Consistency is key
Those who follow the solid-state drive (SSD) landscape will know that earlier this year Toshiba purchased OCZ's assets and launched a subsidiary company known as OCZ Storage Solutions.
It can be reasonably argued that OCZ was very much at the vanguard of the SSD revolution, pushing out a number of drives before the big players - Intel, Crucial/Micron, SanDisk, et al - really took notice. Now, having transitioned and owned by another industry giant, OCZ is looking to reinvigorate the consumer SSD market with a new range of drives.
Kicking off the Toshiba-owned era is the Vertex 460, available in 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities.
OCZ Vertex 460 SSDs |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | 120GB |
240GB |
480GB |
|
| Controller | OCZ Barefoot 3 M10 |
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| NAND | 19nm Toshiba MLC |
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| Total Drive Capacity | 120GB |
240GB |
480GB |
|
| Onboard DDR3 Cache | 256MB |
256MB |
512MB |
|
| Interface | SATA 6Gb/s, compatible with SATA 3Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s |
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| Sequential Read Speed | up to 530MB/s |
up to 540MB/s |
up to 545MB/s |
|
| Sequential Write Speed | up to 420MB/s |
up to 525MB/s |
up to 525MB/s |
|
| Random IOPs (4KB Reads) | up to 80,000 IOPs |
up to 85,000 IOPs |
up to 95,000 IOPs |
|
| Random IOPs (4KB Writes) | up to 90,000 IOPs |
up to 90,000 IOPs |
up to 90,000 IOPs |
|
| Available Form Factors | 2.5in |
2.5in |
2.5in |
|
| Active Power Consumption | 2.7W Typical |
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| Idle Power Consumption | 0.6W Typical |
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| Life Expectancy | 2 million hours Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) |
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| Endurance | 21.9TB TBW - 20GB per day for 3 years |
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| Warranty | 3 Years |
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| Current Retail Price | £68 |
£117 |
£205 |
|
Evolution
The Vertex 460 represents a bridge between the mainstream Vertex 450 and enthusiast Vector 150; it uses the controller from the former and the NAND from the latter. Providing a means by which to improve endurance, OCZ equips the Vertex 460 with 12 per cent overprovisioning, meaning there is 16GB of spare capacity set aside for memory management on the 240GB model we have in for review today. More overprovisioning is better for endurance but, obviously, worse because it reduces capacity.
Speaking of endurance, OCZ says the Vertex 460 is good for 20GB writes per day based on a three-year warranty period. That sounds impressive but isn't as long as some of the competition. It's also significantly lower than the Vector's 50GB per day over five years. Do take this into account if your intend to engage in heavy writing on a daily basis.
The drive
Standing at 7mm tall, making it useful for including in Ultrabooks, OCZ's full-metal casing is heavier and better built than any we've seen before. Removing it is a simple process of taking away four standard screws.
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OCZ doesn't provide a 7mm-9.5mm adapter for fitting the drive into regular chassis, unfortunately, but does include the standard 2.5in-3.5in desktop adapter Adding value to the bundle, there's a copy of Acronis True Image Software. We've used it for a while in the labs, for making images of test systems, and it works well and is easy to use.
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The Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10 controller is surrounded by eight Toshiba 19nm 128Gbit NAND chips on the topside. This is the same memory as present on the faster, more expensive Vector 150. The controller uses two 256MB cache chips for buffering, with space for one more, presumably for the 480GB model.
OCZ is keen to point out that the Vertex 460 performs better than comparable drives when running sustained, steady-state performance achieved after 12 hours of writing. To this end, it quotes steady-state random 4K QD32 IOPs of 21,000 for this model, down from an out-of-the-box 90,000. This 21K number is approximately 2x that achieved by other popular drives, according to the company.
Finally coming on to price, the 240GB drive is currently retailing for £117, representing middle-of-the-road pricing for what is an upper mainstream SSD.
Summary
Built with the foundations laid down by the Vector 150 and promising class-leading performance when in a steady state, the Vertex 460 appears to have all the bases covered. Let's find out if this assertion is true.
