Technology is the one area of our lives that is now constantly in a state of change, what was the best just yesterday is the fluff of today and it seems there is no end in sight. For those of use who are lucky enough to be able to test and review hardware sometimes it looks like an endless sea of the same thing with just a new face on the surface. On some occasions however being a tech guy has its really up points and I feel today is one of those days. Having tested hundreds of hard drives on so many different systems it insane, I was really bored at what the current tech level has balanced out at in the spinning platter market and desperate for something new and relevant. SSD technology is still I its infant stages don’t be fooled by the Hype and you can see how in just one generation of controllers how much has changed on that horizon and is still changing.
When I first started playing with SSD tech I was like everyone else really in high anticipation of what the real possibilities could be and antsy as hell about seeing the results. My first impressions were mainly just in awe of the read write capabilities now being offered on a drive that has no moving parts or sound, not to mention an almost total lack of heat. Needless to say I was hooked. Then came the issue of performance depending on the controller not only on the SSD, but on the motherboard as well as different controllers IE: Marvell/Intel/ASMedia all showed different test results making things a bit confusing for the beginner PC builder or those just new to this technology.
In my search for a solid test bed I have used many different controllers in an effort to see what one offered the best baseline performance across a variety of SSD products. After numerous attempts and testing I have discovered that the Marvell 6GB chipset seems to give the best results overall on the Z68 and Z79 chipset motherboards I have been testing on. The new OCZ Octane 512GB model is one of the highest capacity SSD products that are available on the market today. It uses the Proprietary Indilinx Ndurance Technology as its controller, which is rumored to be very fast with the latest Firmware release that we have now flashed the drive to before testing. Lets take a look now at the features of the new Octane 512 and then check out if it lives up to the Hype and if it’s really worth the high price tag. The drive does come with a whopping $800.00 or more price tag attached so it’s not for the meek of wallet in any case, but it is the latest tech available.
512GB Max Performance*
Max Read: up to 480MB/s
Max Write: up to 330MB/s
Random Write 4KB: 26,000 IOPS
Random Read 4KB: 35,000 IOPS
