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OCZ Octane 512GB SSD Review

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AkG

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SATA 2 Performance

SATA 2 Performance


In a perfect world everyone investing in a new solid state drive would have access to a SATA 6Gb/s controller which could pass on the TRIM command. In reality not everyone has this and for many the decision comes down either giving up TRIM – never a good idea with most controllers – and running it off a secondary controller; or taking a performance hit and running in SATA 2.0 mode.

These tests will consist of some of our real world and synthetic benchmarks run on our standard 1155 test-bed; but the drive will be attached to an SATA 2 port.

For synthetic we have opted for the newcomer to our charts: Anvil Storage Utilities Pro. For real world we have opted for our Adobe test. These two tests should give you a very good idea of the level of performance impact you can expect from running a modern SATA 6 drive in compatibility mode.



s2_anvil_w.jpg


s2_anvil_r.jpg


s2_adobe.jpg

 
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AkG

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Oct 24, 2007
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5,270
Conclusion

Conclusion


On paper, the Octane 512GB is a promising drive. It boasts an all new controller architecture that looks to be adaptable to a wide range of scenarios, comes equipped with OCZ’s legendary customer support and has some lofty specifications. That should all add up to one killer drive, right? The answer is “sorta” but that doesn’t mean we don’t have some reservations about it.

Paper specifications are all fine and dandy but once the benchmark results started rolling in, the Octane showed up with hit and miss performance. On one hand, it ran even with some of the market’s best mid-tier drives but in other scenarios it sank like a stone and was barely able to keep up with drives from two generations ago. This continued throughout our benchmark suite until one thing became apparent: the Everest controller fares well during read tests but simply isn’t optimized for high speed write performance. Sometimes the lines are muddied but in this case we can really see where the Everest controller is lacking. But overlooking this is easy though since the Octane posts respectable real world testing results which place it firmly in the middle of the pack.

To be perfectly transparent about this review, it was put on hold about a week ago in order to make way for the Vertex 4 article. This has led to our opinions of the drive changing drastically. About three weeks ago, the Octane 512GB looked like a reasonably good buy even though it wasn’t a top tier performer. Now, things are a bit different since we’re staring at a price of $650 which is a mere $50 less than OCZ’s own Vertex 4 512GB and for that small premium you’ll get performance that’s worlds above what an Octane can offer. We call that being a victim of progress, folks.

The OCZ Octane series presents us with a bit of a dilemma. Its lower capacities still present a good value for money proposition but we feel the 512GB version needs a significant price cut in order to compete in today’s market. Its controller may not be the best around but OCZ does have a knack for boosting the appeal of their drives through continuous firmware optimizations so we expect more from it in the future. However, in the here and now, we’d recommend holding off purchasing an Octane 512GB until its price has settled down a bit. At that point, it may become an affordable, high capacity alternative for people looking to make a switch away from traditional disk-based storage.
 
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