OCZ's Agility 2 SSD reviewed: despite limits, SandForce SF-1200 drive performs well
By Darren Murph 
posted April 26th 2010 6:44PM
posted April 26th 2010 6:44PM
Contrary to popular belief, one solid state drive isn't the same as another solid state drive necessarily. OCZ's new Agility 2 is proof of that, boasting the final (v3.0.5) version of SandForce's SF-1200 firmware. The issue here is that Corsair's recently released Force series of SSDs are shipping (and continue to ship) with v3.0.1 installed, which -- according to SandForce -- will never be viewed as the final version ready for mass consumption. As the story goes, v3.0.1 may experience a reliability issue with a power management state, but v3.0.5 caps small file random write performance as to better separate the SF-1200 drives from the pricier SF-1500 drives. Our compadres over at AnandTech were able to put the (factory limited) Agility 2 SSD through its paces, and for the most part, it came out looking pretty decent. Critics found 5- to 10-percent performance gains when compared to Intel / Indilinx offerings, but unless you have to have the absolute best, paying extra for that bump may not be the most intelligent move. The other point here is that while the Agility 2 may be capped with the v3.0.5 firmware, at least its upgrade path is a lot clearer than the aforementioned Force; if you ever take v3.0.1 away from that unit, you can kiss that extra performance goodbye. Hit the source link for the full, drama-filled look.
The Force is strong with this article.
The amazing thing here is that a startup company (Sandforce) designed the only controller that can go up against the mighty Intel controller. I love it when startups shake shit up.
@Nitesh
My favorite is Monoprice.com and Monster Cable.
I wonder how long it will be until someone hacks 3.0.1 onto the Agility
As soon as I can buy a speedy 128Gb drive for 200$ I'm jumping on the SSD bandwagon.
ocz is bad news on ssd side. Better stay with intel or gskill while these folks fix the junk.
@fast Gskill is garbage. The new crucial sata 6.0gb SSD's are where it's at. Don't think anything is faster than them right now.
@fast
What? OCZ is one of the best SSD companies, and their Vertex drives have been very popular. They have excellent support, always had custom firmware (many other companies just used the factory firmware), had TRIM support and a wiper utility right away, etc.
@RAWRscary don't see any proof of this "garbage" quality on the gskill. Intel and Gskill perform reliably in the real world. OCZ has been plagued by firmware oddity. The only speed bump you get across models fades when you go down to 4kb so any illusion a benchmark provides escapes real usage numbers. On the subject of crucial, no real turn back numbers yet, meaning untested in the real world and a bit overpriced in some incarnations. The first time they tried with the Phison controller (wich really shouldn't have been used in an ssd simply because it is not made for that, but whatever) and that was a complete botch, they came late to the Indilinx Barefoot party and only time will tell if they have something good this time around. But thanks for pointing out Micron is still in the game.
@looselycoupled ...wait, read the OCZ forums (in case they haven't been sanitized yet), the TRIM support came way too late, and that wasn't the worst of it. A lot of drives simply halted at one point after loosing more then 50% speed. There are a lot of p.o. customers looking at OCZ.