OCZ Vector (256GB) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 27, 2012 9:10 PM ESTFinal Words
With the Vector, OCZ has built a price and performance competitor to Samsung's SSD 840 Pro, which previously remained peerless at the top of our charts. For a company that just weeks ago was considered down and out for the count, this is beyond impressive. Samsung has emerged as one of the strongest players in the consumer SSD space, and OCZ appears ready to challenge it. In our tests, Samsung typically enjoys better peak performance, but OCZ's Vector appears to have the advantage when it comes to worst case performance and IO consistency. The latter tend to be more valuable in improving overall user experience in my opinion. I would still like to see an S3700-class client drive and I'd be willing to give up top-end performance to get there, but I suspect that's a tall order for now.
The Vector's power consumption under load, given the performance it's able to deliver, is excellent. I wish idle power consumption were better, making the 830/840 Pro a better fit for ultra mobile applications. But under load the Vector and 840 Pro are indistinguishable from one another.
The only downside to the Vector really is its price, which like the 840 Pro is at a definite premium vs competition from the previous generation. As with all SSDs however, I fully expect Barefoot 3 and maybe even the Vector itself to fall in price over time. If you want the latest and greatest available today, Samsung's 840 Pro now has competition in OCZ's Vector.
The Barefoot 3 controller is quite promising. It certainly seems very capable from a performance standpoint without blowing through its power budget. It's no small feat if OCZ's best in-house silicon can be spoken of in the same sentence as Samsung's. The PLX and Indilinx acquisitions appear to have paid off. I'm curious to see how OCZ's improved validation and reliability testing fare in the long run. This isn't the first time that OCZ has promised to focus more on validation, but with Vector I do get the feeling that things are different. I didn't run into any compatibility issues or reliability problems with the Vector in my testing, but as always the proof is what happens when these drives make their way into the hands of end users.
Overall I'm impressed by the Vector. It's a huge improvement over the already good Vertex 4, and manages to compete in a different league by fixing some lingering performance issues with its predecessor. I had resigned myself to assuming no one would come close to Samsung on the high-end, but it's good to be proven wrong. Should OCZ be able to deliver Samsung-like performance and reliability, then I'll really be impressed.
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wsaenotsock - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
A 5 year warranty is a pretty solid commitment on the part of a manufacturer. I don't think they would have done that if they didn't trust the stability of the hardware, so they really put their money where their mouth is.Other thing: is the Indilinx co-processor 'Argon' or 'Aragon'? Pic differs from your text description.
alacard - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
Nah, you've got it all wrong unfortunately - they've bet the farm on this drive and if it fails they won't be around in five years to honor those warranties.When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.
Kjella - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
Well that, but I'm glad to see OCZ committing more to their drives... on my local price price check there's Agility, Colossus, Enyo, Ibis, Lightfoot, Octane, Onyx, Petrol, RevoDrive, Synapse, Vertex and Z-drive not counting numbering or variations like Vertex EX, Vertex Limitied Edition, Vertex Turbo and using a zillion different controllers and stuff. The warranty is also an indication this is the technology they'll continue working on and fixing bugs for, which is good because their attention span has been too short and spread too thin. It's better with a few models that kick ass than dozens of models that are all shoddy.MrSpadge - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
Some of the drives you list are several years old..JonnyDough - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
Furthermore, the Intel 520 (which I just purchased) got dropped off the enterprise iometer 4KB random write chart. That don't make a lick-a sense!Hood6558 - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
alacard may be right, OCZ is sliding closer to the cliff as we speak. There's so much competition in the SSD market, someone's got to go sooner or later, and it will probably be the less diversified companies that will go first. I recently bought a Vertex 4 128 for my boot drive, and it lasted only 15 days before it disappeared and refused to be recognized in BIOS. The Crucial M4 128 that replaced it has the problem of disappearing every time the power is shut off suddenly (or with the power button after Windows hangs), but comes back after a couple of reboots and a resetting of your boot priorities. And it's regarded as one of the most reliable drives out there.So in order for OCZ to remain solvent, the Vector must be super reliable and stable, and absolutely must stay visible in BIOS at all times. If it's plagued by the same problems as the Vertex 4, it's time to cash out and disappear before the bankruptcy court has it's way.
Sufo - Tuesday, December 4, 2012 - link
Windows hanging? I smell problems with the user...djy2000 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
That warranty doesn't cover the most important thing. The data on the drive.Bull Dog - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
Is that an m-SATA connector on the other side of the PCB?philipma1957 - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
good question if I open the case can i use this as a msata?a 512gb msata is very hard to find.