OCZ's Octane: Initial Performance Results
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 22, 2011 12:00 PM ESTLast month OCZ finally unveiled the fruits of its Indilinx acquisition: the OCZ Octane SSD. Based on the Indilinx Everest platform, the Octane was to be OCZ's more affordable high-performance SSD. The drive will be available in two versions: 3Gbps (async NAND), and 6Gbps (sync NAND). Capacities start at 128GB and go all the way up to 1TB.
The drive was originally supposed to be available in the channel starting on November 1st. OCZ delayed the launch in order to get some additional testing under its belts. Given the not too distant memories of the infamous SF-2281 BSOD issue, the additional validation time is definitely appreciated.
We just got our review sample yesterday and we won't be able to share the complete review with you all until tomorrow morning. To tide you over however I convinced OCZ to let me share one benchmark graph with you:
In our Heavy 2011 suite the 512GB Octane does very well, hot on the heels of the SF-2281 based Vertex 3. It's actually beyond impressive that OCZ was able to ressurect Indilinx's seemingy dead controller project and turn it into something that can at least (on the surface) hang with the big boys. I have a lot more testing ahead of me before I can really characterize the drive's performance, but this is a very good start.
OCZ is touting incompressible performance as a major advantage of the Octane over its Vertex 3/Agility 3 drives. The controller is more traditional in the sense that it doesn't do any real time data deduplication/compression. The drive's performance is data agnostic, similar to drives from Intel, Crucial, Samsung, etc...
Inside the chassis we get a look at the drive's Indilinx controller and 512MB (2 x 256MB) DRAM cache. Our 512GB sample features sixteen 32GB Intel 25nm NAND packages, each with four die per package.
Check back tomorrow morning for the review!
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MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
In SSDs the bulk of the cost is the flash. Which doesn't change if you use a slower controller. TLC would give you what you want, though (as joseph already said).However, personally I think waiting for 512 GB SSDs to come down in price is rather stupid. It's better to maximize the usage of the space the current drives provide. E.g. I'm using a 60 GB Agility 3 as cache for my entire HDD on a Z68 board. That's fine speed and value.
MrS
n0b0dykn0ws - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I would go the SRT route but I built my 2600K on a P67 board.I would also consider a 120 GB drive for just my games, but I don't really notice a huge lag in game load times using my HDDs now.
I figure in a few years I'll he motivated to upgrade to SSDs.
n0b0dykn0ws
Soulkeeper - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
512MB seems like a massive cache for an SSDMarlin1975 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
1mg per 1gb?I doubt they put 512mg on if it did not help. OCZ seems to push the performance a lot, I just hope reliability comes along this time.
MadMacMan - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I've been using a 120GB OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro SATA III 6Gbps SSD which is insanely fast in my 17" MBP on OS X Lion. I wasn't going to get the OWC at first, but instead wanted to get the OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS Edition. I spent quite a bit of time researching the new SATA III SSD's and I found too many negative reviews for the OCZ. They both use the SF-2281 controller and they're virtually equally as fast, but the OCZ MAX IOPS still edges out the OWC EXTREME. Maybe this new one will be better, although I'm starting to think that it was mostly Windows users who experienced the BSOD's who kind of hurt OCZ's reputation for a while. Anyone running the OCZ SATA III SSDs without any problems?(p.s.: I wish Apple got its act together with the 2011 MBP's, so I can run both of my OWC SSD's in RAID 0 again, which currently still only works in the 13" MBP. Does anyone have any insight as to what I might try to make both the hard drive and optical drive bays run SATA III SSDs reliably?
josephjpeters - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I've been using a Vertex 3 since May in a MacBook Pro. It's been flawless. I haven't even updated the firmware. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
"Anyone running the OCZ SATA III SSDs without any problems?"Sure, but you don't hear these people as usually they don't shout as loud. Well, actually my first drive failed after ~1 week (hadn't even started really using it..). The 2nd one is fine, however (and of course no BSOD issues).
MrS
Fandongo - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
The MBP RAID 0 flaw is the biggest turnoff in computer history.With the possibility of external GPU's via thunderbolt (hopefully)
And ram getting cheaper.
We are baby steps away from Laptops being significant portable workstation powerhouses.
Imagine two 1tb RAID 0 drives for all working video/audio projects.
Just sync/back up to platter drives every time you reconvene with your desk.
Add 4x ram slots in a 17" MBP, and maybe 0.2% of the population would ever need a desktop again.
dingo99 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
OCZ's last Indilinx drive was the Vertex Plus, based on the Martini controller. Read the user reviews and forum posts about that drive and you will think the Sandforce mess was nothing. Even with recent firmware updates, Vertex Plus users are still reporting major data corruption issues. Regardless of the benchmark numbers, I won't even begin to consider Octane until its reliability (or lack thereof) becomes established.rochlin - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Only Samsung and Intel SSDs have proved dependable, according to a previous Anandtech posting. Isn't that game over? Shouldn't the ONLY real question be weather these things will actually not destroy your data? The performance diffs are small compared to that. PLEASE RATE DEPENDABILITY!