OCZ Vertex 4 512GB - Everest beats Sandforce

OCZ’s Vertex SSDs have historically been the company’s highest performance product line. In the past this has meant that they pack the latest Sandforce controller chip, but that has changed with the launch of the Vertex 4. The Vertex 4 uses 1GB of cache, paired with an Everest 2 controller, which is a combination of silicon from Marvell and firmware developed by Indilinx, a company that OCZ purchased last year.

We saw the first fruit of this union in the form of the Octane 512GB that we reviewed a few months ago. That drive used the first iteration of Everest and was designed to be a lower cost model. Unfortunately for the Octane, the current reality is that the Vertex 4 is actually cheaper, and from our testing, the Vertex 4 is also a much better performing drive.

Again, OCZ has deigned to send over the 512GB version of the Vertex 4, which is selling for a cool $800 (vs the 512GB Octane’s tag of $940). It is likely that the lower capacity drives that us mere mortals actually buy will be slightly lower in performance, but this drive should still give a good idea of what to expect from the Vertex 4 lineup.

Expect speed, especially when dealing with the kind of small file transfers that make up most day to day operations. We saw sequential reads and writes around 460MB/s, and our testbench was fast and responsive. It isn’t the same kind of generational jump seen with the introduction of new Sandforce controllers in the past, and now that SATA 6Gb/s is commonplace it is unlikely that we’ll see massive leaps between generations of SATA drives anyway.

 The real benefit that the Everest 2 controller has over the competition is that it is unique to OCZ. One of the realities of Sandforce controllers are that everyone uses them, which minimises the performance difference between different brands of SSDs. Not only does the Everest 2 deliver consistent, excellent performance but it also comes with a five-year warranty, which demonstrates the amount of confidence that OCZ is placing in its new design.