Toshiba OCZ VX500 SSD Review

Application Performance

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

Many of the tests on the previous page, which highlight lower random read and write performance, would lead us to expect disappointing application performance with the Toshiba OCZ VX500 series. We often state that a consumer SSD can't deliver exceptional real-world performance without 9 or 10,000 random read IOPS at QD1. The VX500, like many of Toshiba's client SSDs, is the exception. We've asked Toshiba what the secret sauce is, but it doesn't want to reveal the entire recipe. The innovative LBA mapping technology is likely the key performance-boosting ingredient for real-world applications.

Application Storage Bandwidth

Most of the SSDs in this group are close together with roughly 300 MB/s of application performance (averaged results). It's important to remember that the lightest workloads (shown above) differ slightly from the moderate and heavy workloads. These results come from testing when there isn't a lot of data on the flash, so it represents early-life SSD performance. Next, let's look at the heavier workloads when the drive is full of data.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

Several factors play into how an SSD performs late in its lifecycle. The amount of data on the flash, what you ran last, and how long the drive has been at rest all contribute to the performance of your storage system. We control our test environment with automated scripts, but your computer is a dynamic environment.

The charts are full with the fastest consumer SATA SSDs available. The VX500 series holds up well against the premium products. The spoiler remains the same as year's past; the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB. It costs just a few dollars more than the VX500's MSRP, so OCZ will need to work on making its new series a little more attractive.

Total Service Time

During moderate workloads, the 850 EVO and Extreme Pro still obliterate the other premium SSDs in the service time tests. The VX500 would perform better if OCZ armed it with more performance-increasing DRAM. The design has positive and negative aspects, but here we see the performance impact of going DRAMless.

Notebook Battery Life

We have not tested some of the drives (used in the other charts) with our new Lenovo Y700 notebook and MobileMark 2014.5 software. We've included the SK hynix SL308 because it has the best performance we have measured on this system, but the chart is missing the Extreme Pro and 850 Pro. The other drives appear on the list, though.

The VX500 SSDs all fare well in this test. The 1TB model delivers the best system responsiveness, but the additional power for the NAND die stack and DRAM package combine to chew eight minutes off the battery time.

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