OCZ Apex 120GB SSD Review

XP Start Up

When it comes to hard drive performance there is one area that even the most oblivious user notices: how long it takes to load the Operating System. For our tests the clock starts as soon as the system “beeps!” and stops when our Anti-Virus splash screen disappears. While all the other tests were run with a streamlined XP image this particular image is the test bed's “day to day” OS and it has accumulated a lot of crud over the months from installs and removals. We chose the Anti-Virus splash screen as our finish line as it is the last program to be loaded on start up.


It seems that as we go on through our SSD testing, the XP Startup times just keep decreasing. Even though 1 second between it and the Titan is well within the margin of human error, it is a definate decrease over spindle drives and even some other SSDs.

ADOBE CS3 Load Time

Photoshop is a notoriously slow loading program under the best of circumstances, but when you add in a bunch of extra brushes and the such you get a really great torture test which can bring even the best of the best to their knees. Let’s see how our review unit faired in the Adobe crucible!


As with the XP boot time test, this kind of test really plays to the Apex’s strong points. It once again is the best we have seen (though it does "only" tie for first with the Titan) and we are becoming more and more impressed with the read performance capabilities this drive has to offer.