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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Lord 666 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
2600k with x68XP-UD4 and the drive connected to 6gb slot. MB is even using latest F5 bios and PSU is 700w. OS is Win7 x64 SP1.We'll see what Santa might bring me....
Makaveli - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
"I think people are going to start looking less at max performance values and more at overall Stability. Based on OCZ current history these numbers don't mean anything until more through testing can be completed."Marlin1975 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Hanging with the big boys has more to do with reliability then performance for me. Even the slowest 6gb SSD is still better than platter hard drives.I bought a Crucial M4 more for the reliability factor then performance.
i.e. would you rather drive the 2nd fastest car in the world or the fastest car without brakes or seatbelts?
anactoraaron - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I have 4 different SSD's from 4 different companies and the oldest one from Intel (a 40gb x25-v) has been going strong for over a year. I have yet to experience any reliability issue with any of my ssd's. Don't know exactly where people keep saying these things.josephjpeters - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Sometimes you wonder if HDD companies are trying to push the reliability issue to slow adoption.I've had a Vertex 3 since May and it's been perfect.
Marlin1975 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Yes cause all the people in forums and reviews must be shills as there have only been 5 SSDs sold, your 4 and mine.So the issues of SSDs problems are fake and OCZ and other SSD makers that admit problems and come out with firmware fixs must have been bribed by platter makers to keep the false info going.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
My Vertex 2E has fallen apart. On my previous build it ended up having a ton of errors (about a year old). I thought nothing of it, rebuilt my entire machine (brand new high quality PSU/MB/GPU/RAM/CPU), and it worked for a week.. this is after updating firmware, too, clean install of 7 x64.It now hard locks a few seconds after booting Windows.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I bought an Intel 320 for the same reason, even though I have a 6Gbps SATA board, I don't care. They even upped the warranty to 5 years.n0b0dykn0ws - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
All the performance in the world doesn't mean anything if the drive is priced too high.Yes, with the inflated price of HDDs right now it will probably seem like a value, but if you already have terabytes of storage you need a good price/performance ratio.
I'd like to see something that's a bit slower but increased capacity at a good price.
Like a 512 GB drive for under $200. So what if it doesn't compete with the faster drives, it would be a better value!
n0b0dykn0ws
josephjpeters - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I think that comes out in January with the TLC-based SSD's. It'll probably be $350 for a 512 though.