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Knowing that the Vertex 450 was going to be very similar to the Vector series drives, we already had an idea of what we would see on the test bench. We certainly weren't disappointed with performance that lived up to the storied Vertex name. Specifically, we love seeing the consistent performance without the dips we've been so accustomed to seeing with the SandForce drives. The Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller is proving itself to be amongst the best available and frankly SandForce (LSI) needs to step their game soon if they wish to keep pace with what we are seeing from numerous other controllers...
Now OCZ are bringing to market a new Vertex drive using more than a little tech from their Vector series of enthusiast SSDs. Today the Vertex 450 launches and we have the 256GB model in our test system to see where it fits into the current market.
After the launch of the Vertex 4 OCZ had a little explaining to do. Initially the SSD was presented as using a controller developed in-house by Indilinx, but that turned out to be a Marvell controller using their firmware. The new Vertex 450 makes up for this, as it really does have a controller developed by them and not someone else.
It was only last month that I reviewed the OCZ Vertex 3.20. The Vertex 3.20 was a refresh of the original Vertex 3, basically using the same SSD controller, but this time using 20nm IMFT NAND.This month I’m taking a look at OCZ’s new Vertex 4 refresh, the Vertex 450 series. For the Vertex 450 series, the transition to 20nm NAND has been made. But it’s not only the NAND that has been updated from the original Vertex 4, the controller has also been updated. The original Vertex 4 used Marvell silicon, and in house Indilinx infused firmware. For the Vertex 450 series, OCZ has gone all in house, and used a new variant of the Indilinx BareFoot 3 SSD controller, the BareFoot 3 M10, and their own Indilinx infused firmware.
NVIDIA released a new high-end GPU model today in the form of the GeForce GTX 780. We check it out to see how it performs under our gaming tests.
Our introduction and analysis of the OCZ Vertex 450 6Gbps SSD marks the first release of the Vertex family with an Indilinx controller since 2009, a return that includes some very attractive features…including price. The OCZ Vertex 450 contains the new and improved Barefoot 3 M10 controller and follows the Vector’s lead by using OCZ in-house ASIC technology. Considering the success and performance of the Vector, one just has to wonder what makes the Vertex 450 so special.
The rapid drop in 25nm flash availability and slow RAMp up of 20nm production puts OCZ in a tough position. Vector availability is about to get scarce and Vertex 3.20 can't be profitable at less than $1 per GB. OCZ needs a higher profit product with the flash available today and it has to be faster than SandForce to sell, enter the new OCZ Vertex 450.
Looking at the vast number of drives on the market, there are so many different combinations of controller and flash memory to choose from, for some it is a daunting prospect and thus they stick to the big names that have a proven following and typically this means that they will end up with a drive that houses a SandForce controller and a traditional array of 16GB 22nm NAND IC's from another partner.
SandDisk, like many other companies, are looking for a way to push their products to the forefront of the SSD market and in the case of SanDisk, this has resulted in a new architecture on the drive with the inclusion of a highly efficient Marvell controller with independent channels leading towards some of SanDisk's home-brewed 19nm MLC NAND memory with a separate SLC layer for improved performance for small file writes which has been dubbed as nCache.
This in-house production of memory is an obvious advantage for SanDisk and it leads to more controlled production costs, however using this particular Marvell controller - the SS889175 - is new to me and it will be interesting to see how well it can keep up with the SF-2281 from SandForce - typically the chip of choice.
Windows To Go with the DT Workspace USB 3.0 pen drive from Kingston. Let's dive in and take a look.
The PQI Air Drive is a portable storage device the size of a credit card (and a bit thicker) that enables up to five people to connect and stream live music, movies or photos from the drive to their portable devices simultaneously. Unlike traditional storage devices that uses on fixed memory to store your files, the Air Drives only source of storage is an SD card (or in our case microSD card) up to a maximum capacity of 32GB and can be purchased with different capacity cards included.
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