I’ll admit, I’m a little late to the SSD game. I wanted one, but I sat there with my gigantic 7200RPM hard drives, thinking that there wouldn’t be so much difference in performance that the extra cost of an SSD would be justified.
The OCZ Vertex 2 has shown me just how wrong I was.
The basics
The Vertex 2 series uses a SandForce-1200 controller which is well-known for incredibly fast performance, capable of achieving the full speeds available to SATA II controllers (3.0Gb/s, realistically just under 300MB/s). It is a Multi-Level Cell (MLC) architecture, meaning more than one bit of data is stored per memory cell. Using MLC NAND helps to reduce the cost of devices, but at the same time it is slower and more prone to error than Single Level Cell (SLC) NAND. Fortunately both of these drawbacks can be overcome by packing many cells together and arranging them in a similar fashion to a mechanical disk-based RAID array.
Our review sample is a 120GB SSD. Smaller capacities are available, but if this will be the only drive in the system (a common limitation for notebook users), 120GB would be the smallest I’d recommend. Windows 7 is quite large, and other applications will quickly eat up the remaining space of a 60GB SSD. For example, the current Icrontic benchmark suite occupies around 90GB when fully installed. This includes Windows, several benchmarking applications (3DMark 11, for example, requires 1.5GB of space), and a small library of games which take over 60GB by themselves.
Specs
- Form factor: 2.5″ (notebook-sized)
- Interface: SATA II (SATA 3.0Gb/s)
- Architecture: MLC
- Capacity: 120GB
- Max read: 285MB/s
- Max write: 275MB/s
- Sustained write: up to 250MB/s
- Seek time: 0.1ms
- TRIM support
- SMART support
- MTBF: 2,000,000 hours
- Warranty: 3 years parts/labor
Hardware setup
This is the first SSD to enter our review system, so the comparison for this review will be between the Vertex 2, a Western Digital Caviar Blue 7200rpm drive (the previous bench system hard drive), and a pair of RAID-5 arrays (hosted on an Areca ARC-1230 PCIe x8 controller). The RAID arrays are included to show what is required to approach the performance of an SSD. When looking at the RAID performance, keep a few things in mind:
- The RAID array is hosted on a PCIe x8 controller with 2GB/s of bandwidth. The Vertex 2 is on a SATA II connection with a maximum bandwidth of 300MB/s.
- Given a similar number of Vertex 2 SSDs on the same RAID controller, the SSD-RAID would likely far exceed the hard drive RAID.
- We don’t have five Vertex 2 SSDs to put in a RAID array, but I’m pretty sure it would be glorious.
Testing
Atto
We start with the benchmark that best shows off the performance of the Vertex 2 SSD. Atto tests with compressible data, showing the Vertex 2’s full performance. The Vertex 2 completely saturates the SATA II connection though, and completely blows away the single hard drive. When comparing read speeds, the RAID array’s huge bandwidth advantage creates a large lead, but when it comes to write speeds, the gap is significantly more narrow.
Crystal DiskMark
This gets interesting. While the RAID array bests the Vertex 2 in both sequential reads and writes, the opposite holds true for all the other tests. In fact, when it comes to the 4K test cases, there’s no comparison; the Vertex 2 easily surpasses either of the disk-based configurations.
AS-SSD
AS-SSD uses non-compressible data in its test, showing one of the worst cases for SandForce-based SSDs. As you can see, the numbers are much closer this time between the single hard drive and the Vertex 2, with the hard drive even pulling slightly ahead in sequential writes. It should be noted, though that even with AS-SSD’s umcompressible data the Vertex 2 is far better at 4K reads and writes than a standard hard drive.
PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite
This subset tests a number of everyday tasks in Windows, from booting to various media-based tasks. These tasks rely heavily on storage speed, and the Vertex 2 SSD certainly delivers.
Application load times
For Windows 7 boot time, the clock was started as soon as the power button was pushed, and stopped once the pointer no longer indicated startup programs were being loaded (the spinning circle next to the arrow disapears). The clock was started on Crysis as soon as the “Load” button was pressed and stopped once the level was 100% loaded (a “press any key to begin” message appeared). Adobe Lightroom load time started when the program was selected from the start menu and stopped when the program splash screen disappeared.
The differences look very small on the charts; only a few seconds separate the Vertex 2 and the hard drive. The difference is quite noticeable though. The bulk of the system’s boot time is the motherboard POST routines. Once Windows 7 starts loading, the desktop is ready in a matter of seconds. Crysis levels loaded much more quickly. Lightroom didn’t benefit as dramatically with a small photo catalog, but the speed difference should increase as catalog size grows.
Something else to consider
Vertex 3 is coming, and it will arrive as one of the fastest 2.5″ SSD—we saw speeds nearly twice those of Vertex 2 at CES this year. Should you get a Vertex 2 now or spring forVertex 3 later? Well, it really depends on what your current hardware is and (depending on the first answer) when you plan to change it. If you do not currently have SATA III ports and do not plan to upgrade anytime soon, go with the Vertex 2; anything faster will pretty much be wasted on the SATA II ports. However if you currently have (or plan to upgrade) to a motherboard with SATA III ports it might be worth the wait, although the Vertex 2 certainly remains a great option. Vertex 3 will certainly be more expensive than Vertex 2, which has really come down in price over the last month or so and will continue to drop as Vertex 3 enters the market.
Price
Newegg’s current price for the 120GB Vertex 2 is $229.99 for the 2.5″ form factor or $209.99 for the nearly identical 3.5″ version (the only difference is the case used to house the actual components). This price is one of the lowest available, further adding to the list of benefits.
Conclusion
SSDs still aren’t ready to push hard drives out completely; capacity and price haven’t reached parity with their mechanical counterparts yet. That doesn’t mean SSDs aren’t a viable option though, especially as a boot drive with a larger mechanical drive for data storage. The Vertex 2 was my first long-term exposure to an SSD, and I’ll admit I’m sold on it even at the higher cost-per-bit. The numbers don’t lie, either: this is one fast drive and it’s getting less expensive quickly thanks to the pending arrival of newer and faster models.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for an SSD for a SATA II system, the OCZ Vertex 2 is the an excellent drive and is hereby awarded the Icrontic Stamp of Approval.
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