OCZ Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD Performance Preview

We like PCMark Vantage's HDD Performance module for its real-world application measurement approach to testing. PCMark Vantage offers a trace-based measurements of system response times under various scripted workloads of traditional client/desktop system operation. From simple Windows 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 or workstation PC usage model.

This series of Vantage tests will stress mostly read performance in pseudo real-world usage models, with a mix of sequential and random read transactions of both small and large file sizes.

Futuremark's PCMark Vantage http://www.futuremark.com

The OCZ Z-Drive R4 performs well in this first group of PCMark Vantage HDD tests, but it doesn't quite lead the pack as one might expect. It was only in the Windows Defender test that the Z-Drive takes the lead; in the other three tests the Z-Drive R4 trails at least one of its competitors and in two of the tests even the RevoDrive 3 X2 is faster.