Tom's Hardware's Summer Guide: 17 SSDs Rounded Up

OCZ Vertex 2 (VTX100G, 100 GB)

The regular Vertex 2 is a performance SSD, and there's also a Vertex 2 "E" type (see next page) that is optimized for slightly higher performance, just like G.Skill's Phoenix and Phoenix Pro. However, the differences between the Vertex 2 and the Vertex 2 "E" are much smaller and hardly worth mentioning.

G.Skill offers 50, 100, and 200 GB models. We received the 100 GB drive as a fair price/capacity compromise. The drives are based on SandForce's SF-1200 controller and perform as expected. The Asax ServerOne, G.Skill Phoenix, OWC Mercury Extreme, and RunCore Kylin II drives are all in the same performance range.

The drive comes at a relatively high cost per gigabyte, but all performance results are more than acceptable. Idle power is average at 0.5 W, but peak power consumption for HD video playback, sequential reads, and workstation I/O is excellent, making the Vertex 2 a solid choice if you care about performance per watt.