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OCZ says its Indilinx controller is actually built by Marvell, but has custom firmware
OCZ received stacks of praise following its brave switch to in-house Indilinx-branded controllers, which have delivered solid performance in both the Octane and Vertex 4 SSDs. However, the company has now confirmed to AnandTech that its Indilinx Everest 1 and 2 controllers are actually still based on Marvell products, with a little overclocking on the side, and it hasn't yet implemented its own hardware. That would explain why the latest SSDs are so closely on a par with other Marvell-powered drives, like the Crucial's m4 and Intel's 520. But if it sounds like the brightest kid in the class just admitted to copying some other student's homework, then we should probably all chill out: after all, OCZ never made any precise claims about Everest's provenance in the first place. Besides, one of the most important aspects of a solid state drive is its firmware and OCZ insists that's totally home-cooked. The news here is that we still haven't seen what OCZ is fully capable of following its Indilinx acquisition.
OCZ Vertex 4 SSD released, wins calm praise on the review circuit
The Vertex 4 is a big deal for OCZ, because it's the company's first top-end SSD to come with an in-house Indilinx controller. We first saw an earlier version of this proprietary silicon put to good effect in the Octane drive a few months ago, and by most accounts the Vertex 4's updated Everest 2 controller continues in the same vein. The new drive will ship in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB varieties, with MSRPs of $179, $349 and $699 respectively, which stacks up well against Intel's 520 series. Bearing in mind that only the larger two variants have been sent out for review so far, the general feedback is that the Vertex 4 is reliable and indeed excels in certain key benchmarks like random write performance, which Anandtech described as "incredible." On the other hand, read performance and some other real-world benchmarks were less earth-shattering, and most reviewers have been quite measured in their conclusions. Storage Review, for example, suggested that the new Vertex's attractiveness will grow over time, as pricing gets more aggressive and OCZ's decision to use its own controller pays dividends in terms of support and firmware tweaks. Check out the source links for all the usual benchmark graph goodness. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in.]
