Legit Storage Reviews
OCZ Vertex LE (Limited Edition) 100GB SSD Review
| Manufacturer: | OCZ Technology |
| Product: | OCZSSD2-1VTXLE100G |
| Date: | Sat, Feb 20, 2010 - 12:00 AM |
| Written By: | Nathan Kirsch - |
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OCZ Vertex LE SSD Performance Review
The OCZ Vertex Series of Solid-State Drives (SSDs) has been without a doubt one of the most successful SSDs released by any manufacturer. When we reviewed the original Vertex 120GB drive in April 2009 we found it to be an amazing SSD that was one of the first on the market that had the ability to do garbage collection and TRIM. It was truly a drive that was better than much of the competition and even today it is a solid performing drive thanks to the Indilinx Barefoot controller. OCZ has been busy working on their next generation SSD products, and rather than using last year's Indilinx Barefoot controller they found a new controller series that they liked from an upcoming SSD controller company called SandForce. OCZ has been testing the SandForce SF-1200 and SF-1500 controllers for months internally and last month during CES they made the formal announcement that OCZ would be bringing out the Vertex 2 series of SSDs using these two new controllers.
OCZ is planning on coming out with the following three drives with SandForce Controllers. It used to be four drives, but the Vertex 2 Pro has been canceled.
| Model |
Controller | NAND | Max Read |
Max Write |
4KRW IOPS |
| Vertex LE |
SF-1500 | MLC | 270MB/s | 250MB/s | 15000 |
| Vertex 2 |
SF-1200 | MLC | 270MB/s | 260MB/s | 20000 |
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| Vertex 2 EX |
SF-1500 | SLC | 280MB/s | 270MB/s | 22000 |
The entry level Sandforce drive will be the Vertex Limited Edition (LE) and it will be using MLC Flash memory with the Sandforce SF-1500 controller. Since OCZ canceled the Vertex 2 Pro SSD it is highly likely that this limited edition drive is basically the inventory of Vertex 2 Pro drives with a slower, but more reliable and stable firmware from what we can gather. OCZ said that they have 5,000 of these drives available, so they should go rather quick. The Vertex LE will be available in 100GB (OCZSSD2-1VTXLE100G) and 200GB (OCZSSD2-1VTXLE200G) drive capacities with the 100GB model featuring an MSRP of $399 and the 200GB model having an MSRP of $829. Clearly, these are not inexpensive drives!
The Vertex LE with the latest revision of its firmware has been rated with transfer rates at up to 270MB/s read and 250MB/s write with an impressive 15,000 IOPS (4K random write). Not bad performance, but it will be a little slower than the Vertex 2 SSD drive, which also features MLC Flash, but the SF-1200 controller. OCZ told Legit Reviews that they have been putting months of work into perfecting the SF-1200 controllers performance through Firmware enhancements and as you can tell from the chart above and below that it looks like the hard work is paying off.
Vertex LE Maximum Performance
- Max Read: up to 270MB/s
- Max Write: up to 250MB/s
- Sustained Write: up to 235MB/s
- Random Write 4k: 15,000 IOPS
- Max 4k IOPS: 50,000
The OCZ Vertex LE has native TRIM support and measures in at just 99.8 x 69.63 x 9.3mm in size. For a drive that weighs in at 77g it is amazing to think that it has a shock tolerance of up to 1500G and only consumes 2W of power during operation and just 0.5W in standby mode. Flipping the OCZ Vertex 2 Pro 100GB SSD over give you get a
better look at the back of the drive. Notice that it has threaded
mounting holes on both the bottom and sides to fit in various cases and
laptops.
Here is a better look at the SATA II header and the SATA power connector on the Vertex 2 Pro. Notice that this drive doesn't need a jumper for firmware flashing. The SATA 2 storage
interface is backwards-compatible with SATA 1. For maximum performance, OCZ recommends installing Vertex LE series SSDs on a SATA 2 controller and
enabling ‘AHCI’ mode in the BIOS. This drive does not support SATA 6Gbps, which is a bit of a bummer, but the factory ratings are very impressive and this drive should scream in the benchmarks. The OCZ Vertex LE features a 3-year warranty in case and OCZ informed us that they are reserving some drives for RMA purposes since it is a limited edition drive. This is great news as if you buy one of these you know you should be able to get a replacement.
Let's take a look the new controller and then we will crack open the drive to give you a look inside the drive so you can see what makes it tick.
Next Page - Inside the Vertex LE SSD
| Review Index |
|
Page 1 - OCZ Vertex LE SSD Performance Review
Page 2 - Inside the Vertex LE SSD Page 3 - The OCZ Toolbox Utility Page 4 - The Test System Page 5 - HD Tach v3.0.4.0 Page 6 - HD Tune v4.01 Page 7 - HD Tune v4.01 - Random Access Page 8 - ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.41 Page 9 - SiSoftware Sandra 2010 Page 10 - CrystalDiskMark v3.0 Page 11 - AS SSD Benchmark Page 12 - PCMark Vantage Page 13 - IOMeter Page 14 - Free Capacity and Final Thoughts |
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