discussion OCZ Vertex 3.20 240GB SSD Review

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SATA 2 Performance

SATA 2 Performance

In a perfect world everyone investing in a new solid state drive would have access to a SATA 6GB/s controller which could pass on the TRIM command. In reality not everyone has this and for many the decision comes down either giving up TRIM – never a good idea with most controllers – and running it off a secondary controller; or taking a performance hit and running in SATA 2.0 mode.

These tests will consist of some of our real world and synthetic benchmarks run on our standard 1155 test-bed; but the drive will be attached to an SATA 2 port.

For synthetic we have opted for the newcomer to our charts: Anvil Storage Utilities Pro. For real world we have opted for our Adobe test. These two tests should give you a very good idea of the level of performance impact you can expect from running a modern SATA 6 drive in compatibility mode.

Much like within the full drive performance results the SF2281 controller will need some fine-tuning configuration in order to properly harness the new 22nm NAND. Until this happens there results are decent, but they could be better.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

OCZ’s approach to SSDs used to be one of flooding the market with a dizzying number of drives in an effort to hit as many price points as possible. As the company has quickly evolved over the last year or so to better meet their investors’ expectations, things have drastically changed. Now they have a smaller number of product lines, each laser targeting a specific market. The Vertex 3.20 goes after people who are looking for an excellent price / performance ratio above all else and it does quite well in meeting those goals.

At its heart the Vertex 3.20 may be one of the elder statesmen of this group but with refreshed NAND, it has some new swagger. Performance hasn’t been increased over the Vertex 3 of yesteryear by any meaningful amount, nor has it decreased overall but the inclusion of 22nm NAND has resulted in a significant cost savings which has been passed on to the end user. That’s an important factor since it has allowed the 3.20 240GB to hit that magic sub-$250 price point, putting it right in the thick of a highly contested segment.

Unfortunately, the current volatility within memory markets has caused some price fluctuations which haven’t been helpful to the Vertex 3.20’s position. With its current average price of $240, the Kingston V300, Sandisk’s Extreme, Corsair’s Neutron GTX and Crucial’s M500 are all less expensive yet offer better performance. As it stands, this situation may change in the near future but until then it becomes hard to recommend the 3.20 over competing solutions. With that being said, the Vertex 3.20 does have the ability to hold its initial performance for longer than the Neutron GTX, giving OCZ a serious leg up on at least one competitor.

OCZ’s Vertex 3.20 may not be a perfect drive and it needs a slight price reduction in order to bring its price / performance and capacity ratios in line with current realities. However, once that’s done and a bit and a bit of firmware refinement can be thrown into the mix, this is one SSD which could dominate its corner of the value-minded market.