| OCZ Agility MLC SSD OCZSSD2-1AGT120G |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Storage | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Olin Coles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 22 July 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
OCZ Agility SSD ReviewBenchmark Reviews has seen Solid State Drive products from every angle, and while SSDs have overtaken hard drive products in terms of speed, there still remains the giant task of beating HDDs in price. That's exactly why OCZ has created the Agility Solid State Drive. Identical to the popular OCZ Vertex SSD in every aspect except NAND selection, the Agility SSD series offers the same Indilinx 'Barefoot' controller and 64MB of DRAM buffer allowing a fast 230 MBps read speed. Benchmark Reviews tests the reaction time and bandwidth performance for the 120GB Agility OCZSSD2-1AGT120G model against over two dozen other storage products in this article. Anyone familiar with articles published at Benchmark Reviews is very well aware of our obsession with Solid State Drive technology. They're complex, and every SSD is different than the next. Nothing like Hard Disk Drive technology, which improves as spindle speed and cache buffer are increased, SSDs are the future and because of this their internal architecture is constantly evolving. This is why we offer so much coverage on the topic: it's interesting and exciting. Plus, they can turn the average computer system into a roaring beast. It's not marketing hype; for once the truth is stranger than fiction. The retail consumer market first received a myriad of introductory SSD controller technologies, which included a little something from everyone. SanDisk, Solidata, and pureSilicon have all made attempts and becoming the major name in the SSD industry, just like SandForce and Texas Memory Systems will also soon try. Fusion-io, Mtron, MemoRight, and RunCore offered their proprietary chips beside a smattering of Samsung and JMicron combinations, and then Indilinx came along and their Barefoot controller sat down right at the head table. At the end of the day, it's not the name that counts, it's the final product. In that regard, only Samsung and Indilinx have seized consumer attention with their products. Samsung makes the DRAM modules found in nearly all popular SSD products today, with Elpida and Qimonda also adding their name to cache buffer parts. JMicron, Indilinx, and Samsung engineer many of the most well-known SSDs on the market, with OEM companies adding their own branding, custom-tuned firmware, and warranty. The OCZ Summit SSD is a perfect example of an OEM product, built from the PB22-J model that Samsung decided not to ODM and sell themselves. The OCZ Vertex is an OEM product from Indilinx, but the OCZ Agility SSD is a twist on the shared design.
Performance enthusiasts have been keeping notes on SSD technology for a while now, and until recently the price and performance of Solid State Drives were not within reach for casual consumers. SSD products are quickly moving mainstream, and former marketing points like power consumption is now the least impressive of all benefits a Solid State Drive delivers. The real payoff is in the practically instant response time and high-performance throughput. Capacity and stuttering were once the only problems keeping SSDs from replacing HDDs, but now it's just capacity. Since first making a commercial public debut at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, Solid State Drives (SSD's) have been a topic of hot discussion among performance enthusiasts. These nonvolatile flash memory-based drives feature virtually no access time delay and promise a more reliable storage medium with greater performance while operating at a fraction of the power level. Moving into 2008, SSDs became a consumer reality for many performance-minded power users. Now that 2009 has revealed promising industry support for Solid State Drive technology, we should hope that mainstream acceptance moves faster than DDR3 SDRAM has. Back in November 2007, after experiencing the SuperComputing Conference SC07, finding Solid State Drives on sale anywhere was a real challenge. One year later, and online stores are offering dozens of SSD models at reasonable prices. Solid State Drives are rapidly changing the computing landscape, and many enthusiasts are using SSD technology in their primary systems to help boost performance. Benchmark Reviews has tested nearly all of the products available to the retail market in this sector, and several do well while others fall flat. It used to be that performance was the largest hurdle for mass storage NAND Solid State Drives, followed by stability, and later price. Solid State Drive products are no longer restricted to bleeding edge hardware enthusiasts or wealthy elitists. Heading into 2009, SSD storage devices were available online for nearly $2 per gigabyte of storage capacity while the most popular performance desktop hard drive hovered just above $1/GB. While most consumers are waiting for that day when SSD costs the same as HDD, they seem to be forgetting how Solid State Drives have already surpassed Hard Disk performance in every other regard. Our collection of SSD reviews is a good starting point for comparing the competition. Disclaimer: SSD Benchmarks
Benchmark Reviews recently published an article which details Solid State Drive (SSD) Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into producing that article changed the way we now test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of this technology were lost on one particular difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing or some It's critically important to understand that no software for the Microsoft Windows platform can accurately measure SSD performance in a comparable fashion. Synthetic benchmark tools such as HD Tach and ATTO Disk Benchmark are helpful indicators, but should not be considered the ultimate determining factor. That factor should be measured in actual user experience of real-world applications. Benchmark Reviews includes both bandwidth benchmarks and application speed tests to present a conclusive measurement of product performance. About OCZ Technology IncOCZ Technology Group, a member of JEDEC, designs, develops and manufactures ground-breaking, high performance memory and computer components that set industry standards. OCZ products are the first choice for users needing high-reliability, ultra-high performance solutions. In 2007, PC Power & Cooling and Hypersonic PC were brought into the OCZ Technology Group, forming a well-rounded, highly innovative organization that places the company at the forefront of high-end computing. All of OCZ Technology Group's products are available through its worldwide network of distributors, online resellers and retail stores. OCZ Agility FeaturesOffering your system the incredible performance of flash-based storage, the OCZ Agility Series delivers the performance and reliability of SSDs at less price per gigabyte than other high speed offerings currently on the market. The OCZ Agility Series is the result of all the latest breakthroughs in SSD technology, including new architecture and controller design, blazing read/write speeds, and 64MB of onboard cache. Perfect for notebooks and desktops alike, the Agility Series is ideal for energy-efficient mobile computing to extend battery life, increase the speed of access time, and provide a durable alternative to conventional hard disc drives with superior shock resistance. High capacities and low power consuming NAND flash technology provide the necessary performance and battery life boosts generated by the proliferation of mobile gaming and new ultra-thin laptops. The OCZ Agility drives feature a durable yet lightweight alloy housing, and because OCZ SSDs have no moving parts, the drives are more rugged than traditional hard drives. Designed for ultimate reliability, Agility Series SSDs have an excellent 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) ensuring peace of mind over the long term. All Agility Series SSD drives come backed a two year warranty and OCZ's legendary service and support. 
Offering a robust upgrade from traditional platter-based drives, OCZ Agility Series SSDs have a compact form factor with no moving parts resulting in quiet and cooler operation. For crowded cases and system builders striving for multiple drives in RAID configurations, OCZ Agility SSDs offer space and cost-savings that use significantly less power thanks to the benefits of high-quality flash chips in a durable 2.5" aluminum casing.
As of August 2009 the OCZ SSD family includes the following products from top to bottom:
OCZSSD2-1AGT120G Specifications
First Look: Agility SSDWhen it comes to the appearance of notebook drives, it must be understood that the product you're looking at will be hidden away from plain view once installed. Keeping in mind that this product is solid state, and therefore offers no amount of noticeable physical activity, it takes some special attention to presentation in order to help keep the consumer feeling comfortable with their premium purchase. OCZ does their very best to make each new SSD product as appealing as the last, and the Agility mainstream-series SSD draws they eyes with a nice sea-green label.
Unlike the average Hard Disk Drive (HDD) storage product, SSD's are practically impervious to impact damage and do not require special vibration dampening or shock-proof enclosures. OCZ utilizes a flat-black metal enclosure for nearly all of their Solid State Drive products, including the Agility SSD series, which fastens with four small counter-sunk screws on the underside.
Standard 2.5" drive bay mounting points are pre-drilled and threaded into the Agility SSD, which allows for quick upgrade or addition into any existing notebook or desktop system. The mounting positions matched up to the drive bracket on my laptop, and after only a few minutes of drive cloning I was quickly loading Windows XP. The OCZ Summit SSD does not include a 2.5" to 5.25" converter tray with the kit, as we've seen other manufacturers begin to include.
Unlike desktop computers which utilize a SATA cable system to connect drive to motherboard, nearly all notebooks allow the 2.5" drive to simply slide directly into a connection bay within the system. In addition to notebooks and desktop computer usage, this Agility MLC Solid State Drive can be utilized for mission-critical backups or high-abuse data systems. One unfortunate omission from all recent OCZ SSD products is the integrated High-Speed USB 2.0 Mini-B seen on Solid State Drive product models elsewhere. Now that you're acquainted with the basic exterior features of the OCZ Agility SSD, it's time to peek inside the OCZSSD2-1AGT120G enclosure and inspect the internal components... Agility Internal ComponentsOCZ has designed their Agility Solid State Drive to use the exact same architecture and components as the more expensive OCZ Vertex SSD series, with the NAND flash modules being the only difference between the two products. Benchmark Reviews has discovered that OCZ does not use one single brand of NAND for the Agility, and that the modules could be from one of several different major manufacturers, depending on the model and construction date. For this Internal Components section, we have re-used content from the OCZ Vertex series review. Intermittent and delayed response cycles (stuttering) from Solid State Drive products is not entirely wide-spread among all MLC SSDs, but it has become a big-enough issue among most affordable SSD products that many are well-aware of the phenomenon. Consumers first experienced the bitter taste of stuttering SSD performance with the OCZ Core Series (v1) SSD, although it has also been reported with the G.Skill MLC SSD and Patriot Warp v2. The phenomenon occurs when the drives buffer is filled faster than it can read or write data, and was prevalent among first-generation JMicron JMF602 SSD controllers. In our OCZ Apex SSD article, Benchmark Reviews detailed how the JMicron JMB390 RAID controller managing a pair of JMF602(B) SSD controllers into a RAID-0 striped array was able to overcome the 'stutter' experienced in MLC drives... at least in read functions. OCZ has returned to traditional methods of delivering performance with their latest and greatest Solid State Drive: the OCZ Agility. But how will the Agility SSD produce read-from and write-to bandwidth on par with the RAID-0 Apex without all the new architecture? The secret lies within a larger buffer, and the retirement of JMicron controllers (at least for this product) in place of the new Indilinx ARM7 micro-controller.
To the untrained eye, the OCZ Agility SSD looks like every other Solid State Drive you've probably seen when the internal components have been exposed. There's a collective bank of NAND modules, usually with Samsung markings, followed by the SATA controller chip. OCZ had decided to use Indilinx to deliver the SATA controller interface, since their 'Barefoot' chip was production-ready to be paired with a large cache months ago, while JMicron is still a few months away with their successor to the JMF602B chip.
While the internal NAND flash DRAM on the OCZ Vertex is comprised of Samsung K9HCG08U1M-PCB00 IC parts (pictured below) which bare the branding mark K9HCG08U1M PCB0, the Agility mainstream-series SSD uses several different manufactures to supply more affordable NAND modules. These lead-free RoHS-compliant 48-pin ICs are multi-layer, with one IC directly atop another to offer 64GB in 8x organization.
Indilinx claims that their IDX110M00-FC 'Barefoot' chip offer a maximum read speed 230 MBps and supports the capacity up to 512GB with multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash. The Indilinx (IDX110) Barefoot SSD controller chip is touted as delivering bandwidth over 200 MBps and random input-output (IO) of 20,000/s into various servers such as on-line transaction processing (OLTP) and streaming server units. These figures are NAND-flash dependant, which is why the Agility SSD is reduced in speed when compared to the premium Vertex series.
A single Elpida 64MB SDRAM module is marked with S51321CBH-7BTT-F, but the actual Elpida part number is EDS51321CBH, which is a 133MHz (CL3-3-3) mobile RAM component. This 64MB cache buffer helps improve small write-to performance and removes the 'stuttering' effect from the Agility SSD.
In the next section, Benchmark Reviews begins performance testing the OCZ Agility Solid State Drive, and we determine just how well the new Indilinx Barefoot-based SSD compares to the previous best-performing competition. Disclaimer: SSD TestingBenchmark Reviews recently published an article which details Solid State Drive (SSD) Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into producing that article changed the way we now test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of this technology were lost on one particular difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing or some other method of total-capacity testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best. It's critically important to understand that no software for the Microsoft Windows platform can accurately measure SSD performance in a comparable fashion. Synthetic benchmark tools such as HD Tach and ATTO Disk Benchmark are helpful indicators, but should not be considered the ultimate determining factor. That factor should be measured in actual user experience of real-world applications. Benchmark Reviews includes both bandwidth benchmarks and application speed tests to present a conclusive measurement of product performance. SSD Testing MethodologySolid State Drives have traveled a long winding course to finally get where they are today. Up to this point in technology, there have been several key differences separating Solid State Drives from magnetic rotational Hard Disk Drives. While the DRAM-based buffer size on desktop HDD's has recently reached 32 MB and is ever-increasing, there is still a hefty delay in the initial response time. This is one key area in which flash-based Solid State Drives continually dominates because they lack moving parts to "get up to speed". However the benefits inherent to SSD's have traditionally fallen off once the throughput begins, even though data reads or writes are executed at a high constant rate whereas the HDD tapers off in performance. This makes the average transaction speed of a SSD comparable to the data burst rate mentioned in HDD tests, albeit usually lower than the HDD's speed. Comparing a Solid State Disk to a standard Hard Disk Drives is always relative; even if you're comparing the fastest rotational spindle speeds. One is going to be many times faster in response (SSD's), while the other is usually going to have higher throughput bandwidth (HDD's). Additionally, there are certain factors which can affect the results of a test which we do our best to avoid. Test System
Drive Hardware
Test Tools
System Speed TestI doubt that when DOS was put to rest, Vladimir Afanasiev ever thought he would see his System Speed Test software used again in professional reviews. This program offers comprehensive system information, but it also has a powerful benchmarking tool for memory, processor, and disks. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface and physical transfer rates, seek and access times at the hardware level, and it does so without delay or interference from Operating System software or running processes. This is why Benchmark Reviews will continue to use this test: it polls its results directly from the hardware without the need for Windows! System Speed Test does not require a partition to be present for testing, so all of our Random Access Time benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting. To detect the Random Access Time, each device runs the full test routine a total of five times. The highest and lowest scores were ignored, and the remainder was averaged. This would be prove pointless however, because the access time benchmark for every single SSD recorded identical test results between runs.
Using the System Speed Test software, the top Random Access Time benchmarks places the OCZ Vertex EX, Mtron Pro 7500, and ACARD ANS-9010 at the very top of our results. The 0.9 ms performers include: MemoRight GT, Intel X25-E Extreme, Mtron Pro 7000, Mtron MOBI 3500, Intel 80GB X25-M, and the OCZ Summit. With a Random Access Time of 10ms, the following SSDs were included: OCZ Vertex Turbo, OCZ Vertex, Patriot Torqx, Super Talent UltraDrive ME, Crucial M225, OCZ Agility, and lastly the Mtron MOBI 3000. With a lightning-fast sub 0.1 ms access time, every other SSD is forced to live in the shadow that these nearly-instant products have just created. Some of the slower Random Access Times include the following SSD products: Kingston SSDNow V+ Series (Intel X25-M SSD) with 0.14 ms, The Silicon Power SLC SATA-II SSD SP032GBSSD750S25 with 0.17 ms, the OCZ Apex at 0.18 ms, the Patriot Warp v2 with 0.19 ms, and finally the G.Skill Titan finishing at 0.21 ms. There were slower SSD products, but obselecence removed them from our results. The DRAM cache buffer is common link between request and response time. Solid State Drive devices have the advantage of a nearly instantaneous NAND storage bank responding to an even faster DRAM buffer. Conversely, Hard Disk Drive products depend on a fast spindle speed to reduce the delay before the buffer transmits data. Although the SSDs at the slower end of our Response Time chart may seem less impressive, in reality you couldn't begin to perceive these subtle differences in real-world applications. Still, the slowest SSD product (0.51ms) is 14x more responsive than the fastest desktop hard drive. Hard Disk Drive alternatives are much slower to react, regardless of spindle speed and cache buffer size. Even the very best of the desktop hard drive products, such as Western Digital's VelociRaptor, only produced a best response time of 7.15 ms. The older Western Digital Raptor took 8.53ms to respond, followed by 12.99ms for the Seagate 7200.11, and 15.39ms for the 7200 RPM Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 notebook drive. The worst performer was the standard 5400 RPM notebook drive (Hitachi Travelstar 5K160 HTS541640J9SA00), which recorded a painfully slow 17.41ms Random Access Time. Drive Hardware
ATTO Disk BenchmarkThe ATTO Disk Benchmark program is free, and offers a comprehensive set of test variables to work with. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. There are some minor improvements made to the 2.34 version of the program, but the benchmark is still limited to non-linear samples up to 256MB. ATTO Disk Benchmark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested. While the bandwidth results are not realistic for determining the maximum drive speeds, ATTO Disk Benchmark is still a good tool for illustrating bandwidth using various file size chunks. Please consider the results displayed by this benchmark to be basic bandwidth performance indicators. Our basic I/O bandwidth tests begin with the OCZ Agility SSD connected to the integrated Intel ICH10R Southbridge chip, as the ATTO Disk Benchmark tools performs file transfers ranging from 0.5 KB to 8192 KB. The 120GB OCZSSD2-1AGT120G model reveals a 230 MBps read plateau from 128-8192 KB file chunks, while the 132 MBps write performance plateaus from 128-8192 KB. This is extremely impressive basic I/O read-bandwidth performance, and speed continues to climb with each new generation of Solid State Drive products released.
OCZ has integrated a 64MB cache buffer into the OCZ Agility SSD, which helps it build speed quickly as it processes small-to-large file chunks. OCZ suggests a maximum read performance of 230 MBps, and write performance topping out at 135 MBps for the 128GB (120GB advertised) Agility SATA-II OCZSSD2-1AGT120G model, and from what we're seeing from ATTO these are very accurate expectations. Drive HardwareIn our next section, we test linear read and write bandwidth performance of the OCZ Agility SSD and compare its speed against several other top storage products. Benchmark Reviews feels that linear tests are the best method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article. HD Tune Pro BenchmarksIn the past, Benchmark Reviews has avoided HD Tune benchmarks because the software was so similar to others already being used in our articles. However, EFD Software has released several versions of the program, which add functionality and features with each revision. The latest edition of HD Tune Pro allows random access read and write testing, a feature not available to other software tools. HD Tune is a low-level test that will not operate on a drive which contains a partition, so Benchmark Reviews uses DISKPART to prepare hardware for these tests. Random Access tests are divided into 512b, 4KB, 64KB, 1MB and random size test files sizes. The Random Access test measures the performance of random read or write operations. The amount of data which will be read varies from 512 bytes to 1 MB. Performance is reported in operations per second (IOPS), average access time, and average speed. Because it is our intent to compare one product against another, Benchmark Reviews has focused on random transfer size IOPS performance. 
Benchmark Reviews has tested the OCZ Agility MLC SSD against a collection of top-performing Solid State Drives for our random IOPS benchmarks. By nature, Single-Layer Cell (SLC) SSDs perform far better at delivering high operational transactions per second when compared to Multi-Layer Cell (MLC) products.
The OCZ Agility mainstream SSD, comprised of an Inidlinx Barefoot SSD controller and 64MB of cache buffer, offers extremely good performance. Random read I/O per second (IOPS) is very good, with read IOPS slightly higher than write performance.
In the chart above, the OCZ Vertex EX enjoys the benefit of SLC construction, which delivers traditionally better IOPS performance. The OCZ Vertex (MLC) has the advantage of TRIM enhancements to the firmware, witht he Patriot Torqx and Super Talent UltraDrive ME showing signs of reduced write-to IOPS performance. Hopefully these two companies will address this issue with future firmware updates. Despite their premium pricing, all of these products are in the same general vacinity as the mainstream OCZ Agility SSD in terms of IOPS performance. All of the above-mentioned SSDs appear to be well ahead of the OCZ Apex and G.Skill Titan SSDs, which utilize the dual JMicron controller in an internal RAID-0 array. The JMicron controller exhibits an inherent I/O weakness, producing miserably low single-digit IOPS performance, but the new Samsung controller appears no better for the OCZ Summit. Even the much older SLC products, OCZ's OCZSSD2 and the Mtron MOBI 3000 or 3500, all perform better during write-to testing. Drive Hardware
Iometer IOPS PerformanceIometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. Iometer does for a computer's I/O subsystem what a dynamometer does for an engine: it measures performance under a controlled load. Iometer was originally developed by the Intel Corporation and formerly known as "Galileo". Intel has discontinued work on Iometer, and has gifted it to the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL). Iometer is both a workload generator (that is, it performs I/O operations in order to stress the system) and a measurement tool (that is, it examines and records the performance of its I/O operations and their impact on the system). It can be configured to emulate the disk or network I/O load of any program or benchmark, or can be used to generate entirely synthetic I/O loads. It can generate and measure loads on single or multiple (networked) systems. Benchmark Reviews has resisted publishing Iometer results because there are hundreds of different configuration variables available, making it impossible to reproduce our tests without having our Iometer configuration file. To measure random I/O response time as well as total I/O's per second, Iometer is set to use 4KB file size chunks over a 100% random sequential distribution. The tests are given a 50% read and 50% write distribution. Our charts show the Read and Write IOPS performance as well as I/O response time (measured in ms).
Iometer was configured to test for 120 seconds, and after five tests the average is displayed in our benchmark results. The first tests included random read and write IOPS performance, where a higher I/O is preferred. In this test the single layer cell OCZ Vertex EX rendered 3106/3091 I/O's and outperformed all other products. A set of RAID-0 Vertex 120GB MLC SSDs performed at 1517/1515, which is just slightly ahead of a single Vertex SSD which renders 1197 for read and write IOPS. Sharing the same architecture and design, the OCZ Agility SSD trails behind the Vertex with 857/858 IO's. The OCZ Summit MLC SSD completed 730/733 IO's, with every other product thereafter performing far beneath the above-listed products and are not suggested for high input/output applications. Whiel offering IO's better than any other hard drive, the Western Digital VelociRaptor still fell short on IOPS performance and produced only 134/138 IO's. The Mtron MOBI 3000 performed 107 read and write IOPS, while the Western Digital WD5001AALS rendered 86 and the Seagate 7200.11 completing 77. The Seagate Momentus 5400.6, which is a 5400 RPM notebook hard drive, produced 60/59 IO's. The newer Mtron MOBI 3500 rendered 58 IOPS, which was worse than the older 3000 model. The OCZ Apex struggled to complete 9 IOPS, and its identically-designed G.Skill Titan managed only 8 IOPS. Clearly, the twin RAID-0 JMicron controllers are built for speed and not input/output operations. Next comes the average I/O response time tests...
The Iometer random IOPS average response time test results were nearly an inverse order of the IOPS performance results. It's no surprise that SLC drives perform I/O processes far better than their MLC versions, but that gap is slowly closing as controller technology improves the differences and enhances cache buffer space. In our Read/Write IOPS performance the SLC OCZ Vertex EX achieves a dramatic lead ahead of the other SSDs tested. OCZ's Vertex EX offered the fastest read and write response time, measuring 0.26/0.06ms, and showing strength in write requests. The RAID-0 set of Vertex MLC SSD's scored 0.58/0.07ms, dramatically improving the write-to response time over a single Vertex SSD which offered 0.42/0.77ms. The mainstream Agility SSD produced 1.01/0.06ms with write response times actually better than the Vertex's. The OCZ Summit responded to read requests in 0.78ms while write requests were a bit quicker at 0.59ms. The Western Digital VelociRaptor did very well compared against SSD products, producing 6.59/0.82ms. These times were collectively the best available, as each product measured hereafter performed much slower. The Mtron MOBI 3000 offered a fast 0.42ms read response time, but suffered a slower 8.97ms write response. Both the WD5001AALS and Seagate 7200.11 hard drives performed around 11ms read and 1.2ms write. The Seagate Momentus 5400.6 offered 15.3/1.36ms response times. Mtron's newer MOBI 3500 offered great read response times at 0.19ms, but suffered poor write responses at 17.19ms. The worst was yet to come, as the G.Skill Titan and OCZ Apex offered decent 0.42ms read response times but absolutely unacceptable 127ms write times. Drive Hardware
EVEREST Disk BenchmarkMany enthusiasts are familiar with the EVEREST benchmark suite by Lavalys, but very few are aware of the Disk Benchmark tool available inside the program. The EVEREST Disk Benchmark (version 2.06.37) performs linear read and write bandwidth tests on each drive, and can be configured to use file chunk sizes up to 1MB (which speeds up testing and minimizes jitter in the waveform). Because of the full sector-by-sector nature of linear testing, Benchmark Reviews endorses this method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article. EVEREST Disk Benchmark does not require a partition to be present for testing, so all of our benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting. The SSD products tested with EVEREST Disk Benchmark are connected to the Intel ICH10R SATA controller resident on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard. Using the 1MB block size, read performance of the OCZ Agility Solid State Drive OCZSSD2-1AGT120G measured an average 246.2 MBps and forms a near-perfect line as it scans across all sectors. Oddly enough, this result was nearly identical to that of the OCZ Vertex SSD and others sharing the Indilinx construction. Linear write-to tests were next...
Linear disk benchmarks are superior tools in my opinion, because they scan from the first physical sector to the last. A side affect of many linear write-performance test tools is that the data is erased as it writes to every sector on the drive. Normally this isn't an issue, but it has been shown that partition tables will occasionally play a role in overall performance. The large 64MB buffer on the Summit SSD helped our linear testing, as shown in the waveform chart below. Although the chart makes the linear write performance appear unsteady in a few areas, the results seen here are actually very good compared to most other SSD products we've tested in the past. The OCZ Agility SSD recorded an average linear write-to speed of 176.7 MBps , which falls slightly below the maximum speed of 197.0 MBps.
The chart below shows the average linear read and write bandwidth for a cross-section of other SATA drives attached to the Intel ICH10 Southbridge:
Linear bandwidth certainly benefits the Solid State Drive, since there's very little fluctuation in transfer speed. Hard Disk Drive products decline in performance as the spindle reaches the inner-most sectors on the magnetic platter. I personally consider linear tests to be the single most important comparison of storage drive products, although hard disk drive products decrease performance as they reach the edge of the spindle, SSD products operate at a relatively smooth speed from start to finish. Drive Hardware
CrystalDiskMark TestsCrystalDiskMark is a very basic read and write benchmark tool by Crystal Dew World that offers performance speed results using sequential, 512KB random, and 4KB random samples. For our tests, sequential read and write performance was measured using a 1000MB file size, with 50, 100, and 500MB being the other available options. CrystalDiskMark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested. Benchmark Reviews uses CrystalDiskMark to confirm manufacturer suggested bandwidth speeds. In addition to our other tests, the sequential read and write benchmarks allow us to determine if the maximum stated speed of any storage product is within reasonable specification. In the chart below illustrated below, our sequential read and write performance speeds are organized from highest to lowest based on total bandwidth. Enjoying a noticeable lead atop of our sequential performance chart, the OCZ Vertex EX Single-Layer Cell SSD offers the highest bandwidth. Followed closely behind by the OCZ Summit MLC SSD with 128MB cache buffer. Not far behind the top leaders is the OCZ Apex, and it's twin cousin the G.Skill Titan. Next comes the Patriot Torqx, followed by the Super Talent UltraDrive ME which has slightly better performance than the OCZ Vertex MLC SSD. The OCZ Agility followed closely behind the Vertex SSD and shared the same sequential write speed penalty. Although the remaining drives are much older models, the SLC construction keeps the OCZSSD2, Mtron MOBI 3500, and MOBI 3000 all within respectable range.
Drive Hardware
HD Tach RW ResultsAlthough HD Tach (and also HD Tune or Crystal Disk Benchmark) are all excellent tools for measuring Hard Disk Drive products, they fail to offer the same precision with Solid State Drive products. These programs offer only an approximate estimate of bandwidth speed through their quick-result sample-testing mechanisms, as I have proven in the Solid State Drive (SSD) Benchmark Performance Testing article published not long ago. Nevertheless, HD Tach is still useful for offering an alternative perspective at performance, even if it isn't precisely correct when used with SSD architecture. HD Tach is a software program for Microsoft Windows that tests the sequential read, random access and interface burst speeds of the attached storage device. For the record. every single product tested was brand new and never used. HD Tach allows write-bandwidth tests only if no partition is present. Additionally, each and every product was tested five times with the highest and lowest results removed before having the average result displayed here. The graphical user interface (GUI) of the Windows-based benchmark tool HD Tach is very convenient. and allows the test product to be compared against others collected on your system or those registered into the Simpli Software database. HD Tach will not test write performance if a partition is present, so all of our benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting. In the tests below, Benchmark Reviews utilizes the HD TachRW tool to compare the fastest collection of desktop drives and competing SSD's we can get our hands on. Using the Intel ICH10R SATA controller on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P, HD Tach was used to benchmark the test SSD five times with the best results displayed below. It's important to note that HD Tach's Burst Speed result should be ignored for Solid State Drives due to the cache methods inherent to each memory controller architecture. There are times where this number will be extremely high, which is a result of the optimized cache used for SSD's. The important numbers used for comparison are the sustained read and write bandwidth speeds, which indicate an approximate performance level of the product. Our featured test item, the OCZ Agility Solid State Drive OCZSSD2-1AGT120G, performed at an average 218.8 MBps best sustained read speed and a best average of 95.7 MBps sustained write bandwidth. I use the term 'best' because HD Tach changed it's results on the very next test, and several more thereafter...
Looking at the peak maximum's charted in these illustrations, the OCZ Agility SSD had a extremely consistent 210-220 MBps read speed while the write-to performance occasionally peaked 190 MBps. In fact, the first 10GB of write-to sequential testing averaged 160 MBps. Unfortunately though, HD Tach doesn't offer very consistent test results for both read-from and write-to performance on SSD products, and flat-line SSD read's are very uncommon with this test tool. Compared against the stated specification of 230/135, our read results appear slightly below the maximum speed OCZ defines, but at times the write performance is actually much higher than advertised maximum speed. Keep in mind that HD Tach is only capable of offering approximate estimates for SSD products, as evidenced by the very different write-to performance results received for tests taken only minutes apart. The range average final results is much wider than I would like for a test tool, but I've already warned that HD Tach is meant for Hard Drive products, hence the name. The chart below illustrates the collected averages for benchmark results using HD Tach RW on the Intel ICH10 SATA controller, with the read and write bandwidth results added together to determine rank placement. The first group is a collection of high-performance storage products. With an improved write performance, the SLC Vertex EX finds itself positioned in first place and well ahead of the MLC Patriot Torqx, UltraDrive, and Vertex in single or RAID-0, as well as a set of Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drives paired into a RAID-0 stripe array. The ACARD ANS-9010 RAM-Disk, OCZ Summit SSD, OCZ Agility SSD, OCZ Apex SSD, and Intel X25-M SSD all trail behind in overall performance and finish out the top five positions. Nearly every other storage product trails distantly behind these leaders, which all recorded a combined HD Tach bandwidth to over 300 MBps for each. A single (non RAID-0) VelociRaptor and Seagate 7200.11 hard drive begin the next segment of upper midrange performers, offering nearly 200 MBps of combined bandwidth. Trailed by a closely-packed group consisting of the Patriot Warp v2 SSD, Silicon Power SP032GBSSD750S25, and G.Skill FM-25S2S-64GB, are SSDs generating between 168-172 MBps of combined average bandwidth.
The lower-midrange SSD products begin with the Western Digital Raptor, scoring a combined total bandwidth of 154 MBps delivering half the performance of the leaders. Yesterday's high-performance SSD is today's low-performance drive, and the Mtron MOBI 3500, OCZ OCZSSD2-1S32G SSD, Super Talent MasterDrive MX SSD and Mtron MOBI 3000 all comprise products with less combined performance than Hard Disk Drive alternatives (except in regard to response time). Drive Hardware
In our next section, the entire collection of SSD products Benchmark Reviews has tested will be timed for a Windows XP startup benchmark. Please continue to see how SSD's affect startup performance. Windows XP StartupAfter several SSD product reviews in which I recorded Windows XP startup time data, I have repeatedly omitted my results from the article for lack of enough comparison data. In all honesty, I cannot make this an interesting subject. Most of you reading this article have already watched the video of a Windows computer starting up in mere seconds when it used a Solid State Drive, so it wouldn't be very exciting to show it again. Instead, I have recorded the length of time it took for my Dell Inspiron 6400 notebook computer to startup with each drive. Here are the specifications on the notebook:
This "test" is going to be useful to laptop computer users only, primarily because I did not test the desktop hard drives. The only hard drive included was the high-performance 7200 RPM Hitachi Travelstar 7K100, which recorded a 28-second load time from the moment I pressed the power button to the moment the Windows Login screen was displayed. The primary purpose of this test was to demonstrate that a Solid State Drive could in fact cut the Windows load time in half, but there are other factors to consider. It's important to note that this particular Dell notebook consumes almost 11 seconds on the BIOS pre-loading and POST (Power-On Self Test) routine prior to actually beginning to load Microsoft Windows XP, so it's not realistic to think that my results would match another system identically. Drive Hardware
In the next section, I begin to summarize my final thoughts on the OCZ Agility series SSD as well as Solid State Drives in general. Please continue on to see what I think of SSD technology in todays consumer market. Heat Output ResultsSolid State Drives are not quite a household technology (yet), and because of this the marketing propaganda has become as high-pressure as any political campaign. Benchmark Reviews has tested SSD products from many manufacturers (to name a few: Crucial, G.Skill, Intel, MemoRight, Mtron, OCZ, Patriot, Samsung, Super Talent, and Silicon Power) and each has taken full advantage of the vast new technology improvements offered by their products. Some manufacturers have made claims that other websites have taken to the mat, and wrestled with a topic (such as power consumption), only to later be criticized for improperly testing the hardware. Well, we don't intend on repeating the mistakes of our mega-site affiliates, which is why we plan to approach new methodology in small bites. There have been television shows made famous on the principal of dispelling rumors and myth. This section is not exactly meant to imitate that concept, although we do separate fact from fiction. The first myth we challenge is the claim that Solid State Drives produce no heat. Nearly every manufacturer selling Solid State products has at some point claimed their SSD products do not produce heat, which is believable on many levels because there are no moving parts. Well, chances are very good that you have already peeked at the illustration below, so I won't delay in explaining what we've found. Using some spare Styrofoam panels, I constructed a small unit to shield two 2.5" notebook drives from the nearby power supply. Although not pictured, there was also an open-top wall section that surrounded this unit, further insulating it from thermal affects of any nearby environment. Since there was no data connection made, these tests are what I would consider to be 'idle'. The power leads were connected and power was delivered for twenty minutes before temperatures were taken with a non-contact IR thermometer at approximately six inches from surface. The rooms ambient temperature as measured directly at the test site was exactly 19.0°C at the time I recorded the results for the units pictured.
In the image above there are only two devices pictured of a four-cell test platform. On the left side is the Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 60GB HTS721060G9SA00 7,200 RPM SATA 2.5" Hard Disk Drive, and on the right is one our Solid State Drive test subjects. The Hitachi 7K100 is one of the few 7200 RPM notebook hard drives available to OEM builders, and since these faster spinning disks use more power they also create more heat as a by-product. Although not pictured because of camera direction, my test rig setup compares up to four products at once. The results of other SSD test products are shown in the charts below. Temperature Readings at 19.0°C
The message here is simple: Although the heat produced by SSD's under load is usually the same as what the Hard Disk Drive generates at idle, Solid State Drives still produce heat. Don't let marketing hype fool you into believing that Solid State Drives are cold-operating devices just because there are no moving parts. Cooler, yes. Cold, no. Drive Hardware
SSD vs Hard Disk DriveThe only things standing in the way of widespread Solid State Drive (SSD) adoption is the capacity and price of Hard Disk Drive (HDD) devices. Because flash-based SSD technology costs more per gigabyte of capacity than tradition magnetic hard drives, the benefits of speed and input/output performance are often overlooked. Like most consumer products, it wasn't a question of how much improvement was evident in the new technology, it was price. I'll discuss product costs more in just a moment, but for now consider how each new series of SSD product employs greater performance than the one before it, convincing would-be consumers into waiting for the right time to buy. There's also a gray area surrounding SSD performance benchmarks that has me concerned. You might not know this, but SSDs can be very temperamental towards the condition of their flash NAND. My experience testing dozens of Solid State Drives is that a freshly cleaned device (using an alignment tool) will always outperform the same device once its been formatted and used. A perfect example is Indilinx Barefoot-based SSDs, which suffers severely degraded performance when writing to 'dirty' flash NAND. The reason that all of this matters is simple: the performance results reported to consumers in product reviews (such as this one) often report the very best performance scores, and the process used to obtain these results is not applicable to real-world usage. This is where garbage collection techniques such as TRIM become important, so that end-users will experience the same performance levels as we do in our tests.
Garbage Collection (GC) is the current solution for keeping flash NAND in 'clean' condition, while maintaining optimal performance. Windows 7 offers native TRIM support, and most retail SSDs also include this special GC function or at least offer a firmware update that brings the drive up-to-date. For anyone using an Operating System or SSD that does not offer Garbage Collection functionality, you'll be using 'dirty' flash NAND modules and suffering sub-optimal performance for each write-to request. A few SSD manufacturers offers free tools to help restore peak-level performance by scheduling GC to 'clean' used NAND sectors, but these tools add excessive wear to the NAND the same way disk defragmenting tools would. SLC flash modules may resist wear much better than MLC counterparts, but come at the expense of increased production cost. The best solution is a more durable NAND module that offers long-lasting SLC benefits at the cost of MLC construction. Adoption is further stalled because keen consumers aware of this dilemma further continue their delay into the SSD market. Getting back to price, the changes in cost per gigabyte have come as often as changes to the technology itself. At their inception, high-performance models such the 32GB MemoRight GT cost $33 per gigabyte while the entry-level 32GB Mtron MOBI 3000 sold for $14 per gigabyte. While an enjoyable decline in NAND costs forced consumer SSD prices lower in 2009, the price of solid state components has been on the rise during 2010. Nevertheless, SSDs continue to fill store shelves despite price or capacity, and there are a few Solid State Drive products now costing only $2.33 per gigabyte. Although the performance may justify the price, which is getting dangerously close to the $1.13 per gigabyte WD VelociRaptor hard drive, costs may still close some buyers out of the market. Price notwithstanding, the future is in SSD technology and the day when HDDs are obsolete is nearing; but there are still a few bumps in the road to navigate. OCZ Agility ConclusionBenchmark Reviews begins each conclusion with a short summary for each of the areas we rate. The first is presentation, which takes product packaging into consideration to the extent that it provides adequate packing material and delivers consumer information for an informed purchase. Since the American economy in the midst of an economic recession, many manufacturers are having to pull out some very creative ideas to help market their products. Add onto this the fact that SSD technology already carries a premium price tag over the alternative, and you can understand why product presentation becomes so important. OCZ takes the mainstream Agility SSD series packaging back to basics with a simple-yet-catchy green appearance, while at the same time delivering critical product information and specifications for the untrained consumer.
Solid State Drives are a lot like spark plugs: you see them just long enough to install, and then they're forgotten. OCZ keeps production costs down on the Agility SSD Series with a uniform black painted enclosure identical to all of their other SSD products, and uses an adhesive label for each product series with underside specifications. There isn't very much to expect from the appearance of Solid State Drives, because like their Hard Disk Drive counterpart they are meant to place function before fashion. To this end, I still wish manufacturers would begin using sealed plastic enclosures to prevent moisture or electrical shock damage. Construction is probably the strongest feature credited to the entire SSD product line, and OCZ products have never been an exception. Solid State Drives are by nature immune to most abuses, but add to this a hard metal shell and you have to wonder what it would take to make this drive fail. If an OCZ Agility Series product does happen to fail during the 2-year warranty period, end-users can contact OCZ via the company website or extensive support forums. Fortunately, there's also a toll-free telephone number for support or customer service questions (800-459-1816). Performance places the mainstream Agility SSD directly behind the same-design Vertex, and ahead of the Summit series in most tests. Based on our large collection of benchmark performance tests conducted, the OCZ Agility offers bandwidth performance roughly 5-10% behind the Vertex series. An noteworthy 0.15 ms response time assure a near-instant reaction, and the Agility SSD showed no sign of stuttering during our tests. ATTO Disk Benchmark tool reported an impressive 230 MBps maximum read bandwidth in our tests and 132 MBps maximum write, both of which are dead-on with the OCZ maximum speed specifications. EVEREST's linear full-sector bandwidth performance was a steady 246.2 MBps read-from, and an impressive 176.7 MBps write-to speed. While all of these benchmarks indicate the general bandwidth 'speed' was among the best SSDs available, input/output performance results were also very high for a MLC SSD. Iometer indicated a random read and write IOPS around 758, which is well above most other MLC products tested. As of August 2009, the OCZ Agility mainstream series of Solid State Drives has three models available at NewEgg. The 30GB Agility SSD (OCZSSD2-1AGT30G) is sold for $134.99, and a 60GB Agility SSD (OCZSSD2-1AGT60G) is also offered for $189. The 120GB version (OCZSSD2-1AGT120G) Benchmark Reviews has tested sells for $299. Compared against the premium OCZ Vertex series SSD which is sold for $139 (30GB), $221 (60GB) and $369 (120GB), the Agility series is a sure winner in terms of value. In conclusion, the OCZ Agility mainstream Solid State Drive offers excellent read and write bandwidth speeds comparable to the premium Vertex series, with an exceptional 0.15 ms response time with very good MLC IOPS performance. The Indilinx Barefoot SATA controller is a formidable opponent to the competition, and it once again proves that it's best on the block. OCZ may have given the Agility series the same high-performance controller, but this mainstream SSD is packed with value and costs only $2.57 per gigabyte or storage space. The OCZ Agility is well suited for cutting-edge super-users and performance enthusiasts who want impressive response time and bandwidth speed from their computer system without a premium price tag. Benchmark Reviews has nominated the OCZ Agility SSD for our Editor's Choice Award, and can safely recommend this MLC Solid State Drive to our readers. Pros:
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other method of total-capacity testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best.
Comments
Although I did not have problems with the SSD sent to me for testing, it sounds like your SSD might have a problem with it. I suggest that you update the SSDs firmware to the latest available on the OCZ website, and contact their technicians if you need additional assistance. Good luck!