OCZ Vertex 3 240GB review

So before we start off, we need to state that we have received a 'beta' or rather engineering version of the SSD from OCZ. Since the article launch was merely days before shipment OCZ did not even had the time to put stickers on it. All black without stickers and hot from the press baby.

Specifications and architecture

We stated it several times, the current SATA II controller is a bottleneck for future generation SSDs as literally they where hitting the upper plafond in terms of performance. We've now physically and mechanically reached that threshold. With the slow adoption rate towards SATA III, effectively the bandwidth your storage device can work in has doubled up, and believe it or not ... that's great but still not enough for the years to come as SSD performance over the coming year or two will take an even larger leap in peak performance.

We have stated it many times and explained this quite a bit, but the seek time on SSD drives are insane; nothing short of amazing, at less than 1ms -- 0.1ms as we actually can measure. The average seek time for a traditional HDD is roughly 9ms. Do the math, hey, no more moving and spinning mechanical components is the key here.

The traditional HDD is a limiting factor on the overall PC experience. Also, storage performance like this will, for example, greatly enhance load times of Photoshop, Generic applications, Office, games load times and even simple stuff like browsing the web will become a much faster experience.

But let's move onwards to the SSD itself.

Specifications and architecture

Here's where we'll look a little deeper inside the actual product. The OCZ Vertex 3 is, as stated, an SSD based on MLC NAND (25nm) flash memory.

The difference though is that it uses that new SATA III interface. The end result here is that you'll get a storage unit with a massive IO performance, peaking up-to 525 MB/sec in read performance and a scorching 500 MB/sec write performance.

Now, always bare in mind that a manufacturer loves to show you the burst / maximum peak performance, not average. Regardless of that fact, which we'll show you in the benchmark sessions, this storage unit is just extremely fast.

So at first sighting, the non-PRO model seems familiar to a nearly awkward way. There are differences though, the regular Vertex 3 comes with a lower spec SandForce 2281 controller and we spotted 'cheaper' NAND flash memory. We'll get into that in a sec.

The regular Vertex 3 SSD will become available in two volume sizes: 120 and 240 GB are available. The products range from just under 250 USD for the 120 GB version towards, 500 USD for this 240 GB version, OCZ covers the unit with a 3 year warranty. Some key features:

• SATA III / 6Gbps
• Implements SandForce 2281 Controller
• Enhanced BCH ECC capability
• Supports SATA-7 Security Erase
• Efficient Write Amplification Factor of less than 1 (4K database transfer workload)
• Comprehensive SSD specific S.M.A.R.T. attributes
• Significantly improved performance over previous generation
  o Delivers 20% faster IOPS, and 40% faster sequential read/write throughputs
• Consumer solution that implements cost-effective2Xnm MLC NAND Flash to deliver an excellent balance of performance and reliability
• MTBF: 2 Million Hours

To understand the product we'll need to realize that there are primary technologies embedded into the storage unit. As such we'll continue the technology coverage in two stages:

1. The SSD partitions paired with controller
2. SATA III 6 Gbit interface

We'll explain each one in a simple manner.