OCZ Apex 120GB SSD
Quirky performer
Review From the outside, the 120GB OCZ Apex solid-state drive looks very similar to every other 2.5in SSD on the market, including the 80GB Intel X25-M that we reviewed last year.
OCZ's Apex: good price-per-gigabyte score
Internally, it’s a different story as the Apex uses two JMicron JMF602 Flash controller chips in conjunction with a JMB390 RAID chip so the Apex is effectively a pair of 60GB SSDs in RAID 0 configuration. If you check the specification, you’ll see that the RAID setup means that the 60GB model has a write speed of "up to 110MB/s", while the 120GB and 250GB models have a speed of "up to 160MB/s".
Our reference point for the OCZ Apex is the Intel X25-M, which launched at a price of £399 - £4.99 per gigabyte - and which has subsequently dropped to £315 - £3.94 per gig. Intel has announced a 160GB X25-M that costs £615 - £3.84 per gigabyte - so you pay a smidge less than £4 per gig if you shop with Intel and £2.67-3.25 per gig when you buy an OCZ Apex drive.
That’s a substantial saving provided the performance of the Apex is up to snuff. We tested both the Intel and OCZ drives along with a 1TB WD Caviar Black HDD on an EVGA X58 SLI motherboard with a Core i7 965 processor and 3GB of 1066MHz DDR 3 memory running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition.
Inside the Apex
OCZ Apex 120GB SSD Specs
- Available in 60GB, 120GB, 250GB capacities
- Read up to 230 MB/s
- Write (120-250GB) up to 160MB/s
- Write (60GB) up to 110MB/s
- Seek <.2-.3ms
- Slim 2.5in Design
- Dimensions 99.88 x 69.63 x 9.3mm
- Weight 77g
- Operating Temp -10°C ~ +70°C
- Storage Temp -55°C ~ +140°C
- Low Power Consumption
- Shock Resistant 1500G
- Internal RAID 0 Support
- MTBF 1.5 million hours
- Warranty Two years
COMMENTS
testing random writes on SSD?
I think here you will find just the right tool (admittedly, benchmarking is not its purpose) : http://managedflash.com/downloads/index.htm . To see what I mean, download the documentation http://downloads.managedflash.com/documentation/090107_windowsinstall.pdf and jump to bottom part of page 22 (section 2.8).
Alternatively, just adopt any SQL IO performance test - they all measure random writes performance pretty well. BTW, I hope this explains why random writes latency is important.
Figures, figures
Apologies for this folks - the figures on the graphs are correct however I managed to trip over the reams test results and make some silly mistakes in the copy which Tony has sorted out.
ref Bronek's comments: Tony and self talked about hard drive testing a while back and came to the conclusion that benchmarks are all well and good but file transfer tests are more real world.
Transferring files and timing the results should reflect any funny business such as excessive latency. If this is not the case I'd be happy to hear the flaw along with any suggestions about how we can realistically measure it.
@All
Apologies, all. The graphs present the correct HD Tach numbers - and now so does the review text. It doesn't radically alter the outcome of the evaluation, and the Verdict and Rating stand.
SSD friendly OS
Is Mac OS X 'SSD friendly', as per the configs you can buy from Apple with SSDs?
Would be interesting to see results here.
