SSD shootout: Samsung 470 vs. Corsair Nova vs. OCZ Vertex 2

by Philip Bloem

Today we are going to have a look at some of the fastest SSDs available to notebook users.  The Samsung 470 is Samsung’s latest SSD. It uses 30nm flash and a new Samsung controller. Second in our lineup is the Corsair Nova V128GB. It uses an Indilinx Barefoot controller. Lastly we included the OCZ Vertex 2, which is a very popular SSD at the moment. It uses the Sandforce 1200 controller. Let's find out which SSD is the fastest.

Specifications :

	Samsung 470 256GB Maximum read speed 250 MB/sec Maximum write speed 220 MB/sec
	Corsair Nova V128 Maximum read speed 270 MB/sec Maximum write speed 195 MB/sec
	OCZ Vertex 2 120GB Maximum read speed 285 MB/sec Maximum write speed 275 MB/sec

Synthetic performance
To get an impression of the synthetic performance we ran the CrystalDiskMark 3.0 benchmark.

Samsung 470 256GB

Corsair Nova V128

OCZ Vertex 2 120GB

It's refreshing to see that Samsung reaches higher speeds than claimed in the specifications. The Samsung drive actually reaches higher sequential speeds than the Corsair Nova and OCZ Vertex 2. The Vertex 2 doesn’t work well with incompressible data that Crystal Disk Mark uses. After some usage sequential writes drop down to 86MB/sec.

In 4K random performance it's the Vertex 2 that rules, followed by Samsung 470 and Corsair Nova.