Posted on 24 June 2010. Tags: agility, ASSD, capacity, compression algorithm, cpu intel, drive, extreme memory, files zip, host os, intel pro, paragraph summary, performance, performance penalty, raid 0, reason, sata, sequential, SSDs, storage technology, test
OCZ’s Agility 2 120GB is a new generation of drive based on the SandForce SF-1200 controller. Unlike the OCZ Vertex LE and OCZ Vertex 2 drives, the Agility 2′s SandForce controller has an IOP limit artificially limited in firmware. With that being said, it is also cheaper than the Vertex 2 120GB and is still a very fast SSD, especially with compressible loads.
The short story of the SandForce controller is that it uses an internal encryption/ compression algorithm to write data to NAND faster than other drives. The SandForce based Agility 2 120GB is therefore fairly fast with compressed workloads (i.e. pictures, music files, zip files, ISOs, and etc) and much faster with compressible workloads such as office documents. Another major storyline is that SandForce is a fairly new player and the controllers are of unknown reliability. Finally, originally SandForce reserved much more space on drives in this capacity range for use in wear leveling, cache and etc. OCZ Agility 2 and Vertex 2 SandForce drives were originally 100GB but after being criticized for mediocre cost per GB and with little performance penalty moving from 28GB reserved (old drives were 100GB usable 28GB reserved) to 8GB reserved (new drives are 120GB usable 8GB reserved), the choice to enable the extra capacity was clear.
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Posted in Disk Subsystem Performance
Posted on 29 March 2010. Tags: atto benchmark, atto benchmarks, Benchmark, benchmark numbers, crystaldiskmark, Intel, max speed, ocz, ocz technology, raid 0 1, raid 0 setup, Raid 5, Review, SSD, storage technology, v1.5 firmware, vertex
Shortly after posting my last benchmarks on the dual OCZ Vertex 120GB in Raid 0 setup, I received an e-mail to try the new Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) 9.6.0.1014 drivers, which were supposed to enable TRIM in raid. These new drivers were released, taken down, then re-released in March 2010. The big improvement was supposed to be TRIM is enabled for Raid 0, 1, 10, but not enabled for Raid 5. Unfortuneately, this seems not to be working so the best that can be done is the background garbage collection in firmware v1.5 for OCZ’s Indilinx based SSDs. Since I am only working with two 120GB drives at the moment, I decided to give them a shot. Just for reference, the original benchmarks were done with the standard, off the shelf, Windows 7 64-bit RTM drivers.
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Posted in Disk Subsystem Performance
