Introduction, Specifications and Packaging

OCZ’s new Vector gives everyone a run for their money!

Introduction

OCZ has been in the SSD game for quite some time, and has previously done quite well mixing and matching hardware from other vendors into solutions of their own. It was a good way to put out a large array of products, fitting many a niche for a decent cost. Further, OCZ has always been known as somewhat of an underdog who tailored their parts more towards the power user / tweaker crowd. All of that said, they have been taking steps to become more of a major player in the SSD market, and the fruits of that labor begin their payoff today, with the release of the OCZ Vector:

A new Indilinx Controller?

The Vector comes equipped with a bunch of firsts for OCZ. The controller is OCZ's first 100% in-house part, and has been engineered from the ground up to be as high of a performing part as possible. There has been a paradigm shift within OCZ lately, and the Vector went through a large beta test phase *before* release, as to avoid the need for a series of rapid fire firmware updates just after the product ships. Vector should perform at or near its maximum potential today, not after some firmware updates seen months from now. Here's a look at the controller functional block diagram:

Fairly standard 8-channel layout, but note the dual processors. There's a main ARM processing core, coupled with an OCZ-designed Co-Processor. Samsung SSDs have done well with mult-core ARM-based controllers, so this looks promising so far. Lets check out the specs, shall we?

Specifications:

  • Capacity:                256GB (also available in 128GB and 512GB)
  • Sequential Read:     550MB/sec
  • Sequential Write:     530 MB/sec (400 MB/sec for 128GB)
  • Random Read (4k): 100,000 IOPS (90,000 for 128GB)
  • Random Write (4k): 95,000 IOPS

Packaging

Standard OCZ packaging, complete with 3.5" adapter plate, a sticker, and a bundled license code for cloning software from Acronis.

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