Vertex 4 Reviews and Thoughts

[Highendtoys]

http://www.ocztechnology.com/vertex4/

The clock is ticking....but none of the reviews are up.

Controller Info: http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/46...iew/index.html

Performance Info: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/465...iew/index.html

[Christopher]

Shouldn't you be in a better position to answer that question? I think it all happens at 08:00.

[Computurd]

yeah, its about time for the net to light up LOL

[Highendtoys]

I don't know what you are talking about. I'm just some dude on an internet forum trolling for info and trying to figure out what to buy next.

[Christopher]

What, you don't have secret ninja spies like I do?

[Gilgamesh]

Reviews (256-512GB):

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5719/o...ew-256gb-512gb

http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_vertex_4_ssd_review

http://www.guru3d.com/article/ocz-vertex-4-ssd-review/

http://hothardware.com/Reviews/OCZ-V...Review/?page=7

http://thessdreview.com/our-reviews/...mance-results/



Plextor PX-256M3P from koc:

[Highendtoys]

At least post something with a little entertainment value.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/465...iew/index.html

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/46...iew/index.html

I fell asleep, something I haven't really done in two days.

[lowfat]

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...sd-review.html

[Bobsama]

Looks like a Samsung 830 is a better choice, then.

[Gilgamesh]

Vertex 4 256GB is better than Octane 256GB, no doubt.

5 years warranty is always good.

Waiting for street prices after 1/2 weeks.

[Nizzen]

Lol there is always something wrong with OCZ

Seq read are just bad, when you look at many different tests.

Are we waiting for 23 more firmwareupdates? :p

Epic fail for now...

If someone want low pcmark vantage scores, just buy Vertex 4 LOL


------
@ hexus:

The benchmark is admittedly dated, but it has proven to be a good indication of real-world performance during light, everyday tasks, and the Vertex 4 results aren't anywhere near the expected level.

OCZ's explanation for these results is that "PC Mark is mostly based on compressed files performance which means it's not a good representation of the capabilities of the Vertex 4."

---------
@ Anandtech:
......Light Storage Bench suite shows the read performance isn't consistently high. It's a frustrating dynamic, one that I truly hope is mitigated with the next firmware release as OCZ has promised.

........Idle power consumption is also a concern of mine. As it stands, consuming over 1W when doing nothing isn't ok for a notebook drive. OCZ tells us a fix is on the way for this as well

The fix is called Vertex 5?

OK I am negative about Vertex 4 :p

[Anvil]

I find the Vertex 4 quite interesting, it's not listed anywhere yet in these parts of the world though.

I'm sure there will be a few firmware updates, nothing unusual about that.

[Christopher]

This was a bum rush to get the drive out before the next Marvell drives.

[Anvil]

A pity that the pcper review doesn't include a proper Marvell based drive.

[Christopher]

A pity that the pcper review doesn't include a proper Marvell based drive.

Define proper

[Anvil]

Normally I'd say the m4 is the one to include but some of the Plextor's would do as well

[johnw]

From the Marvell 88SS9187 controller press release
http://www.marvell.com/company/news/...releaseID=2176

Supports on-chip RAID technology for the NAND device with flexible customer firmware based algorithm to optimize retiring of defective NAND block, plane, die or device.

Supports high-speed DDR3 DRAM interface with support for up to 1 G byte memory that permits customer to implement highly performance optimized mapping algorithms.

Maximum sequential read performance for a SATA 6G device.
~500MB/s of sequential write performance even at dirty drive conditions.

Best-in-class Random Read and Write IOPS with minimum over-provisioning and minimal performance degradation.

So, the 9187 supports flash RAID. So does the Vertex 4 (although it is apparently not enabled).

The 9187 supports 1GB of RAM cache. The Vertex 4 has 1GB of RAM cache.

The 9187 supports ~500MB/s sequential write speed. The 512GB Vertex 4 sequential write speed is in the high four-hundreds MB/s.

The 9187 supports very high IOPS performance (high QDs, of course). The Vertex 4 has the highest 4KiB high QD IOPS of any consumer SSD.

It certainly does look like the Vertex 4 is using some version of the Marvell 88SS9187 controller, except that the firmware has apparently been "tuned" in such a way that sequential read performance is sub-par at low QD.

The only evidence I have seen that makes me doubt that the V4 has a 9187 is that Marvell's press release talks about low power usage, but the V4 has one of the highest idle power levels of any SSD. But maybe that is just OCZ screwing something up in their specific implementation (or maybe it is unavoidable with a full 1GB of RAM cache).

I can hardly wait to see what Plextor can do with the 9187 controller. I guess it will be awesome. But what will they call it? The m4 name is already taken.

[johnw]

The power consumption issues is reported to be a FW problem in which the drive can't manage power at idle or something, but the 512GB has a lot of NAND on it anyway so it's hard to tell.

Idle power consumption has almost nothing to do with the amount of flash, since flash memory (obviously) retains data with no power applied.

DRAM, in contrast, must be constantly refreshed, so it consumes power at idle. Hence my comment that maybe the 1GB of RAM cache on the V4 is responsible for the higher idle power.

[Wendy]

Vertex 4 512GB

Pic 1 - 4K random write queue depth profile.
Pic 2 - 4K random read queue depth profile.
Pic 3 - Anvil's SSD benchmark (0 fill)
Pic 4 - Anvil's SSD benchmark (100% incompressible)

[Ao1]

The type of NAND being used with the Marvel 9187 will also make a difference to performance (in addition to f/w tweaks).

[Christopher]

Idle power consumption has almost nothing to do with the amount of flash, since flash memory (obviously) retains data with no power applied.

DRAM, in contrast, must be constantly refreshed, so it consumes power at idle. Hence my comment that maybe the 1GB of RAM cache on the V4 is responsible for the higher idle power.

That's true, but just because it's not doing anything doesn't mean it's not doing anything. But I mean, you don't know if high idle consumption is due to power management or if high load consumption is due to the NAND/controller/both.

In the V4's case, it looks like the 256 and 512 use about the same amount of power. The 256 and 512 830s use vastly different amounts of power at idle for some reason, though they're quite close on load (I've measured this for myself).

The 830s are basically identical save 8GB dice vs. 4GB dice. The V4s are pretty close too, but the 256 has half the die count/package.

[lm358]

I read the storagereview review. Looks pretty good, but the Plextor M3P still seems to be better overall (especially in real world and steady state testing!).. which makes me wonder what the "new Marvell controller" is going to be capable of.

@johnw: are you sure the Vertex 4 has 1GB of DDR3?.. I thought it was 512MB. Not that it really matters

[johnw]

@johnw: are you sure the Vertex 4 has 1GB of DDR3?.. I thought it was 512MB. Not that it really matters

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5719/o...-256gb-512gb/2

1GB of DDR3-800 On-Board
The Everest 2 controller is flanked by a 512MB Micron DDR3-800 DRAM. Another 512MB chip exists on the flip side of the PCB bringing the total to a whopping 1GB of DDR3 memory on-board.

[canthearu]

Yeah, they will release a firmware update to fix it's problems .... but it will be a destructive update and it will come out about 15 seconds after your install windows on your vertex 4.

But yeah, the vertex 4 definitely has potential ... but needs a bit more polish.

[felix_w]

I read the storagereview review. Looks pretty good, but the Plextor M3P still seems to be better overall (especially in real world and steady state testing!).. which makes me wonder what the "new Marvell controller" is going to be capable of.

@johnw: are you sure the Vertex 4 has 1GB of DDR3?.. I thought it was 512MB. Not that it really matters

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5719/o...-256gb-512gb/2

As per Anandtech review :

In order to get 128GB, 256GB and 512GB drives to market as quickly as possible, OCZ is shipping them all with 1GB of DRAM on-board. The 128GB and 256GB drives simply won't use all of the DRAM however. A future revision of the Vertex 4 will pair the 128/256GB drives with 512MB of memory instead to save on costs.