SSD Mega Test - Test of the Titans!! Neutron GTX/Neutron vs Vertex 4

Andrew Moore · 3 Sep 2012 at 09:51

Hello

Well, I have just sat and done some testing for you to find out what exactly is the best. The Corsair Neutron, Corsair Neutron GTX or the OCZ Vertex 4!

Take a look below

Crystal Disk Mark

Neutron

Neutron GTX

Vertex 4

ATTO

Neutron

Neutron GTX

Vertex 4

AS SSD (MB/S)

Neutron

Neutron GTX

Vertex 4

AS SSD (IOPS)

Neutron

Neutron GTX

Vertex 4

So... As you can See ultimately the Vertex 4 seems to be the quickest "just" as an over all drive. The Neutron GTX is also very fast with the difference literally being a case of Buy which brand you prefer - Corsair or OCZ.

The strange drive however is the Neutron.. it is marginally quicker than the Neutron GTX in its read performance which at the end of the day is ultimately what matters the most on a day to day basis which given it is cheaper than the GTX makes it a very good drive indeed.

The Vertex 4 however seems to perform faster on the small 4k and 512b files etc than the competition and at its current price smokes the corsair offerings.

Corsair - Bring your pricing down a little and you will have (debatable) the joint fastest and best value drive on the market. The Agility 4 has not been tested however the Neutron would simply blow it out of the water unless OCZ have a firmware update planned to combat this.

Gibbo · 3 Sep 2012 at 10:00

All very impressive drives!

Just out of curiosity, fancy running one of the Vertex 2E 60GB in the same system to see how a bargain £29.99 drive compares?

Space Monkey · 3 Sep 2012 at 10:02

Nice work, thanks for sharing, certainly takes the sting out of the purchasing guess work

Andrew Moore · 3 Sep 2012 at 10:02

Gibbo said:
All very impressive drives!

Just out of curiosity, fancy running one of the Vertex 2E 60GB in the same system to see how a bargain £29.99 drive compares?

Yea why not

Gibbo · 3 Sep 2012 at 10:19

Andrew Moore said:
Yea why not

Also stick a pair in raid 0 too.

martian_aphid · 3 Sep 2012 at 10:23

The new corsair LAM drives are good performers it's just tough to pick them at the minute with the prices their competitors are offering. Weren't LAM purchased by Hynix? Either way, when Corsair loose exclusivity of that controller I think prices will become more competitive.

[timko] · 3 Sep 2012 at 10:25

Thanks for posting these numbers, especially the IOP/s results

littlepuppy · 3 Sep 2012 at 10:25

Yep they are hynix owned...

NathWraith · 3 Sep 2012 at 10:43

The Vertex 4 looks to be the best there man

opstrat · 3 Sep 2012 at 11:57

so whare are the samsung 830 and crucial m4's?

westylakey · 3 Sep 2012 at 12:43

Just bought a vertex 4 from a forum member as well

Andrew Moore · 3 Sep 2012 at 13:08

opstrat said:
so whare are the samsung 830 and crucial m4's?

In the other "Mega test" thread from a few months ago. Neither of the drives listed above come close in performance (around 10-20% slower depending on scenario) and this as such is reflected in the pricing as both the m4 and the 830 are cheaper.

Helios1234 · 3 Sep 2012 at 13:34

Andrew Moore said:
In the other "Mega test" thread from a few months ago. Neither of the drives listed above come close in performance (around 10-20% slower depending on scenario) and this as such is reflected in the pricing as both the m4 and the 830 are cheaper.

I don't think they are worse units. According to Anandtech, the Samsung and Crucial may not be the best on synthetic benchmarks but give it a real world heavy load, the Samsung comes out on top.

Different drives shows benefits in different tests. Synthetic tests don't show the whole story. Ultimately though, the difference will be tiny.

Jakus · 3 Sep 2012 at 13:37

You know I really don't think any of the benchmarks really indicate much for real world performance.

I would make sure the drives compared are the same size (often reviews don't)
I would fill the drives up, delete 30GB, then make a 12GB test file of various small and large files and accurately time it copying from the drive to a new folder on the same drive. That would be more of a test

People often say raid 0 is a waste of time with ssd !, I did a similar test with 2 raided M4's so full, I barely had 100mb spare (after the test) and compared them to a new clean Samsung, the old raided M4's were still 30% + faster
(all drives 120GB) Stunning considering I've never used trim and frequently run out of space !

SFFNoob · 3 Sep 2012 at 14:18

Thanks for the benchies mate, impressive!

Gibbo said:
All very impressive drives!

Just out of curiosity, fancy running one of the Vertex 2E 60GB in the same system to see how a bargain £29.99 drive compares?

Gibbo said:
Also stick a pair in raid 0 too.

See the salesmanship in you is always on?

Andrew Moore · 3 Sep 2012 at 14:27

Helios1234 said:
I don't think they are worse units. According to Anandtech, the Samsung and Crucial may not be the best on synthetic benchmarks but give it a real world heavy load, the Samsung comes out on top.

Different drives shows benefits in different tests. Synthetic tests don't show the whole story. Ultimately though, the difference will be tiny.

This is correct however if you look at synthetic tests the gap in some cases increases to as much as 40%

Gibbo · 3 Sep 2012 at 16:10

Hi there

Here is some benchmarks from the Vertex 2E connected to a SATA3 port:-

As you can see the performance is pretty damn good, and all for £29.99 Inc. VAT.

On SATA2 the performance might be marginally better as they are obviously optimised for SATA2.

Rikki · 3 Sep 2012 at 16:17

A 60gb SSD new for under £30 inc vat?

Thats just fantastic!

Thought I do remember my first 20MB IDE hard drive from 1991 costing about 10 times that

Gibbo · 3 Sep 2012 at 19:15

The RAID benchmarks from a pair in RAID 0 (VERTEX 2E 60GB):-

I've placed these results next to single drive results for easy comparison. The only difference is the single drive had zero data on it. In RAID 0 the drives had Win7 Pro loaded onto them.

SINGLE DRIVE (NO DATA)-------------------------------- TWO DRIVES - RAID 0 (OPERATING SYSTEM / BOOT DRIVE)

SINGLE DRIVE (NO DATA)------------------- TWO DRIVES - RAID 0 (OPERATING SYSTEM / BOOT DRIVE)

Jakus · 3 Sep 2012 at 21:13

Gibbo said:
The RAID benchmarks from a pair in RAID 0 (VERTEX 2E 60GB):-

I've placed these results next to single drive results for easy comparison. The only difference is the single drive had zero data on it. In RAID 0 the drives had Win7 Pro loaded onto them.

Now without looking at benchies, how quick does that feel ?

Would make a very quick "budget" game and OS setup for £60 !!!

SSD Mega Test - Test of the Titans!! Neutron GTX/Neutron vs Vertex 4

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