The first of the Indilinx powered Vertex drives.
OCZ has long been at the top of the SSD market, even culling off its memory business to focus primarily on storage. To further solidify its already strong position, OCZ purchased controller manufacturer Indilinx in late 2011. The Indilinx acquisition not only gives OCZ exclusive access to the best Indilinx technologies but also promises to reduce production costs, which should (in theory) result in cheaper drives.
This pricey drive offers the best performance available.
The latest in the premium Vertex series is the Vertex 4 512GB, sporting (you guessed it) an Indilinx controller. This is a totally new look for the Vertex, which has traditionally used SandForce controllers. The new Indilinx controller is the Everest 2, which has slightly lower sequential read and write performance than the popular SandForce 2281, but boasts nearly 40% gains in random read operations.
Along with the ridiculous 95,000 random read IOPS, the Vertex 4 also features 85,000 random write IOPS, 535MB/s sequential read and 475MB/s sequential write. IOPS stands for input/output operations per second, a standard measurement used to compare disk speed. Every time you open an application or play a game the data is read from random locations on the hard drive -- the faster the random read IOPS, the faster your game responds.
Even though the Vertex 4 isn't cheap, the Indilinx acquisition has already made an impact on the price, putting OCZ at a very competitive price point. If you want the best performance available, then you can’t go past the Vertex 4.
Special features :
- The first Vertex featuring the OCZ owned Indilinx controller.
Pros : Insane random read performance, comparatively inexpensive.
Cons : You could still build an entire rig for the price.
Verdict : 8 out of 10. Highly Recommended!
Available from OCZ Technology, retailing for $790
