New OCZ Firmware Boosts Vertex 4 Performance Up to 210%

OCZ just released a new firmware (v1.4RC) this morning that boosts the performance of its Vertex 4 SSD (check out: OCZ Vertex 4 Review: A Flagship SSD Powered By...Indilinx?). Random read and write performance hasn't changed, but OCZ has made a few tweaks to sequential read and write speeds that should provide a major performance benefit. Across the entire Vertex 4 product line the data rate for sequential reads now top out at 550 MB/s, a meager 15 MB/s improvement.

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Vertex 4 Performance Specifications128 GB256 GB512 GB
4 KB Random Reads (IOPS)90,00090,00090,000
4 KB Random Writes (IOPS)85,00085,00085,000
128 KB Sequential Reads (MB/s)Now: 550Previously: 535Now: 550 Previously: 535Now: 550 Previously:535
128 KB Sequential Writes (MB/s)Now: 420Previously: 200Now: 465 Previously:380475

With the exception of the 512 GB capacity point, sequential writes see a major improvement. If you own the 128 GB model, you'll see a 210 percent increase in performance, as the data rate is now 420 MB/s. At 256 GB, the firmware tweaks made by OCZ only yield a 22 percent gain - from 380 MB/s to 465 MB/s. The great thing is that these speeds obviously apply to incompressible data, an important distinction considering this is OCZ's first performance Vertex drive that doesn't feature SandForce.

  • nikorr
    Now that's an update!
    Reply
  • frombehind
    hell yea... wish there were more out there like it. If only my AMD 7970 card could be made 210% faster with a driver patch, lol
    Reply
  • matt_b
    The title definitely skews the facts presented. A definite improvement is noticed, but only on one spec and one of the models - not the entire Vertex 4 lineup as the title would have you think. Still, I'll take the 2.8% and 22% performance from the other drive with the updated speeds. Anything is better than nothing, just hoping reliability remains in check.

    Edit: In addition to the fuzzy number wording, this is also not the first Vertex without a Sandforce controller - correct me if I am wrong.......
    Reply
  • amdwilliam1985
    Sorry for being ignorant, but I thought the most important factors in a SSD is the random read and write. Since those didn't change, I presume real-world user experience won't be affected as much.
    Reply
  • (420 - 200) / 200 = 110% improvement not 210%.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    only for writes... and sequential writes... in practical everyday use this really helps nobody as 99% of what you do with a system drive is read. If you were using this as a render drive then it would help a lot... but I think most people with that workload would avoid OCZ like the plague and stick with Crucial or Intel.
    Reply
  • (420/200) x 100% = 210%
    Reply
  • victorious 3930k
    caedenvonly for writes... and sequential writes... in practical everyday use this really helps nobody as 99% of what you do with a system drive is read. If you were using this as a render drive then it would help a lot... but I think most people with that workload would avoid OCZ like the plague and stick with Crucial or Intel.Boot includes sequential writes.
    Reply
  • Branden
    synthetic compressible data or real-world data?
    Reply
  • mesab66
    Yup, 200-->420 % increase aint 210%. Still 110% increase aint too shabby, and yep, this would be a helluva lot better for most users if this was the read improvement.
    Reply