OCZ Vertex 3 Pro looks to become one of the first SSDs using the SandForce SF-2000 SSD controller. OCZ decided to show off an early prototype at CES in Las Vegas. With the SandForce SF-2582 controller Vertex 3 Pro presents almost unimaginable performance with read and write speeds around 500 MB/s.
OCZ will not launch the Vertex 3 Pro SSD-until Q2 2011 and despite the early firmware and 32nm NAND flash memory – retail version will have Micron 25nm NAND – it achieves amazing performance. Do note that we are talking about the next generation SandForce controller with Toggle Mode MLC NAND flash in a regular 2.5″ format without any RAID solutions or such, connected to a regular SATA 6.0 Gbps port.
When SandForce presented the performance specifications for the SF-2000 series we were mighty impressed, but with Vertex 3 Pro, OCZ has improved this and is just months away from the final launch.
OCZ specifies Vertex 3 Pro to 550 MB/s at read and 525 MB/s when writing data. At the same time impressive 75,000 IOPS when writing 4K files. You can compare this to 275 MB/s for both write and read with current SandForce drives.
At Anandtech they have run their own tests in IO-Meter and believe it or not Vertex 3 Pro is close to the rated speeds.
What impress us the most is how high performance is even when writing uncompressed data. One of the Achilles heals we have found with current SandForce controller is the handling of already compressed data during file transfers. Even if OCZ Vertex 3 Pro drops in write performance it reaches 262 MB/s with uncompressed data, higher than the market leading SandForce controller with compressed data.
OCZ Vertex 3 Pro and the SF-2582 SSD controller almost reach the limit of the new SATA 6.0 Gbps interface with the maximal capacity of 600 MB/s, and once again the interface is about to limit the speed of our storage.
The launch of SandForce’s new SSD processors will take a few more months, but we will be ready then.
Source: Anandtech
