OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB SATA 6Gbit/s SSD Review

Finally, we reach the first of our real-world tests where there are no unusual testing or scoring algorithms to leave us scratching our heads, just simple tests to see how an SSD changes actual system performance.

For the File Transfer test we took a 4.5GB archive and timed how much time was required to transfer the file to another destination on the same drive. Keep in mind that with a hard disk, this requires the actuator arm to seek back and forth between the source and destination sectors of the disk platter, while any SSD can concurrently read and write to separate flash chips at once.

In a surprise twist, the Vertex 3 Max IOPS has no trouble outstripping the V3 here, lopping off four seconds from the already fast time. Considering both drives deliver performance already in a league of their own, it makes for a pretty strong showing.

Adobe Lightroom 3.4

With Adobe Lightroom, importing image files with “Copy” simply acts like a file transfer, exactly like our previous test. Rather than simply time how long it takes to create a duplicate set of 500 RAW files we elected to choose the “Copy as DNG” import option. This will convert the NEF files (Nikon’s equivalent to RAW) into the Digital Negative standard while importing them to its image library.

This test was not particularly effective as Adobe Lightroom 3.4 only spawns two threads, meaning that even with the power of a Core i7 that has eight threads available, the CPU was still the main bottleneck. When Adobe deems fit to update Lightroom to take advantage of more threads we will see a real need for faster storage here, as such a task as this is perfectly suited for high thread parallelization.

Even so, upgrading to any SSD will save a minute and a half off the import time over a mechanical drive. The Vertex 3 Max IOPS placed just over a second behind the V3, but drops the import time by over two minutes compared to the hard drive. If Lightroom simply doubled the number of threads spawned to four, it would likely halve the time required for completion using either one of the Vertex 3 SSDs.