Blazing Performer

OCZ has been one of the first companies in the industry who actively promoted Solid State Drives. The first-to-market move has built a reputation of their brand but it wasn’t always positive with a few flaws in some of their previous range. This has got some people questioning their quality ever since.

Well OCZ have taken back to the drawing board, ditching the more popular SandForce 3 controller for their in-house Barefoot 3 controller built from the ground up. Can their flagship Vector series bring it back?

The Important Stuff

• Up to 550MB/s Sequential Read
• Up to 530MB/s Sequential Write
• Up to 100,000 IOPS 4K Random Read
• Up to 95,000 IOPS 4K Random Write
• Available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB Sizes
• 5-Year Warranty
• Street Price: $259 AUD

 

For benchmarking the SSD, we use the popular AS SSD software. Easy to use and benchmarks about any drive in your computer, even mechanical ones. We pit the OCZ Vector against it’s own OCZ brother, the Vertex 4 256GB SSD so we can get some comparison down on table up first. We’ll have a ever growing table as other manufacturer’s SSD enter the ring. For the benchmarks, bigger is better.

 

Sequential Read and Write Benchmark:

 

You’ll instantly notice the Vector is faster than the Vertex 4 in out test by some margin. Advertised at up to 550MB/s read, we were only able to push a max of 505MB/s on our test run – at some points just under the 500MB/s read mark. The Write speed however wasn’t closer to the advertised speed of 530MB/s but we expected different results as it’s not all consistent. The write speed still sits roughly 40MB/s faster than the Vertex 4.

 

Random 4K Read and Write Benchmark:

 

While the Sequential reads show the Vector in the lead between the two drives. The 4K benchmark puts it nearly on par with one another. So random read and write with the drives are almost identical. Once we get the Samsung PRO on our test bench, we can see how the Vector competes against other brands and technology. So far, we are impressed with the numbers the OCZ Vector puts out but in the end, its all about how far the SSD will go during it’s life time.

 

Overall

The Vector SSD is a strong performer in our test. OCZ may have made a comeback with this drive on the market. Jumping on the band wagon for a new controller can be quite risky but OCZ has backed their new technology with an incredible 5-year warranty to re-assure customers.

Picking up the SSD has also proved to me the build quality of the drive. It’s feels heavy and rugged unlike other brands that seamlessly feel cheap on the casing. It’s very well built in that manner.

It’s hard to find any faults with this drive, out of the box it performs incredibly well, the quality feels premium and backed with that 5- year warranty shows OCZ is not playing around when they want to provide the best. My time with the Vector has restored faith in a brand I thought was unreliable in past history – the Vector truly is a performer and worthy of every dollar spent on it. Highly Recommended.