SSD Summer Slam: 12 New 2.5" And 1.8" Drives Rounded-Up

OCZ Vertex 2.5” (120GB)

The Vertex is OCZ’s Indilinx-based SSD. The drive comes with 64MB cache memory and is available at 60GB, 120GB, and 250GB capacities. We like that OCZ recommends which drivers you should use with the drive. The company also offers a garbage collection tool, which reorganizes stored data by executing deletes. This results in preventing the drive from going the full read/erase/write cycle on blocks that were previously used when new data has to be written.

Note that we kept using Intel’s storage drivers on our reference storage test system. This is the configuration we use for all other SSDs, and we don’t want to start adjusting drivers for individual drives. Most users wouldn’t know about this recommendation unless they take the time and accidentally read them on the OCZ Vertex product page.

OCZ’s specified performance numbers sound solid and honest: 250 MB/s read maximum, 180 MB/s write maximum, and 100 MB/s sustained writes for the 120GB drive we tested. Our benchmarks reported 214 MB/s for reads, but they go all the way down to a minimum of 52 MB/s. Using the garbage collection tool didn’t help much here. The Vertex delivers average I/O performance and average PCMark Vantage application benchmark results. Its power consumption stayed in the green zone between 0.5W and 1.1W, helping the drive pull in impressive performance per watt results. The drive didn’t dominate in any category, but it is a solid all-around desktop or mobile SSD.

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PCB Details

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