OCZ Vertex 4 SSD review

 

Anvil’s Storage Utilities

As well as performing SSD endurance tests. Anvil’s Storage Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD benchmark tests many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random at different queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly than this, all using real test data.

Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD benchmark is the fact that you can change the compression levels of the test data. The compression levels of the data sets used for the tests can be varied from 0% compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few data profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real application data being read and written to the SSD.

Anvil’s Storage Utilities is still in beta at the moment, but the application is currently solid enough to use in this article, and I have already verified the results obtained using an SATA analyser.

I will include a screenshot of the review drive, and all comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If you would like to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other SSDs in this article, you can do so by following the link here.

I will also be testing three different compression profiles, which are as follows.

• 0 fill (100% compressible data)
• Application simulation profile (46% compressed)
• 100% (non compressible data)

 So let’s begin the tests.

0 fill

OCZ Vertex 4 512GB (0 fill)

Total score

Writing score

Reading score

With a total score of 4826.72, the OCZ Vertex 4 is way out in front, with particularly strong writing performance.

Application profile

OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD (application profile)

Total score

Writing score

Reading score

With data that isn’t so easily compressible, the OCZ Vertex 4 pulls out a larger lead over the two SandForce SF-2281 based SSDs, and with a total score of 4859.69, it is a long way ahead of all the other SSDs in this test.

100% incompressible

OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD (100% incompressible)

Total score

Writing score

Read score

For once the Vertex 4 is beaten, and in this case it’s the read score in the 100% incompressible data test. However, the OCZ Vertex 4 is still overall the fastest drive in this test with a total score of 4848.72.

Summary

One should keep in mind that although Anvil’s Storage Utilities SSD benchmark is a very good benchmark, and tests many aspects of SSD performance, ultimately it is demonstrating which SSD is technically the fastest, and this may not be showing (for example) which drive will be fastest in the real world with a home user’s work pattern.

The OCZ Vertex 4 has performed extremely well in these tests and is by a large margin the fastest SSD.

 

Now let’s head to the next page for some real world tests….

 

• IOMeter test results
• Real world tests