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Today we are taking a look at an OCZ brand SSD that uses a controller developed by the same manufacturer that powered the original Vertex series. Once again OCZ and Indilinx are working closely together, this time to create what is known as the Octane series. Boasting capacities up to 1TB, this new series is also SATA 6Gb/s compatible...
It has been 3 years since we tested our first Indilinx driven SSD, which was a 120GB version of the original OCZ Vertex. Powered by the “Barefoot” controller the Vertex cost just over $2.80 per gigabyte and that price vs. capacity ratio saw the 120GB version cost well over $300. Despite the price, the read and write performance of 250-180MB/s made the Vertex a hot item.
It wasn’t just OCZ’s Vertex series that flaunted the high performance Indilinx controller either, as a sea of Barefoot enabled SSD’s quickly surfaced. Yet despite their success Indilinx quickly moved back into the shadows as SandForce took over with their SF-1200 series controllers becoming the weapon of choice for the Vertex 2 series and then the SF-2200 followed arming the Vertex 3 series. While all this was taking place OCZ agreed to purchase South Korea-based NAND flash controller maker Indilinx for $32 million back in March. The Octane series is their first SSD line to use the newly acquired company's controller technology since then, but OCZ has previously said they will continue to rely on third-party partners for some of their products. The new “Everest” controller boasts read and write performance of 520–410MB/s which is competitive with today’s high-end SATA 6Gb/s SSD’s. The OCZ Octane series was actually announced back in October of 2011 and was said to include 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB models, though today the 1TB model is still missing from the line-up. Early this year, on January 23rd, OCZ announced a new firmware update for the Octane series that dramatically improved performance. Now known as the v1.13 firmware, it effectively doubled the random write IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) performance. This was great news for existing Octane owners as it meant they could receive a significant performance increase for free. This further bolstered the strength of the Octane series, helping to improve their appeal when compared to the SandForce driven Vertex 3 series. Not only are the Octane SSDs very fast but they are also extremely stable and suffer from no known bugs. For almost half a year this is something owners of second generation SandForce SSDs such as the Vertex 3 and Agility 3 could only dream of. Although the SandForce BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) firmware bug appears to have been squashed, the fact that it plagued owners of SF-2200 powered SSDs for so long would have undoubtedly left a bad taste in their mouths. For this reason alone it is important for OCZ to diversify their product range if they wish to remain at the forefront of the SSD market... |
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ProX |
Posted on: 03/14/2012 12:00 PM
Hmm mediocre performance and not that competitive price wise, think I will pass for now. |
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next |
Posted on: 03/15/2012 12:34 PM
yeah 2 late now the v4 is just around the corner. |
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swayn |
Posted on: 03/16/2012 11:20 AM
I had the Agility 3, well actually I had three of them. In the end I gave up and got an m4, not sure I could go back to OCZ anytime soon. |
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Sarge |
Posted on: 03/16/2012 11:29 PM
Yes the price of the bigger models like the 512GB model reviewed are cheaper when compare to most other high-end SSDs but the Octane is also slower. When spending as much on a single SSD as most people do on an entire system you probably want to buy the fastest model possible. So I fail to see the point of the Octane series. |