Specifications, Pricing and Availability

The 128GB model is the baby of the Octane family. This is more than just a statement on the capacity; it is also the slowest drive from the group. On paper the Octane 128GB has a max read of 470MB/s and the write speed is just 210MB/s, far lower than OCZ's SandForce based drives. You should already know that on paper performance doesn't always relate to real-world performance and we'll toss a zinger your way in the review that proves that point today.

After the OCZ acquisition some new Indilinx buzz words hit the marketing sheets. Indilinx Infused, it sounds a bit like SandForce Driven and Ndurance, a play on Durawrite maybe, but we don't get caught up with these buzzwords unless the technology they are based on blows our socks off. Octane's architecture uses a traditional design that is similar to most of the consumer SSDs use aside from Team SandForce models. The Octane has a controller, flash and a cache buffer that sits in-between. Just like the larger Octane, the 128GB uses two DDR3 chips for cache. We never nailed down the capacity of the cache in the 128GB model, the 512GB uses 512MB and the product family specification sheet says up to 512MB. It wasn't pressing enough for us to hold the review for clarification since the answer doesn't change the final results.

One thing I've found by actually using the 512GB drive is that it feels much faster than the benchmarks show. OCZ worked to reduce the access times and even though other products on the market show the same access time numbers in benchmarks, the Octane feels faster.

All of this is moot though because the only way for OCZ to make the Octane in its current attractive is to price it lower than the Vertex 3. In our first run with the Octane I stated this drive could be one of the first good SSDs to reach $1 per GB before it hits end of life. That hasn't happened, not even close. At the time of writing the 128GB Octane is on sale at Newegg for 179.99 USD, after a $20 mail-in-rebate. Of the three sizes listed only three Newegg reviews are listed, so I don't think this drive is exactly flying off the shelves, with the 120GB Vertex 3 now selling for 169 USD after a MIR it's easy to see why Octane isn't that attractive at this time.