Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup
Internals:
Packaging is similar to that of other OCZ SandFroce units, with changes to the chip layout, this time reverting back to the 2×4 orientation present in the original Vertex 2. I suspect this has to do with orienting the traces for different types of flash memory. This unit uses ONFi flash, while the Vertex 3 Pro we tested last week used Toshiba toggle-mode flash.
The back of the board shows the same layout, with an interesting point of there being no solder pads to accommodate a super-cap on either side.
The new consumer version of the 6Gb/sec SandForce, parked next to its bank of IMFT ONFi flash memory.
Our tests are a good mix of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. PCMark, IOMeter, HDTach, HDTune, Yapt and our custom File Copy test round out the selection to cover just about all bases. If you have any questions about our tests just drop into the Storage Forum and we’ll help you out!
Test System Setup
We’re breaking in a new SandyBridge testbed. Necessary for properly testing these new drives, even with the known issues. To get around this, we are using only the Intel SATA 6Gb/sec ports, which are known to not exhibit the inconsistent performance / connectivity issues.
PC Perspective would like to thank ASUS, Corsair, and Kingston for supplying some of the components of our test rig.
Notes specific to this review
We included data from the Micron C300 for comparison – but that data was obtained under the previous testbed’s ICH10R controller. This was done primarily due to very odd performance seen when testing under the Marvell SATA 6Gb/sec controller. We will be revisiting the C300 with newer firmware, testing it under the SandyBridge native SATA 6Gb/sec controller along with a backfill retest of our other samples.
| Hard Drive Test System Setup | |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-2500K |
| Motherboard | Asus P8P67 Deluxe |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3-2133 CL9 |
| Hard Drive | G.Skill 32GB SLC SSD |
| Sound Card | N/A |
| Video Card | BFG Geforce 8400 GS 512MB PCI |
| Video Drivers | Geforce 181.22 |
| Power Supply | Corsair CMPSU-650TX |
| DirectX Version | DX9.0c |
| Operating System | Windows 7 X64 |
- PCMark05
- Yapt
- IOMeter
- HDTach
- HDTune
- PCPer File Copy Test
