OCZ Vector 150 240GB Review

Performance Analysis

Looking at sequential read speeds, the Vector 150 is 1MB/sec behind the Vector and a few more behind the SSD 840 PRO. Samsung has a slightly clearer advantage in CrystalDiskMark, but the Vector 150 is still very quick with speeds over 520MB/sec in both tests.

As for write speeds, it's also well placed with a result just shy of 500MB/sec in AS SSD, but it's again a little behind the Vector and the 840 PRO both here and in CDM. Sequential performance has reached a bit of a plateau in performance focussed SSDs, and the small differences that do separate the top-end drives in these tests are practically irrelevant.

The Vector 150 isn't particularly strong when it comes to random reads. At a single queue depth, it's only faster than the Vertex 450 in both AS SSD and CDM. As the Vector also places pretty poorly in these tests, the Barefoot 3 controller is likely to blame. Thankfully, at higher queue depths, the situation improves for the Vector 150, especially in AS SSD, although it's still unable to post a better result than the Vector.

Random write performance is much better than the that of random reads, which is a pattern we also saw with the Vertex 450. In the single queue depth test in both AS SSD and CDM, the OCZ drives occupy the top four places (excluding Samsung's RAM-accelerated RAPID mode), and the Vector 150 just edges ahead of the Vector too, albeit only barely. We see a similar pattern at the higher queue depth tests, where the three Barefoot 3 drives take the top positions.


The Vector 150 falls behind a fair few drives, including the original Vector, in the PCMark 7 trace-based tests that are designed to emulate real world performance. In both the Gaming and Starting Applications tests, the whole of Samsung's 840 series fares better. Nevertheless, we do observe rapid Windows boot times compared to most other drives, although again the Vector maintains a slight lead.

Conclusion

The Vector 150 is priced more keenly than the Vector was when we looked at it, in that it has essentially the same cost per formatted gigabyte as its primary competition from Samsung, the SSD 840 PRO 256GB. That said, we still would have preferred even more aggressive pricing given that performance is actually down compared to the original Vector thanks to a move to 19nm NAND. We're sure OCZ will want to highlight the value proposition of the bundled Acronis software, but equally Samsung includes its own user-friendly Magician software with its SSDs, and it covers cloning as well as the excellent one-click RAM-caching solution known as RAPID Mode.

When it comes to SSDs, the biggest barrier to entry by far for casual users and even most enthusiasts and gamers is price, so for the vast majority of users we still wholeheartedly recommend the excellent Samsung SSD 840 EVO. However, with its flagship drive, OCZ is targeting the hardcore enthusiast and workstation audiences, who are likely to chew through masses of data each day and thus require the high endurance and steady state performance that the Vector 150 offers. If that's you, then this drive could well be worth your time, although the lack of hardware accelerated encryption is a shame.