Review OCZ has been rattling out new SSD drives with gay abandon. The 120GB Apex scored 70 per cent in our recent review (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/02/25/review_storage_ssd_ocz_apex_120gb) and now it’s time for the 120GB Vertex to take its place on the test bench.

Cast your eye down the specifications of the Apex (http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_apex_series_sata_ii_2_5-ssd) and the Vertex (http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_vertex_series_sata_ii_2_5-ssd) and you’ll struggle to find much difference between the two models. They look identical because they both come in the 2.5in notebook Sata form-factor. The Vertex is available in the same capacities as the Apex - 30GB, 60GB, 120GB and 250GB - at prices that are very similar. But, inside the casing, there are changes afoot.

The older Apex uses a JMicron JMF602 SSD controller that has acquired a reputation for poor performance in a variety of SSD drives. Consequently, OCZ decided to use two of the controllers in a Raid 0 configuration.

Inside the Vertex, you'll still find 16 Samsung MLC Flash chips and a 64MB cache chip that were used in the 120GB Apex, but the JMicron controller is gone, replaced by the new Indilinx Barefoot IDX22 chip. This means that OCZ has been able to ditch the Raid arrangement, replacing the dual controllers and the Raid chip with a single controller.

Changing the controller is a huge step yet the change in the specification between the Apex and Vertex is surprisingly small. Feeds and speeds vary between models with different capacities so we’ll stick with the 120GB versions. A 120GB Apex drive has a claimed read speed of up to 230MB/s and a write speed up to 160MB/s, with a seek time of less than 0.2-0.3ms.

The 120GB Vertex has a read speed of up to 250MB/s, a write speed of up to 180MB/s and a seek time of less than 0.1ms, so the numbers haven’t changed a great deal.

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We're fully aware that OCZ and the other SSD manufacturers can easily change the read and write speeds by considerably more than 20MB/s with a revision to the drive’s firmware. The question here is whether a single Indilinx controller can do a better job than a pair of JMicron chips in Raid mode, so we slapped the Vertex on the test rig alongside an Intel X25-M SSD and our trusty 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black HDD.

We have continued to evolve the testing software that we use with SSDs as they behave so differently to hard drives. We still use HD Tach but ignore the burst speed figure and instead concentrate on the average read and write figures. The random access time also plays a part but every SSD has a random access time that is a fraction of a millisecond far less than 7200rpm HDDs with their rotating platters that have a delay of 18ms. In this review, we'll also be using CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html) along with ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.34 (http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1137/ATTO_Disk_Benchmark_v2.34.html).

For our file transfer tests we still copy 2GB of movie files - six 350MB files - but we have added a second test where we copy 2GB of MP3 tracks. This collection is made up of 480 files that average 4.2MB in size, which is our idea of a small file. The files aren’t tiny but they are true to life.

Unfortunately, we no longer have the OCZ Apex and 256GB Samsung PB22-J (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/03/17/review_storage_ssd_samsung_mmd0e56g5/) SSDs that we have recently reviewed as they were reclaimed by their manufacturers double quick. This means that our table of test results is a bit of a mix and match as we had to plug in the figures that we previously obtained for these two drives. Consequently, there are a few gaps in the graphs.

The bar charts generated by the ATTO Disk Benchmark graphs reinforce the figures we've previously seen in HD Tach and our file transfer tests as the Intel X25-M - equipped with firmware 8610 - has write speeds that are horribly low. They top out at a sustained speed of 50MB/s compared to the OCZ Vertex at 200MB/s and even our WD Caviar Black writes at 80MB/s.

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2GB File Copy Within Drive

2GB File Transfer To/From OCZ Apex
Large Movie Files

2GB File Transfer To/From Intel X-25M
Large Movie Files

2GB File Transfer To/From Intel X-25M
Small Music Files

2GB File Transfer To/From WD Caviar Black
Large Movie Files

2GB File Transfer To/From WD Caviar Black
Small Music Files

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HD Tach Results

PCMark05 Results

CrystalDiskMark Results

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Check out CrystalDiskMark and it's much the same case. You might think that the Intel SSD is awful but this isn't the case as the 64MB cache can hold a whole two seconds of data. In the event that you are writing large amounts of data in a constant stream to your storage device then you may hit trouble with the Intel SSD, but our experience shows it to be a stunningly good product.

The key test results with an SSD are the data read speeds as your drive needs to be able to deliver files as quickly as possible. Hard drives often deliver an initial burst of data and then slow down to a steady stream. Fragmentation can make this process much, much slower. By contrast, an SSD has minimal latency and ought to be able to deliver data in a mighty torrent provided it doesn’t suffer from the dreaded stutter. The Apex was a bit of a mixed bag, but we felt the internal Raid avoided stutter and turned the JMicron into a reasonably good product.

By contrast, the Vertex is a properly good SSD and matches the read speeds of the Intel and delivers write speeds that look really impressive. In practice, we doubt you'll ever need to use the extra write speed but what the heck, we’re happy to have it in reserve.

There’s another pointer to the advantage of switching to the Indilinx controller and that’s the question of heat. The Apex got quite hot in operation, no doubt because of the dual controllers and the Raid chip, while the Vertex runs as cool as other SSDs, which is a sign of progress.

So we like the Vertex but would we recommend it? Hmm, that’s a tricky one as we have yet to see the OCZ Summit, which will combine MLC Flash with a Samsung controller. We can’t be sure that this will be the same as the controller in the 256GB Samsung PB22-J, but it’s a safe bet the Summit will be a good ‘un.

Verdict

For the time being, we’re going to hang back on a final verdict on the Vertex - even though it is very good - as we fully expect that the Summit SSD will be just as good and may be even better. ®

More SSD Reviews...

(http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/04/20/review_update_storage_ssd_intel_x25_m/) Intel X-25M 80GB

(http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/03/17/review_storage_ssd_samsung_mmd0e56g5/) Samsung PB22-J 256GB

(http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/02/25/review_storage_ssd_ocz_apex_120gb/) OCZ Apex 120GB

(http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/04/06/review_storage_ssd_crucial_n125/) Crucial N125 64GB