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When I first looked at the Octane 512GB drive in December I was impressed with the Indilinx Controller. It delivered great results with both incompressible and compressible data and my viewpoint hasn't changed any in the last two months.
Sandforce have ruled the performance charts for a long time, but their controllers have been tainted with reports of problems and even failures over the last six months. A select audience of the enthusiast userbase have lost faith in Sandforce 2281 powered solid state drives, so alternatives are particularly welcomed in 2012. The Samsung 830 series for instance has proven successful, powered by the excellent S4LJ204X01-Y040 controller. OCZ are keen to promote their own Indilinx Everest controller in this competitive sector.
The 1.13 firmware update has been released primarily as a performance enhancement, OCZ haven't indicated that it has fixed any potential platform bugs which will be reassuring for current owners who don't plan on flashing their drive. While the 4kb random write performance of the drive has been significantly improved, there is a slight trade off in other areas. Sequential read and write performance has suffered a little, although in the real world we wouldn't imagine that anyone would notice. I certainly didn't over the course of several days intensive testing.
CrystalDiskMark highlights substantial performance improvements in regards to the 4k QD32 write test. The previous firmware averaged around 58 MB/s, and after updating to 1.13fw this increased to around 100 MB/s. IOmeter recorded a 75 percent increase in 4k random write performance.
Back in the real world, what exactly will this mean for an enthusiast user?
Well, If you have the Octane drive installed in a server which has to deal with a vast array of random writes, such as frequent accesses to a database, then the 1.13fw will be a solid update. Improving random write performance is a key focal point for many companies this year, so it shows that OCZ have successfully invested research and development time into updating their firmware code.
The Octane drives have already earned a good reputation for reliability and they seem to be faring well with the enthusiast audience. Ideally I would have preferred to be in a position to report on possible performance degradation over the course of several months, however sadly that hasn't been possible as we weren't offered the opportunity to hang onto the last Octane 512GB drive.
Whichever firmware you decide to use, the performance of the Octane 512GB is great. It is a good indication that Everest 2 should have some tasty surprises in store when it is released in Q2.
You can buy this drive online today for £635 inc vat.
If this is too rich for your blood, then Aria stock the 128GB drive for £134 inc vat.
Pros:
- Improved 4kb random write performance.
- Controller is strong with both incompressible and compressible data.
Cons:
- It faces heavy competition in this sector.
Kitguru says: Another quality SSD from OCZ and a strong alternative to the plethora of Sandforce powered drives.
Good drives, I actually bought a 128gb version in january. been flautless for me.
It is a good point that sandforce are known to fail, even if they are very quick. I know a lot of people on forums who got burned with OCZ and corsair branded sandforce drives.
I still think its a bad time to buy an SSD, later this year or 2013 will have the next generation which will completely saturate 6 Gbps when compressed and incompressed