OCZ Agility EX 60GB SLC SSD
PrintSLC makes a comeback
It’s been a long time since we tested a single-level cell (SLC) SSD, as the market has moved almost entirely over to multi-level cell (MLC) designs. MLC is favored because it’s cheaper to produce and each cell can store two bits of data, rather than one, so you can cram more storage into each flash unit. On the other hand, SLC is faster and is rated for 100,000 read/write cycles, as opposed to 10,000 for MLC. Naturally, SLC is preferred for enterprise solutions, while MLC has captured the consumer market. But with the introduction of the (relatively) affordable Agility EX series, OCZ is hoping to win back some of the consumer market for SLC.
The OCZ Agility EX is billed as an affordable SLC drive for consumers. Affordable, of course, is relative.
The 60GB Agility EX pairs the popular Indilinx Barefoot controller—responsible for this generation’s blazing-fast, stutter-free SSDs—with 64GB of onboard SLC NAND. It’s worth noting that this is the same capacity as a standard 64GB SSD; OCZ just uses a binary naming convention. In our tests, the Agility EX’s sustained read speeds topped off at around 197MB/s, or approximately six percent slower than the second-gen Intel X-25M. Sustained write speeds, at 175MB/s, were the same as with the Patriot Torqx, an MLC drive using the same Indilinx controller. But the Agility really shone in application tests, with a five percent faster Premiere Pro encoding time and a 13 percent higher PCMark Vantage HDD score than the Torqx.
At $400, the Agility EX is twice as expensive as 64GB MLC drives using the same architecture. But its performance is right up there with the best we’ve ever tested. The fact that its life span is 10 times that of an MLC drive is attractive, to be sure, but seems unnecessary for consumers—after all, how many of you are still using 10-year-old hard drives? The Agility EX is a great drive, but SLC life spans (and SLC prices) may just be overkill, even for enthusiasts.
OCZ Agility EX 60GB SLC SSD
Dex
Blazing-fast speeds; 10x the life span of MLC drives.
Cha
Costs twice as much as MLC drives of same capacity; do consumers need a 60GB drive that lasts for decades?
7
Benchmarks
| OCZ Agility EX (SLC) | Patriot Torqx (MLC) | Intel X25-M G2 (MLC) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity | 60GB | 128GB | 160GB |
| Average Sustained Transfer Rate Read (MB/s) | 197.5 | 205.4 | 209.1 |
| Average Sustained Transfer Rate Write (MB/s) | 175.5 | 175.1 | 79.5 |
| Random Access Read (ms) | 0.11 | 0.11 | 0.13 |
| Random Access Write (ms) | 0.24 | 0.31 | 0.08 |
| Premiere Pro (sec) | 647 | 674 | 696 |
| PCMark Vantage Hard Drive | 24,070 | 21,247 | 23,288 |
Best scores are bolded. All drives were tested on our standard test bed using a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, EVGA 680i SLI board. HDTach 3.0.1.0, h2benchw, and Premiere Pro CS3 were obtained in Windows XP; PCMark Vantage 2005 scores were obtained in Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit.
More like this
ihjones
December 12, 2009 at 3:07pm
Just so you know, the speed of your drive plays only a minor role in the boot process. Beyond the reading of OS files into memory which takes only a few seconds on a modern HDD, the speed of your drive has little if any effect on the remaining boot process!
anusbreath
December 01, 2009 at 9:09pm
How come no one points out the acronym for SSD...
Still Sucks D!ck
anusbreath
December 01, 2009 at 7:40pm
Between YouTube videos, TomsHardware, and other testing I've seen of SSD drives, they are still years away from being ready for market. Their performance is horrifyingly bad compared to a regular ol' 7200 RPM hard drive... both read and write. Despite all the fraudulent claims that SSD makers claim about their drives read/write performance, watching a few YouTube videos will quickly and completely show how worthless these drives are. The drive being the slowest part of the Processor\Ram\FSB\HD combo, clearly any drive that could transfer data at 250 MB per second should be able to load windows completely in 3-4 seconds, not the 40-60 seconds that they ACTUALLY take in real world tests. My 64 bit windows 7 system with 12 GB of ram is amazingly fast, and I get 70 MB per second transfers between drives with no problem. There's not an SSD on earth at the moment that can compete with that... I don't care what B.S. stats the SSD producers are vomiting on their customers. Until I see a real world test results on YouTube or another REPUTABLE site, clearly DEMONSTRATING performances that far surpasses regular ol' hard drives, I'll stay the hell away from the garbage SSD market.
ihjones
December 12, 2009 at 11:00am
Sir, you must have been living under a rock for the last 5 years.... Your post is so outdated and so very wrong, I can only think it was done to provoke a response, an outrage even...
Please if your going to post get up to speed on the real facts first!!
:)
mesiah
December 02, 2009 at 3:06am
You, my friend, are out of your mind. There are many indicators of this, but the only one I need to point to is the fact that you refer to youtube as a "reputable site." I about fell out of my chair when I saw that. If you would bother to do some actual research instead of looking for 3 year old SSD videos on youtube you would know that the good drives on the market (those based on intel and indilinx controllers) absolutely destroy tradition spinning media in every benchmark you can throw at them. Yes, early on the market was flooded with overpriced poorly performing SSDs that had horrible buffering issues and failed to live up to their hype. But the intel drive has been the real deal from the start, and the indilinx drives have been on the market for some time now, and they are running neck and neck with the intel drive. Go to any REAL reputable site and look at a RECENT ssd article. Anyone who knows what they are talking about will tell you that the good SSDs are outperforming even 10krpm hdds by a factor of 10 in some tests. Although the sustained read write speed of SSDs is impressive, the number you should really be paying attention to is random read write speed and IOPS. Most drive access is small file reads and writes, and traditional hard drives cant even begin to compete with good SSDs in this aspect. If you want some REAL information, and not just silly youtube videos I have provided a couple links bellow.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-x25-m-vertex,2399.html
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531
anusbreath
December 02, 2009 at 10:15am
As "I" mentioned in my first post, I do read Toms Hardware. As far as 3 year old You Tube videos, kinda hard to watch a demo of Windows 7 booting with an SSD considering that neither were around 3 years ago, and often times, the video shows the actual drive being used while it's operating.
I have yet to see ANY videos of real world performance for SSD's that came remotely close to impressing me. The boot times are absolutely disgusting for their supposed 10x the performance of a regular HD as you claimed.
I remember a decade ago seeing a windows computer boot completely in 12 seconds with a regular ol' hard drive. Yeah, there was probably a lot of under the hood tweaking, but here we are 10 years later and these P.O.S. SSD's can't even boot in less than 20 seconds... that's a joke. Until an SSD can massively outperform (how about the 10x you suggested) a regular old hard drive AND boot windows completely in less than 5 seconds, they are a complete waste of time and money. I'd rather rent an industrial trash compactor and throw all the SSD's in there. They're junk.
I do like your AnandTech link... very good read. I'm still going to wait for a video where I can see the performance for myself. Like the author pointed out, a freshly installed system on either an SSD or regular hard drive has great performance. Applications open lightning fast, etc. So nothing to be impressed with there. The most convincing evidence that SSD's are much better than hard drives is to demo a windows system booting in under 5 seconds, and I have a feeling it's going to be years before we see that.
boden
December 13, 2009 at 12:56pm
I do not disagree with your observations. but i do disagree with your assumptions. Boot speed is not hard drive dependent, they are dependent on the amount of hardware checks the os has to performe and application load/run before it can start loading your input. You can put NT 2 on a modern computer set with fixed hardware perameters in the os boot structure and it will boot up in around five seconds. The problem with windows is that when the computer starts it checks all the hardware to make sure nothing has changed, there are multible redundent checks. That is what is slowing down boot speeds. A fast ssd will only speed up a windows machine bootup about 20% but it will speed up scratch work and data movement considerably. To understand more look at the google chrome os youtube channel and watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTFfl7AjNfI
hope this helps
chronium
December 01, 2009 at 10:44am
I'm actually still using 10 year old hard drives without any problems.
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