Conclusion

Fortunately you can't compare the Apex with the Core V2. The revised JMicron controller combined with the internal RAID 0 architecture performs way better. With the Apex you also don't get the annoying stutting you got with the Core V2. As a matter of fact the OCZ Apex is a solid performer and worth considering when upgrading your system.

In our test environment the OCZ Apex wasn't able to reach the claimed 230 MByte/s reading and 160 MByte/s writing speeds. The maximum values were 166 MByte/s reading and 82 MByte/s writing. As we tried optimizing our test environment towards maximum speeds we reached reading values far above 200 MByte/s and writing speed close to 160 MByte. But we have to mention that test like this aren't representative for everyday use.

The reading performance meanwhile is on a high level and it doesn't matter if you look at sequential or random reading speeds. Unfortunately writing 4 KByte blocks is still a weakness of the Apex. The issue that results is a performance decrease when you do massive multitasking.

With the Apex OCZ brought a product to the market that performs well and is worth considering when upgrading from a conventional hard drive.

You can buy the OCZ Apex 120 GByte at Brack Electronics to a price fo CHF 599.-

Authors: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch and m.seiler@ocaholic.ch