OCZ Vertex 4 SSD review with 1.5 firmware - Specifications and Features

Specifications and Features

So the Vertex 4 samples from OCZ have arrived, and they figured in their traditional "SSDs Gone Wild" mindset to submit a 512GB and 256GB version.

Initial tests immediately surprise us! This product can keep up with any SandForce SSF-2281 SSD product like the OCZ Agility and Vertex 3 and Intel's latest and greatest as well.

The Vertex 4 series will be OCZ/Indilinx Everest 2 based, obviously it will pack a 6Gbps SATA interface and big NAND Flash memory partitions. That SATA3 version as such can deliver speeds of up to 535MB/s of bandwidth, 85K 4KB IOPS.

We'll be testing both the 256GB and 512GB models, which after formatting leave 238GB and 476GB of free space.

Product Features:

• Dual Core Indilinx Everest 2 ASIC
• Up to 512MB DRAM cache
• 128GB, 256GB, 512GB models
• High sequential speeds:
  MAx  (SATA 3.0) Read: 535MB/s; Write: 380/475MB/s
• High transactional performance - Optimized for 4K to 16K compressed files
  (SATA 3.0) 85,000 random read 4K IOPS
• Industry-low latency:
  Read: 0.06ms; Write: 0.09ms
• Strong performance at low queue depths (QD 1 – 16)
• Up to 8 channels with up to 16-way Interleaving
• Advanced BCH ECC engine enabling more than 70 bits correction capability per 1KB of data
• Proprietary NDurance™ Technology: increases NAND life up to 2X of the rated P/E cycles
• Efficient NAND Flash management: Dynamic and static wear-leveling, and background garbage collection
• Boot time reduction optimizations
• NCQ support up to 32 queue depth
• End-to-end data protection
• TRIM suppor
• Industry standard SMART reporting

Capacities will start at 128GB and can go all the way up to 512GB. OCZ  already mentioned that Vertex 4 solid state drives have great performance when dealing with compressed data compared to other drives, we'll check that out of course. But that means with large files like ISO, MP3, movies, etc this SSD should be a beast.

Interesting to note is that OCZ will give the product a very nice 5 year carry-in warranty. A good step up from the previous 2 year warranty.

All three Vertex 4 SSDs will include 25nm-class MLC Flash memory chips as well as 512MB of fast DRAM cache pool based on two Micron RAM chips. Indilinx works with a large memory cache, whereas SandForce uses a segment of the NAND flash the cache. That's an essential difference really as it'll leave more space/volume available on the Indilinx productss.

The OCZ Vertex 4 SSDs come with the company's proprietary NDurance technology that promises to extend the life of the ECC NAND memory chips installed and also include built-in support for 256-bit AES encryption.

The SATA3 models just started listing in the stores here in the Netherlands.

So these are specs and introduction prices hovering at 1.35~1.40 USD per GB, Once they get in stock we think another 10% will be shaved off the price fast enough. But let's have a look at the product shall we?