OCZ have released a new range of Solid State Drives, named the Agility series, which will complement their eight SSD ranges they have at the moment. Described as "an affordable offering for mainstream notebook and desktop users demanding the latest technology" in their press release, the new range will be placed in their mainstream category. The 2.5" SSD makes use of a 64MB cache, something which the Apex SSD range (which we reviewed a few months ago) does not offer. The drive uses 5 watts of power when in use, and 2 watts when idle, making it potentially appealing to notebook owners. However, the drive is only available in capacities of 30GB, 60GB and 120GB, with the 60GB and 120GB models offering 230MB/s read speeds and 135MB/s write speeds, but the 30GB having lower read speeds of 185MB/s and write speeds of 100MB/s.
Like most of OCZ's SSDs, the Agility series models have a MTBF (mean time before failure) of 1.5 million hours, which is 170 years.
"The new Agility Series of SSDs are the latest addition to the OCZ lineup of solid state drives and are designed for cost-conscious consumers seeking the performance and reliability benefits of SSDs at an aggressive price," said Ryan Edwards, Director of Product Management at OCZ. At the time of writing no prices were available for the models.
OCZ have continued to release new ranges of SSDs, now offering "Value", "Mainstream", "Performance" and "Enterprise" branded series. Whilst they offer a large range of drives, it remains to be seen as to whether they can compete with Intel's Solid State Drives, as well as the other competitors on the block that have decided to enter the SSD market, such as Corsair and Kingston, especially after some of the issues they had with the drive controller in OCZ's first SSDs, which resulted in freezes and other performance issues.
Update: We have now got the recommended selling prices from OCZ. The 30GB model is recommended to sell at $129.99, with the 60GB and 120GB models recommended to sell at $219.99 and $349.99 respectively.
However their reputation was tarnished when their initial products had severe issues with the drive controller, meaning that they were considerably slower than Hard Drives in some cases.
I've been using the Apex for several months now, and although boot up times are impressive, in the long run I'm not convinced that they offer good value for the price you pay.
I'm pretty tempted to do a follow up report on that review now, about the ups and downs I've found using an SSD for the last few months.
If you do decide to go SSD make sure you get one of those series that has 64 meg cache, they do not suffer from the stuttering issues.
I have 2x30gb Vertex in RAID 0 and they perform absolutely amazing, I can load photoshop CS4 from cold in under 2 seconds, I can boot into Windows 7 in under 15 seconds. The 60 GB is more than enough for your operating system and applications provided you do not install loads of games.
Last edited by stevember on 10 Jun 2009 - 11:41
Their Vertex series is rated amongst the best of the SSD offerings at the moment, at least from the reviews I've read comparing them.
I have 2x30gb Vertex in RAID 0 and they perform absolutely amazing, I can load photoshop CS4 from cold in under 2 seconds, I can boot into Windows 7 in under 15 seconds. The 60 GB is more than enough for your operating system and applications provided you do not install loads of games.
Two in a RAID 0 huh?
I'd imagine it'll be somewhere between the OCZ Core 2 series and the Apex/Vertex series.
Exactly 60gb main OS+Apps and 1TB libraries and pron.
It will be a very long time before ssd match hard disk storage, but then they should never really be compared...
Hard disks main advatage is size, while ssd is speed.. so they cant really be compared... I personally would never need more than 128gb ssd, my os even with games is never more that 30-50gb.. and whats the point of just storing stuff on an ssd...
30(32)GB = $129.99
60(64)GB = $219.99
120(120)GB = $349.99
^
Upcoming enthusiast market segment unit. No hard specs to report yet.
OCZ Colossus SSD. 3.5" form factor, to be available in 500GB and 1TB capacities. Very expensive, though: Rumored price is at about $3500 USD. Still, if you've got the cash and you really need seriously fast storage... I say go for it. Should be out by this fall.
Thanks to Guru3D.com for the pics.
http://www.slashgear.com/ocz-announces-agi...series-0546129/
1.5 gigs of ram Swap turned off. I'm not worried about killing the drive.
For whatever reason the SSD prices have slowly been getting higher and higher as the year goes on. At least HD prices still go down.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.