OCZ Octane Series SATA III Solid State Drive Review

Name: OCZ Octane SSD
Brand: OCZ

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 11:56 AM EDT

We really like PCMark 7's Secondary Storage benchmark module for its pseudo real-world application measurement approach to testing. PCMark 7 offers a trace-based measurement of system response times under various scripted workloads of traditional client / desktop system operation. From simple application start-up performance, to data streaming from a drive in a game engine, and video editing with Windows Movie Maker, we feel more comfortable that these tests reasonably illustrate the performance profile of SSDs in an end-user / consumer PC usage model, more so than a purely synthetic transfer test.

Futuremark's PCMark 7 Secondary Storage

http://www.futuremark.com

The OCZ Octane put up the lowest overall score in the PCMark 7 secondary storage benchmark, but that result is somewhat deceiving. If we tunnel into the individual test results, the OCZ Octane has some of the best scores in 6 of the 7 tests. It's only in the "Starting Applications" test that the Octane trails, and that drags its overall score down.

Having recorded this result, we spent some time launching applications on the OCZ Octane and compared them side-by-side with a SandForce-based drive and there was no perceptible difference.

Tags: SSD, OCZ, Storage, indilinx, solid state, SATA III, Everest

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com