OCZ 30GB Vertex (OCZSSD2-1VTX30G)

Jun 9th, 2009 | By Simon

If you’re interested in buying the Vertex SSD or any SSD for that matter, you must already know how to install a 2.5″ hard drive. For laptops, the drive needs to be mounted onto your hard drive cage and pushed into the bay. For desktop PCs, you’ll need to purchase a 3.5″ to 2.5″ drive bay converter, screw the drive into place and plug in the SATA data cable and power.

I compared the power consumption of the Vertex to a few other SSDs and a conventional 500GB Seagate hard drive. With no surprise, the SSDs are a few watts below the conventional hard drive. It also appears that the Indilinx controller requires a few more watts than the original JMicron controller.

I will be testing the OCZ Vertex on my test bed as the primary drive with the OS installed on it. Here’s my system specification:

Control

CPU: Intel C2D Q6600 (G0 SLACR L731B434) @ 2.71 GHz
MB: Asus P5E3-Dlx Wifi-AP Edition
GPU: Sapphire HD 4850 X2 Catalyst
RAM: Aeneon 2×2GB XTune DDR3-1600 (AXH860UD20-16H) @ 1800Mhz 10-10-10-30 1T
PSU: Cooler Master Real Power Pro 850W
CPU Cooling: Thermalright HR-01 w/ 120mm Antec Tri-Cool Fan
PWM/NB/SB Cooling: Stock/Stock/Stock
OS: Windows Vista x64

Hard Drives

OCZ 30GB Vertex SSD (OCZSSD2-1VTX30G)
G.Skill 64GB Falcon (FM-25S2S-64GBF1)
G.Skill FM-25S2S-64GB
Seagate Barracuda SATA 500GB 7200.11 (ST3500320AS)

To test out the drive we’ll be using DiskBench, Crystal DiskMark, SiSoft Sandra, HD Tune 3.10, ATTO, HDTach, IOMeter and Boot Timer. All benchmarks were executed 5 times and the average result was recorded. The system was reset between each benchmark.

To add a little flavour to the review, I’m going to benchmark the OCZ Vertex twice – once when the drive has only Windows Vista and the benchmarking software installed, denoted “New” in the benchmarks, and once when the drive is completely full with files then deleted to make room for the benchmark test files. These results will be denoted “Full”. I’m doing this to see what the performance impact is once the drive is full of files.

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7 comments
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Sean June 9th, 2009 4:57 pm
My hdd died a few weeks ago… I have some spare traditional drives I could have replaced it with but wanted something new to play with and wanted to ease the bottleneck that normal drives create. I got 2 of these 30gb drives for the price of one, do to a deal I worked out with a customer, and in raid0 they KILL traditional drives. KILL.

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Frank Rizzo June 9th, 2009 7:31 pm
The Intel X25-M is still king of the hill because of its read speed with 4kb files. The X25-M scores 112,164 on my system with 4KB read (ATTO) vs. the Vertex 50,000. I have personally used 5 different types (SLC, MLC JMICRON 1, MLC JMICRON 2, Vertex, Intel) of SSD and nothing compares to the X25-M.

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Simon June 9th, 2009 11:13 pm
Sean wrote:

My hdd died a few weeks ago… I have some spare traditional drives I could have replaced it with but wanted something new to play with and wanted to ease the bottleneck that normal drives create. I got 2 of these 30gb drives for the price of one, do to a deal I worked out with a customer, and in raid0 they KILL traditional drives. KILL.

We’re doing a review for HighPoint card and the results are smoking indeed. We’ll have the results up soon and they are definitely good

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Simon June 9th, 2009 11:15 pm
Frank Rizzo wrote:

The Intel X25-M is still king of the hill because of its read speed with 4kb files. The X25-M scores 112,164 on my system with 4KB read (ATTO) vs. the Vertex 50,000. I have personally used 5 different types (SLC, MLC JMICRON 1, MLC JMICRON 2, Vertex, Intel) of SSD and nothing compares to the X25-M.

Yes, the Intel X25-M is still the king of the hill but not everyone can afford one and that needs to be taken into considerations. You’re looking at twice the price for an Intel SSD vs the Indilinx MLC.

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Frank Rizzo June 10th, 2009 5:43 am
Simon wrote:

Yes, the Intel X25-M is still the king of the hill but not everyone can afford one and that needs to be taken into considerations. You’re looking at twice the price for an Intel SSD vs the Indilinx MLC.

The Intel drives are actually less expensive than the Vertex. I just bought another X25-Ms 80GB from Newegg.com for $289.95 (free shipping) yesterday. That is $2.96 per Gigabyte.
The OCZ Vertex 30GB is $4.30 per Gigabyte AFTER you factor in the rebate.
The Vertex drives aren’t bad, but they are OVERPRICED. The 30GB drive should sell for $75 not $149. The 120GB Vertex is not worth a dime more than $180. I would consider a 120GB Vertex for $180, but I’ll take an 80GB Intel ($290) over a 120GB Vertex ($355) any day of the week.

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Simon June 10th, 2009 11:15 pm
Frank Rizzo wrote:

Simon wrote:

Yes, the Intel X25-M is still the king of the hill but not everyone can afford one and that needs to be taken into considerations. You’re looking at twice the price for an Intel SSD vs the Indilinx MLC.

The Intel drives are actually less expensive than the Vertex. I just bought another X25-Ms 80GB from Newegg.com for $289.95 (free shipping) yesterday. That is $2.96 per Gigabyte.
The OCZ Vertex 30GB is $4.30 per Gigabyte AFTER you factor in the rebate.
The Vertex drives aren’t bad, but they are OVERPRICED. The 30GB drive should sell for $75 not $149. The 120GB Vertex is not worth a dime more than $180. I would consider a 120GB Vertex for $180, but I’ll take an 80GB Intel ($290) over a 120GB Vertex ($355) any day of the week.

If the Vertex 30GB cost $75 and the 120GB cost $180 then it would definitely be a steal and it would sell out in no time. As it stands even if OCZ’s cost per GB is still higher the overall cost for being able to own an SSD, and get good performance, is much lower than buying an Intel drive. Not everyone can afford $300 for an 80GB Intel SSD. The $130AR makes the Vertex a very promising buy and the $150 saved could be put to other upgrades.

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nabillo August 7th, 2009 2:36 pm
@ Sean:

I have 2 vertexes in raid 0 as well with windows vista, the only thing they killed is each other…
something is obviously wrong with my installation, I used to get random hangs, but now it is even worse, windows crashes with one of the drivers not detected any more on restart… I have to leave my system cool down before it can detect the driver again…
strange…

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