OCZ Vertex Owners Thread - Test Results

PsychoDuck

PsychoDuck

PsychoDuck

Associate
Joined
23 Oct 2005
Posts
201
Location
North London
OCZ Vertex Owners Thread - Test Results **Updated 15 Mar 2009**

A few ATTO benchmarks from different drives I have here:-

First a 32GB IDE MTRON SSD in my samsung laptop running windows 7 beta:-

atto_mtronidessd.jpg


Second a 300GB WD Velociraptor in my main machine running XP SP3:-

atto_velociraptor.jpg


Lastly, new 60GB OCZ Vertex in my main machine running XP SP3:-

atto_vertexssd.jpg


Main machine is a Asus P5e3 X38 motherboard, with Q6600.

At the moment not too happy about the performance of the vertex drive, I am hoping that there are some machine settings that I can tweak to improve both the read and write performance.

Update 7th March 2009

Right, I have a small update for everyone:-

People were saying it may be a controller issue i.e. ICH9R, but there is pretty much no difference between this and AMD SB750, the benchmark results were almost identicle.

Aligning the partition seems to make little or no difference in either scenarios.

The biggest benefit came from enabling write cache on Windows XP. The below ATTO result is after I have been through all the various SSD tweaks, i.e. disabling the pagefile, aligning the partition, enabling write cache, disabling indexing services etc:-

atto_vertexssd_writecache.jpg


The write speeds now seem to be at a more acceptable level and I am now feeling a little happier about purchasing one of these drives. I dont know why OCZ dont put all of these steps in a printout inside the vertex box. It would save everyone a lot of faffing about.


Update 15th March 2009

Just updated with the new firmware which was a pain in the a$$. Note to anyone else, if you have the nvidia SATA drivers installed the OCZ flashing tool will not work. Write speed seems quicker, although read speeds havent changed much.

atto_vertexssd_1199.jpg


Update 23rd March 2009

Just updated with the new firmware version 1275. Not really too much of a speed difference. Upgrade process was painless now I know to uninstall the nvidia SATA drivers and re-install the standard ones for the flash tool to work.

atto_vertexssd_1275.jpg
 
Last edited:
writes are ... not .. very good.

There is a new firmware apparently ready. According to people at OCZ support forum it should perform "better" without sacrificing I/O performance.
 
Last edited:
Hey Psychoduck, have you got the advanced cache feature enabled? I'm using Vista so I don't know if it's there for sure..

DeviceManager_AdvancedCache.jpg


It made a huge difference to my ATTO scores.

Update: Also with your install being XP and not Vista, did you follow the guide on the OCZ forum to align your partition correctly?
 
Last edited:
How many I/O operations per second are you getting?
Click to expand...
Will try to test later on this evening.

Did you follow the guide on the OCZ forum to align your partition correctly?
Click to expand...
No, the current benchmarks above are when the drive has been formatted from the XP setup screen with a standard NTFS partition. I am going to re-format this evening aligning the partition, then retest to see if this improves the performance.
 
PsychoDuck said:
At the moment not too happy about the performance of the vertex drive, I am hoping that there are some machine settings that I can tweak to improve both the read and write performance.
Click to expand...

This sounds really bad, that directly conflicts with all the hype that's been going on about them solving the recent problems? :/
 
Def enable write back cache remember to also do it on the raid config if your using an ICH10R or similar controller for raid (not directed at original poster)

Heres my results for 3x30gb vertex in raid 0 on ICH10R controller. must admit am more then satisfied.

attachment.php


attachment.php


4k RW
attachment.php


All in one test
attachment.php



Not a very technical test but...

Crysis Level load time

I patched to version 1.21 landed at start and saved on the beach exited game came back in and loaded took 13.4 seconds to load into game from the saved game menu. used stop watch on my iphone to time.

attachment.php



To enable write back cache on XP you will need to look here

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/Q811392

Baically grab DSKcache

Once unpacked place dskcache.exe direct on C drive (root)..open command prompt and type.

c:\dskcache +p c: (replace C: with what ever letter you need)
 
Last edited:
netdps said:
To enable write back cache on XP you will need to look here

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/Q811392

Baically grab DSKcache

Once unpacked place dskcache.exe direct on C drive (root)..open command prompt and type.

c:\dskcache +p c: (replace C: with what ever letter you need)
Click to expand...

I think I'll do this with my current drives. I have an old APC UPS which will cover the machine. Will give a bonus to the current drives. I'm also considering using two old Maxtor drives for RAID0 I have lying around..

edit: didn't work - the hotfix states I have a later SP so don't need it, the dskcache program then states that can't access the device..
 
Last edited:
PsychoDuck said:
At the moment not too happy about the performance of the vertex drive, I am hoping that there are some machine settings that I can tweak to improve both the read and write performance.
Click to expand...

210 -220 mb read speeds are more then acceptable on a single drive.... though am sure the tweaks suggested below will increase this further aswell as fix your writes issue.


Write Cache.

Bios Updates.

Controller Driver updates.

Alignment - set it to 64 for a single drive but could also try 128. *important to do on XP more so then vista*
 
Last edited:
Right, I have re-aligned the partition and re-formatted. This seems to have made no difference at all in the ATTO benchmarks. I am going to update the mboard bios and enable write cache later and will re-post some benchmarks.
 
PsychoDuck said:
A few ATTO benchmarks from different drives I have here:-

Lastly, new 60GB OCZ Vertex in my main machine running XP SP3:-

atto_vertexssd.jpg


Main machine is a Asus P5e3 X38 motherboard, with Q6600.

At the moment not too happy about the performance of the vertex drive, I am hoping that there are some machine settings that I can tweak to improve both the read and write performance.
Click to expand...


now i know why ocz used a queue depth of 10 in thier atto benchmark on thier forums to make the drive look better. the vertex seems to be very crap on writes of small files. will see if other people experience the same sort of performance (or lack there of). but from what iv seen so far the vertex is not worth the money.
 
Consistent 200mb/s doesnt seem so terrible to me. I'm particularly interested that realigning the partition didn't do anything, since grub broke quite badly after alignment.
 
OCZ said the smaller Vertex' are considerably slower than the 120GB+ versions, even before release. The smaller drives lack the channels that their bigger siblings enjoy :confused:
 
As far as I was aware all vertex drives use the barefoot controller and that always uses four channels. The speed difference is due to the memory density and the cache. It is worth noting that there is a firmware upgarde that should be increasing the 30 and 60 GB models to the same speeds as the 120GB model. This will be upgradeable by the consumers, although you will lose any data that is currently on the drive.

Your write speed do seem a little slow, your best bet is to ask for help on the ocz forums, they are very helpful and there are already a lot of threads on tweaks to try.
 
the 60gb remember is the slowest of the lot right now,

netpds is clearly showing that the drives are more than capable. right allignment, stripe size makes a difference, aswell as maybe OS and almost certainly motherboard.

its more than possible newer raid controllers are more tuned for low access i/o throughput which is killing older chipsets. Most of the poor results I've seen so far have been on ich9 or the sb600. I've mostly seen fantastic results on the ich10r and I think some people were using amd setup with sb750.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom