OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD

Results Analysis and Final Thoughts

Following encouraging theoretical performance in HD-Tach, our FC-Test sequential test showed the Vertex to comfortably outpace every mechanical drive in the write tests, a feat only previously achieved by the SLC based Intel X25-E (which, if you remember, was both crippling small and murderously expensive). In the sequential read/write tests it again came up trumps behind the X25-E and when tasked with reading either of our FC-Test file patterns was only marginally bettered by the pair of Intel X25 drives.

While sequential performance was great, we were a little apprehensive going into our new suite of Iometer tests with the Vertex, having seen for ourselves the poor performance of the previous generation's JMicron based drives. We needn’t have worried. The Vertex was the fastest of any drive in the random read test and was up to ten times faster than the fastest conventional hard disk drive in the random write test – an achievement that only the Intel X25 drives have managed to date.

Although the Vertex is, admittedly, not as fast as the X25-M in terms of random write speed, it trumps it by being able to deliver consistently solid results elsewhere. In comparison, the X25-M suffers from performance degradation as data is re-written, causing performance to fall sharply when we repeated tests, a problem completely absent from the Vertex which completed the random write test over twenty times without any sign of a performance dip.

Given the choice between decent dependable random write, or much faster but rapidly degrading random write, we’re sure you’ll agree the Vertex makes much more sense, while still offering a huge improvement over normal hard disks without any of the stuttering issues that have plagued the JMicron based SSDs.


All this excellent synthetic and sequential performance combines in our real world Windows boot and Crysis load tests to produce an extremely nippy boot time of just 33.2 seconds, and a level load in just 30 seconds, again only fractionally slower than the Intel drives without any of the performance degradation headaches that became so apparent in our Iometer testing.

Simply put, the OCZ Vertex is awesome. It’s the first MLC drive we’ve tested that’s comfortably outpaced mechanical drives in not just some, but every single test we ran and by quite significant margins too. It’s faster at reading, writing, copying, random write, random read, boot times and level loads – whichever way you choose to look at it, it’s just faster in every way we could find to test it.

What’s also quite pleasing is that, while undoubtedly expensive at £330, or £2.75/GB, the Vertex is some way off the extortionate prices Intel was asking for the X25-M when it first hit the market last year, and for your money you’re getting a quite reasonable 119.24GB of usable hard drive space, more than enough for an install of Windows Vista or 7 and a healthy handful of games.

If you really want more space, OCZ also sells the Vertex in 250GB (30GB and 60GB too), but right now we feel the sweet spot for value is this 120GB drive – enough space for everything you'd want without demolishing the bank balance. Watch this space though because we’ll be looking at the somewhat cheaper (but physically identical) G.Skill Falcon in the next few weeks, to see if G.Skill have managed to pull off the same firmware wizardry as OCZ.

We’ve talked before about the gradual rise of the SSD as the inevitable replacement for the hard disk drive, but until now there have always been draw backs, be they slow random write performance, ludicrous costs or performance degradation over time. Finally, we have a drive that, in our week or so extensively using and benchmarking it, has performed brilliantly in every respect without any of the drawbacks, and without costing ludicrous amounts of cash. Forget “inevitable replacement,” if SSDs are able to match and build on the Vertex it’s a case of “come in hard disk drives, your time is up.”

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Score Guide