OCZ Agility with SATA II Which series?

[man2387]

Hi users,

Im about to upgrade my budget pc with a SSD drive in hope of getting faster load times at general use with a SATA II port. (Which i heard still would give some noticable performance gains over traditional Hard Drives)

I've been looking at two from OCZ, and i've already ordered the 60GB from 3 Agility Series, but now i have found out that they also made a new 64GB from the 4 Agility Series.

So i was wondering whats the difference between those two are? - and if it's worth canceling my first order.


The Agility 4 Series

Performance 64 GB
Sequential Reads 300 MB/s
Sequential Writes 200 MB/s

The Agility 3 Series

60GB Max Performance
Max Read: up to 525MB/s
Max Write: up to 475MB/s

When looking at these data from a newbie perspective it seems that the agility 3 have a higher max output but i figured that there might be more in it than that. So if anyone with a bit more knowledge on the topic could assist me in my buying decision then i would be really happy

 

[dingo07]

Those are both SATA III drives

here's a better chart that has all information on it
http://www.ocztechnology.com/res/manuals/OCZ_SSD_Breakdown_Q3-12.pdf

 

[man2387]

Yes i know, but they are backwards compatible.

 

[carowden]

if i were you, and this is what i did with mine, i would get the cheaper of the two. you will not see these max numbers because it will be limited by the sata II ports on your board. and yeah you will definitely notice an increase in performance over a hdd

 

[Maxx_Power]

from memory, the difference is in the controller. The agility had a Sand Force based controller while the newer one I think is Indilinx Everest 2. As for the actual NAND, I think they are both MLC async NAND. While the Agility 3 is faster, on your SATAII connection, I don't think the difference will be huge. Sand Force is an older, very reliable type of controller while Indilinx Everest 2 is very new.

I think you are safe with the one you ordered.

 

[dingo07]

Do you plan on using the drive later on in the future, perhaps in a newer build that supports SATA III? If YES then get the faster drive. If NO, then it doesn't matter which one you get, so the cheaper one would be the one.

 

[man2387]

Thanks for the answers so far
- im not really planning on upgrading my mobo in the future.


Btw i saw this post on the ocz forums:

It handles incompressible data better for one. While the Agility 3 handles easily compressible data at high speeds, it can drop substantially with certain hard to compress file types (like pictures, video, certain game files, etc).

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?103478-New-build-Agility-3-or-Agility-4

 

[carowden]

is this going to be the computer's main drive or just for the operating system?

 

[Maxx_Power]

Thanks for the answers so far
- im not really planning on upgrading my mobo in the future.


Btw i saw this post on the ocz forums:

It handles incompressible data better for one. While the Agility 3 handles easily compressible data at high speeds, it can drop substantially with certain hard to compress file types (like pictures, video, certain game files, etc).

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?103478-New-build-Agility-3-or-Agility-4

Yep, the Sand Force controller is good at handling compressible data. I personally only use Sand Force equipped SSDs from OCZ to Intel.

 

[man2387]

Im going for main drive.

But what is the difference between those two then? Im quite confused. what is it that you get with the 4 over 3.

 

[cin19]

I add the only one review for the agility 4 (128GB) here: http://www.rwlabs.com/article.php?id=644

In the review they said agility 4 vs 3 is two steps forward and one step backward, so I will say you should buy the cheapest one ( $ / per GB).

And update the firmware, you can't feel the different in real world between them and you only can see the different in the benchmark.

 

[man2387]

Okay thank you very much for the answer

 

[Maxx_Power]

Im going for main drive.

But what is the difference between those two then? Im quite confused. what is it that you get with the 4 over 3.

Well, mainly with the 4, OCZ bought Indilinx and the Everest 2 is their first combined effort (manufactured by Marvell no less). So the 4 is more OCZ in house where as the 3 is both sourced NAND and sourced controller. I imagine the 4 is a lot cheaper to make compared to the 3, and that would be the main reason for OCZ to push out the 4 instead of the 3.

As for the actual NAND they used, I'm not aware of any large differences between the quality of NAND in the 3 and the 4. The 4 seems have much higher random 4k read IOPS compared to the 3, but I suspect the NAND in the 4 is a lot slower since both 3 and 4 have 8 dies of NAND packges, and both controllers are capable of SATA III speeds, then the difference in speed must be in the NAND used. For what it is worth, they are both 2x nanometer NANDs.

Another difference is that there is an extra scratch area in the Sand Force equipped 3 series, that's why the capacity is 60 GB instead of 64 GB. This may be important longevity wise if both drives were equipped with similar NAND.

 

[man2387]

Ahhha thanks for clearing things out Maxx_power!

 

[Maxx_Power]

No problem!!

 

[BlueCat57]

If you haven't already bought your SSD go to Newegg today, Sept 5, to their Shell Shocker deals. Their 10 am PST to 12:59 pm PST deal is an Agility 3 for $60 after rebate. I doubt you'll get a better price in the next month or so.

Right now I'm doing my research so I'm ready for Black Friday.

I've got a SATA 2 system that I'm going to add a SSD to and I don't plan to upgrade to SATA 3 in the near future. Maybe I'll get a PCI SSD adapter in the future for that system but I doubt that I will need the performance boost. I'm buying the SSD so I can move some hard drives to other systems I have and get a fast boot on that one. My biggest concern is if the drive will install without too much trouble.

As for problems with drives, don't worry about them. The companies are shooting for 98% plus success and reliability. They don't want to sell products that users have problems with any more than you want to buy one with a problem. If there is a problem they don't make money. It is unlikely you'll see people talking about how easy the install went since they will be busy using their sysems. Remember the only people that call customer service and tech support are the ones with problems. The US Postal Service has over a 98% success rate for delivery on-time to the right address. But they deliver BILLIONS of pieces of mail each year so that 2% failure means millions of people have a problem with their mail. Focus on whether the price is right and if it will work for you. If it does and you're happy, who cares what the benchmarks are?

So if you are going to buy now, buy today. If you can wait pick a price point and wait for the drive of your choice to hit that.

Of course I jut figured out I'm on Tom's UK so the Newegg thing doesn't apply. Now that I think about it the UK doesn't use the Euro so maybe I'm on some other part of Tom's. Of course as I write this I see that I'm not logged in yet.

Bottom line, pick a price point then buy the best drive you can at that price. You probably won't have the drive long enough to wear it out.