OCZ Vertex 4 256GB Solid State Drive Review

System Overview & Testing Procedures
Once the drive is formatted you have 238GB of useable space.  Most SandForce-based drives that are 256GB are advertised as 240GB drives and only have 223GB of usable space once formatted.  Since the Vertex 4 is not using a SandForce controller it does not need the extra space for over-provisioning.

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Opening up CrystalDiskInfo we can see all of the information about the drive.  It supports S.M.A.R.T., APM, NCQ and most importantly TRIM.  Also OCZ has loaded the drive with the latest 1.5 firmware.  OCZ has done a great job in updating their firmware with the Vertex 4.  The firmware upgrades have really helped improve performance, you can see what I mean in this forum post.

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For testing the drive we will be using the following benchmarking programs, we have provided links to each so you can run the benchmarks as well.

HDTune Pro (download)
ATTO Disk Benchmark (download)
CrystalDiskMark 64bit (download)
AS SSD Benchmark (download)
Anvil Storage Utility Professional (download)

We also made these optimization changes…
– No power saving options in the BIOS
– ACHI enabled in the BIOS
– Windows 7 User Account Control (UAC) is disabled
– Windows 7 power saving settings are disabled

For comparison we will be testing the OCZ Vertex 4 drive against these other solid state drives.

ADATA Premier Pro SP900 (Review)
Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB (Review)
Crucial M4 256GB (Review)
Samsung 830 120GB (Review)
Patriot Pyro SE 120GB (Review)
OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G (Review)
Kingston HyperX 240GB (Review)
Patriot Wildfire 120GB (Review)
Corsair Force GT 120GB (Review)
OCZ Agility 3 240GB (Review)
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB (Review)

Now let’s get to testing!

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