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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josephjpeters - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I think people are going to start looking less at max performance values and more at overall performance. Looks like Octane competes with the best.inplainview - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I think MOST non-geek-high-end user types will be looking for reliability first. SSD's have become more reliable but I still get a bit nervous when I see something strange happening. Data backups are your best friend.josephjpeters - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Totally agree. The delay in the launch was probably a good thing for the end consumer. Better OCZ catches bugs then the consumer.niva - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Bingo! Reliability is #1 in the long term, even for the nerdy geeks who want speed. They come around eventually. I'm not too pleased with the way reliability is heading but compromises must be made to make this tech cheaper for the masses.Solandri - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
There are two types of people: Those who've lost data without a backup, and those who will. Always make backups. Once you do, the reliability becomes a non-issue, and you can enjoy the speed of SSDs without worry.The backup system I set up for my dad does incremental backups wirelessly to a NAS every day, so he doesn't even have to do anything. (A new initial backup every few months is made over a wired network to save time.)
Proxy711 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Your right since I backup my data every month I no longer care about BSOD, stuttering, and the need to rely and frequently make use of my backups./sarcasm
SSD reliability doesn't just apply to loss of data.
Denebola - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
I don't care about reliability since everything that I would put on a SSD can easily be redownloaded.It might be problematic for people who don't know how to move the media folders on Windows though (if they even use that.)
That is as long as the drive still works / under warranty. If they doesn't apply then I'd be pretty livid if I had a $500 paper weight.
Lord 666 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Have to say that I have been dissappointed with my M4 256 fw9 SSD. For the price, encryption and some more performance would have justified the high tag.This graph just proved I should have held off.
Marlin1975 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
You do know there are more than 1 way to measure performance in SSDs right?One that is slower in one area may be better in 4k and so forth.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
Could be your CPU is limiting speed, not the M4. At work we've got some DELLs with 64 GB Samsung PM..*something*. Definitely not the fastest, even 2 years ago. However, during installs routinely one Core of the i5s (~3.6 GHz) gets fully loaded.. so a faster drive wouldn't help much.MrS