OCZ Apex 120GB SSD

Results Analysis

While the OCZ Apex 120GB shares the big step up from the previous generation of single drive controller chip based Samsung NAND flash drives with the G.Skill Titan, we must admit to being a little disappointed on a couple of fronts here.

While theoretical performance as measured by HD-Tach is excellent, it doesn’t really translate into too many real world benefits. In our MP3 file pattern FC-Test benchmarks, despite producing excellent read and write results, the OCZ Apex demonstrates some unconvincing file copy speeds and writing the larger files in our ISO file pattern tests also produced a disappointing result, with the OCZ taking on average four seconds longer to write the 1.6GB file pattern than the similarly designed G.Skill Titan.

Performance of the Apex 120GB was also very sporadic and we've had to re-run our tests literally dozens of times to get results we're happy to publish. While some results were very fast, others lagged well behind. Looking at the saw-tooth HD-Tach average read and up/down average write graphs on the first page gives us a pretty good idea of why this is, with lots of differences in speed across the capacity of the drive.

It’s unfortunate really as had we looked at the OCZ Apex first, we’d have hailed the major improvements over the previous generation that the dual drive controller chip design has brought. As it is though, the G.Skill Titan has already shown itself to be a more well rounded SSD and while the OCZ Apex does benefit from some minor improvements over the G.Skill, it also carries some performance hits too.


It’s amazing really considering just how similar the two drives are that the performance differences can be so startling, with just the firmware and NAND flash module size separating them. However, as we’ve seen from HD-Tach’s average read graphs, the firmware differences are pretty clear, and these have manifested themselves in our testing.

Value and Final Thoughts

Value wise the Apex is also a little disappointing. While we appreciate that cutting edge tech always carries a premium, the cost per gigabyte of the Apex at £2.87 in comparison to the G.Skill Titan’s £1.83 doesn’t make it as appealing (if you can ever call that sort of price per Gigabyte appealing!), although it’s still a lot better than the £4.50 per Gigabyte Intel charges for its 80GB X25-M.

If you’re genuinely thinking about splashing this sort of cash on an SSD though, rather than opt for the OCZ Apex 120GB SSD, you might as well go the whole hog and grab the G.Skill, which packs more well rounded overall performance and more than twice the capacity for just £125 more! That might sound like a lot, but in the world of SSDs it really is worth it, especially if you’re considering using the drive as a boot disk for a high end system – after all, you can never have too much hard drive space.

While the OCZ Apex 120GB is still an admirable step up from the previous generation of OCZ SSDs thanks to the innovative use of the dual JMicron drive controllers, its performance isn’t quite what we’d hoped for considering what we know the drive’s design is capable of. Add to this the unattractive price tag and you end up with a drive that, while strong on its own merits, struggles in comparison to what else is out there in the market.

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 5/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

Score Guide

Addendum 11th February 2009: OCZ Technology has provided bit-tech with an official comment:

Consumers may see a discrepancy between reported capacity and actual capacity; the storage industry standard is to display capacity in decimal. However, the operating system usually calculates capacity in binary format, causing traditional HDD and SSD to show a lower capacity in Windows. In the case of SSDs, some of the capacity is reserved for formatting and redundancy for wear leveling. These reserved areas on an SSD may occupy up to 5% of the drive’s storage capacity. On the Apex Series the new naming convention reflects this and the 30 is equivalent to 32GB, the 60 is equivalent to the 64GB and so on.

The current end user prices for the OCZ Apex 120GB in the US and the UK are at USD 299 and GBP 310, while we are working closely with our UK partners to get a lower MSRP to ensure we offer the community the best price performance in all segments with our wide SSD range.

The Apex 60, 120 and 250GB models will ship to our leading UK partners this week.

OCZ also pointed out to us that Aria has listed the 120GB Apex for just £285.14 inc. VAT, making it much more competitive, and they are expecting stock later this week.