OCZ Vector 150 SSD Review (240GB) – OCZ Refines Their Enthusiast SSD With An Enterprise Flavor

STEADY STATE 4K RANDOM WRITE IOPS TESTING

Looking through the literature before analysing this SSD, it wasn’t hard to see that the bread and butter of the OCZ Vector 150 would be its sustained write IOPS performance.  With sustained random 4K IOPS as high as 26K for the 480GB capacity, 21K for the 240GB capacity that we are testing today and 12K for the 120GB version, OCZ claims that these are superior to many, if not all similarly configured consumer/enthusiast SSD available, most of whom don’t even advertise these IOPS numbers.  Quite frankly, this isn’t a far stretch as most consumer drives just aren’t built to industry enterprise standards.

For our testing, we decided on matching the OCZ Vector 150 with an upper tier consumer drive, as well as what most might consider to be an enterprise class SSD.  On the consumer side we have the Plextor M5M Pro Xtreme SSD that we reviewed previously, and on the enterprise side we threw in the Seagate  600 Pro that was reviewed here as well.  All three SSDs were hit with 12 hours of 4K random write disk access, which not only shows the colors of any SSD, but also, pushed all three to a sustained level of performance.

In examining these results, most might think that there is something wrong with the Plextor M5M Pro Xtreme as its steady state IOPS leveled off at just over 7000IOPS, but there isn’t.  This is representative of a typical consumer SSD, many of which might not even last this test pattern for 12 hours.  From there, the OCZ Vector 150 comes in at just over three times higher with over 21000 IOPS at steady state, and the Seagate 600 at around the 31500K IOPS mark.

Both the consumer and enterprise SSD are representative of their respective classes, and OCZ has pulled off quite an impressive performance run with a steady state more than three times that of a typical consumer SSD.

MIXED WORKLOAD PERFORMANCE

Up next in our test file we decided to put OCZ’ claims to the test with a bit of mixed workload testing. Once again using IOMeter, we tested all three SSDs with data samples typically seen in a Database (67%R/33%W), File Server (80%R/20%W), WorkStation (20%R/80%W), and a Web Server (100%R). These tests were conducted part and parcel to steady state testing above.

It’s easy to see why OCZ is raving about their steady state and mixed workload performance with the vector sitting necak and neck with the Seagate 600 Pro enterprise SSD.  We expected the Plextor to show performance improvement in Web Server testing, however, the rest is indicative of a typical consumer SSD.

MIXED LOAD PERFORMANCE – SECURE ERASE

We were a bit curious as to what the mixed load comparisons would look like after we did a secure erase on the three SSDs. We were very confident that a performance increase would be seen, however, wanted to se if the comparisons deviated at all, especially since the configuration file accounted for a ramp up period before conducting the test.

Let’s take a look at the OCZ Vector 150 promotional video before detailing our report analysis and final thoughts: