SSD drives haven't quite reached ‘mainstream' yet, however as more enthusiast users are realising the performance benefits, sales figures are increasing and the adoption rate is improving.
SSD performance is based around three areas, the Controller, the Firmware and the NAND. The controllers are massively important to the overall unit with products from Micron, Samsung, Sandforce, Toshiba, Indilinx and Intel making up the six big players. The Micron Marvell controller is right now the performance leader and we reviewed the Crucial RealSSD C300 256Gb drive a few weeks ago. This is the only current unit based around a 6GBps controller which means there is no real competition, unless you configure a dual Raid 0 configuration.
For many years OCZ have used tried and trusted Indilinx controllers but in recent months they moved to create units based around the Sandforce SF-1200 controller, which has helped them squeeze out more performance from the drives. This leads me into our review product today, the OCZ Agility 2 120GB which uses the very same controller.
Specifications | OCZ Agility 2 120GB |
Size | 99.88 x 69.63 x 9.3 mm |
Operating Temp | 0-70c |
Max Performance | Read: up to 285MB/s
Write: up to 275MB/s |
Sustained write | up to 250 MB/s |
4KB Random write | up to 10,000 IOPS |
Shock Resistance | 1500G, 0.5ms |
Vibration | 20G Peak, 10-20khz with 3 axis |
MTBF | 2,000,000 hours |