The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.
To test the performance of the OCZ Vector 256GB, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro 4.61, Anvil's Storage Utilities and Iometer. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Samsung SSD 840 Pro, Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, Samsung SSD 840, OCZ Vertex 4, OCZ Agility 4, SanDisk Ultra Plus, Kingston SSDNow V300, Kingston HyperX 3K and SanDisk Extreme.
The Vector is the first drive based on the Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller platform. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that, unlike SandForce controllers, it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 OCZ Vector 256GB |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB |
According to OCZ, the 256GB Vector is capable of reading at 550 MB/s and writing at 530 MB/s when connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port. While the drive performed well, it came up a bit short of these numbers in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write speed tests.
 OCZ Vector 256GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The Vector performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 503.3 MB/s and write at 491.9 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the Vector's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the Vector had average read and write speeds of 337.5 MB/s and 305.7 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 385.1 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the Vector's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 OCZ Vector 256GB |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB |
When tested with ATTO, the Vector's read speeds topped out at about 557 MB/s and its write speeds at 534 MB/s.
