We’ve examined two other solid-state drives (SSDs) in OCZ’s Vertex 3 series, at capacities of 120GB and 240GB (the latter earning our Editors’ Choice award). So it seemed like it would be worth the time to see how the highest-capacity model, the 480GB version, fares—especially given OCZ’s recent releases of both its Octane and now Vertex 4 drives of similar size. As it turns out, pretty well, and across a broad range of applications. In certain circumstances you might want to default to one of the others, but for regular use this is a solid go-to SSD—provided you can afford its steep ($769.99 list) cost.

Unlike the Octane and the Vertex 4, which have been outfitted with controllers from Indilinx (which OCZ acquired last year), Vertex 3 drives like this 480GB model  still utilize SandForce SF2200 hardware. This delivers top read speeds of 530MBps and write speeds of 450MBps—interestingly, both lower than the most you can expect from the 120GB (550MBps and 500MBps) or especially 240GB (550MBps and 520MBps models). The 480GB drive, which offers about 447GB of usable space once it’s formatted, does slightly better than the other drives in terms of 4KB random reads (it’s rated for 50,000, as opposed to 20,000 for the 120GB drive and 40,000 for the 240GB drive) and slightly worse in terms of random writes (40,000, as compared with 60,000 for the others).

The Vertex 4 model surpasses the Vertex 3 in certain tasks, such as sequential writes (418.6MBps versus 292.2MBps) and 4KB reads and writes with 64 threads (275.6MBps and 257.1MBps respectively, versus 218.2MBps and 148.8MBps) as measured in the AS SSD Benchmark, or sequential writes and 512KB writes as measured in CrystalDiskMark. Random performance was better with the Vertex 4 as well, particularly at higher queue depths as measured in the AS SSD benchmark, and in the SiSoftware Sandra 2012 Random Write test (419.7MBps versus 287.3MBps for the Vertex 3). If such tasks form considerable portions of your regular workload, you’d be better off with that drive. And both the Octane and Vertex 4 drives better balance performance with compressible and incompressible data, something you don’t see as much of with SandForce controllers like those in the Vertex 3.

But the Vertex 3 holds its own nicely against the larger models, especially in cases of sequential reads: 491.9MBps in AS SSD, compared with 503.3MBps for the Octane and 429.3MBps for the Vertex 4; and 498.9MBps in CrystalDiskMark, ahead of both the Octane’s 481MBps and the Vertex 4’s 465.3MBps. Its Buffered Read result of 509.1MBps in SiSoftware Sandra 2012 was the highest of the three drives (the Octane managed 499.6MBps and the Vertex 4 491MBps), as was its Random Read score (516.12MBps, leaving its nearest competitor, the Vertex 4, in the dust with 427.13). And in the ATTO Disk Benchmark, it kept pace with—and a number of times exceeded—the performance of both the other drives, particularly with heavier data samples (upwards of 128KB, where the Vertex 4’s performance fell off). And its score of 5,430 in Futuremark PCMark 7 was tops by a fair margin (the Vertex 4 earned 5,147 and the Octane 4,977).

Whether the 480GB OCZ Vertex 3 is the right choice for you these days depends primarily on you use your computer: It’s much better handling sequential reads at less intense queue depths than it is random data or more punishing write operations—in those cases, the Vertex 4 would be a better way to go. But even if the Vertex 4 has superior random performance and a slightly lower price ($699 list), the Vertex 3’s is respectable—and its focus on reads would seem to give it an edge for general-purpose usage patterns. If you don’t need quite this much storage, or if want to spend a lot less, we’d still recommend the speedier Editors’ Choice 240GB version of the Vertex 3 (which can be found online for less than $350); otherwise, this is a fine high-capacity, high-price choice for most consumers.

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