OCZ Vertex 4 Extreme Performance SSD Solid State Drive Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,639 words · ~8 min read
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Welcome to another SSD unboxing. This one is actually particularly exciting.
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This is OCZ's Vertex 4. So, if you're
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familiar with OCZ's nomenclature for their drives, you'll know that as far as
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the consumer space goes, Vert.Ex is
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their branding for what they consider to be their top tier, best they can
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deliver, top product line. So, the
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original Vertex used an Indelinks barefoot controller and that was when
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OCZ and Ind were both still separate companies. The second generation Vertex
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used the first generation Sanforce controller which at the time delivered
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previously unheard of performance due to
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the way that it compressed the data before it wrote it to the flash allowing
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you to basically get more more mileage for your dollar in terms of the actual
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speed of the flash itself due to controller voodoo magic. than the
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Vert.ex 3, which is still a current product and still going, is using a
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second generation sandforce controller, a SATA 36 Gbit per second force
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controller. And this right here is the
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second product we've seen from OCZ that takes advantage of their new
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relationship with Ind. So that is the original Vertex one was Indelinks and
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now we've come full circle again back to Ind. The difference is this time OCZ is
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the owner of Ind has developed the
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controller for this chip in-house since the acquisition for Indelinks and is so
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proud of their creation that they are putting their Vertex branding as well as
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a 5-year warranty behind this product. And I apologize guys in advance for the
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uh for the backdrop here which happens to be my system that I'm working on but
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it was too heavy to move. So it is what it is. So, what does OCZ have to say for
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themselves? High performance design? Yeah, that's for sure. As far as real
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world performance benchmarks go, it's
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pretty much up there. It's either a top performer or the top performer. In some
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synthetic benchmarks, it doesn't do quite as well, but at the end of the
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day, I use my drives in the real world.
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I don't know about you. MLC flash memory is hardly a selling point. Everyone's
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using MLC flash memory these days. Includes an SSD adapter. That's good to
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have. SATA 3 6 Gbit per second. H, which
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is pretty much the limiting factor for the performance of this drive due to a
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couple of the a couple of the performance enhancements they've made,
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including a huge RAM cache that allows it to basically max out the SATA 36 Gbit
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per second uh interface whenever it's
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able to use it. Trim support, once again, it better be. And a really cool
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thing about the fact that it has trim support is also compared to the Octane
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which was the first Indelinkx infused OCZ product since the uh since the
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acquisition um non-trim support is also
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significantly better compared to that first generation Everest product. So
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this is Everest 2 in terms of the controller and it not only supports trim
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but also performs much better without trim into links infused. So that means
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it has an Indelink controller as opposed to the sandforce controllers that not
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only OCZ has access to but everyone else in their dog has access to. This is
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their own thing. So was designed and built with unparalleled performance, reliability and endurance in mind. So
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reliability and endurance is something that they're very very serious about on
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this product. Not only are they throwing the 5-year warranty on it, but they're
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also building in a lot more advanced features such as and I totally have
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notes over there. No, don't look over there. Those are my notes. Okay, just a
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sec. So, the features that OCZ is building in to justify that warranty are
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things like very low right amplification compared to previous generation
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products, which means that when especially when the drive is in a more
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used state and it has to move things around before it can write to it. It is
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doing less wasting of the I mean, let's
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face it, few limited write cycles that are available on the nan flash that it's
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using. So, that's going to make it last longer. Also, it's ready for upcoming
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generations of NAND flash because it supports much more robust error
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correction than previous generation products, which allows it to as we
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shrink the processes for the NAND uh the NAND flash that's on these drives, they
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become inherently less accurate and less reliable. So, we will be able to
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compensate for that with an advanced controller like this one, which may not
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seem relevant today, but if you're an engineer at OCZ or any other SSD
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company, you had better be concerned about that, especially if you're going
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to bring a product to market and expect it to last for a long time. Now,
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speaking of lasting for a long time, performance is very good today, but I
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would definitely expect it to continue to improve because we are still very
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early on in the firmware of this drive. And even the last generation Everest
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product, Octane, got a significant performance boost with firmware well
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after the initial launch. So, inside the box, we get a my SSD is faster than your
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hard drive sticker. We get an OCZ
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warranty and installation guide
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book. Sweet. All right. We get a 2 and
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1/2 in to 3 and 1/2 in OCZ adapter made
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of metal, which is good.
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And we get some mounting screws. And
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finally, the Vertex 4 2.5 in solidstate
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drive. And what could be what could be sexier than putting it next to this GTX
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590 classified so you can enjoy both of them
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together. Pretty sweet, hey. So,
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consistent performance across all workloads is a is a trait that both
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Everest controllers share. Now what that means is compared to Sanforce where if
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you're copying a large file that happens to be like a raar file or a sevenzip
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file an already compressed file it will tend to be significantly slower because
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Sanforce deresides a lot of its performance by compressing data on the
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fly and you can't really compress much further data that's already been
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compressed whereas Everest gets the same performance regardless of whether you're
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working with compressible or non-compressible data. It supports AES
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256 encryption, which is a feature that
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is useful if you encrypt your drive. Personally, I don't work with encryption
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on my desktop, so I'm not too worried about it. It also has absolutely wicked
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4K random read and write performance, as well as outstanding write performance.
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Once again, especially with incompressible data. When it comes to incompressible data, this drive is
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pretty much untouchable. the higher cap
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drives as with many other drives. I don't know if you guys have checked out this video on my NCIXCOM channel, but if
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you do, I do mention this many times. Higher capacity drives tend to perform
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better than lower capacity versions using the same architecture. Whether
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it's because there are more channels to write to uh in parallel or read from in
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parallel, giving it just a sheer bandwidth advantage, or whether there
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are other architecture tweaks, that just tends to be the case. So this is a 256
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gig drive which will perform slightly less than the 512 gig drive and slightly
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better than the 128 gig drive. So you do get more value for buying a higher
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capacity besides just the additional capacity. And right now 120 gig is sort
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of the sweet spot, but more and more people are deciding to go with 256 gig
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drives as well. So you can come in and have a close look at it physically,
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although I don't expect you're going to notice much of note. Um the sticker is
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on crooked on this one. So maybe that's because it's a media sample, but you
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know, that's probably the kind of thing that I would correct cuz I'm OCD like
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that. In terms of mounting holes, you see your usual mounting holes. So yes,
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it can be mounted either in a desktop or in a notebook. Got your four on the
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bottom. You got your sticker showing the serial number. You got your warranty
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void if removed OCZ sticker. You've got your standard SATA 36 GB per second data
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port as well as your SATA power connector. And other than that, in terms
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of the physicality of it, yeah, there's nothing special, but it's what's under
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the hood that makes this drive special. Maybe it's not the same kind of a
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generational performance leap like we saw from Vert.ex one to Vertex 2 or from
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2 to three, but what this is is it's finally something that OCZ has 100%
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control over. I mean, yeah, there were the blue screen issues with the early
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earlier Sandforce drives that OCZ took the brunt of the flack for because they
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were the ones shipping most of the drives. Well, now they're no longer
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relying on a third party company in order to support them. So, this is one
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of the first products where we see how well they are going to deliver when they
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actually fully control all aspects of the execution of this drive. So, I'm
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very excited to see how the general public accepts this particular product.
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Thank you for checking out this unboxing and first look.