Posted in Storage , SSDs , OCZ , Agility 3
Today OCZ added two more capacities to their Agility 3 lineup: 180GB and 360GB. Agility 3 isn't the first SSD series to feature such SSD capacities, but more often we see 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB SandForce based SSDs. However, making a 180GB or 360GB SSD isn't any more difficult. The SF-2281 controller supports up to eight channels but it can also run in 6-channel mode and that's how you make 180GB and 360GB drives.
Remember that SandForce drives use about 7% for over-provisioning by default plus possibly RAISE as well depending on the SSD. Hence these SSDs have 192GiB and 384GiB of actual NAND in them. 2.5" drives usually have 16 NAND packages but to run in 6-channel mode, you only use 12 packages (i.e. two NAND packages per channel). For the 180GB model, that means twelve 16GiB NAND packages with two 8GiB dies per package. 360GB simply doubles the dies per NAND package so you have twelve 32GiB packages with four dies each.
Specifications of New Agility 3 SSDsCapacity180GB360GBRaw NAND Capacity192GiB384GiBControllerSandForce SF-2281NAND TypeAsynchronous 25nm MLCSequential Read525MB/s525MB/sSequential Write500MB/s495MB/s4KB Random Read35K IOPS35K IOPS4KB Random Write50K IOPS25K IOPSPrice19,000 Yen ($237)36,000 Yen ($448)Even though only six channels are used, there is no performance loss according to the specs. Read speed is the same for all Agility 3 drives but write speed is dependent on the capacity: low and high capacity drives have worse write performance than the medium capacities. This is why the 180GB model is faster in writes than the 360GB model.
The new capacities have already been listed by some retailers and the 180GB seems to go for around $225 while the 360GB is listed at $425. The price per GB is about the same as what other Agility 3 drives offer, so these are viable options if you're looking for something in between 120GB and 240GB or 240GB and 480GB models.
Sources: Hermitage Akihabara, OCZ
martyrant Reply RE: Have they even fixed their recent QA issue with these drives? by Jaegs on Wednesday, February 29, 2012 I've had 4 of these drives in RAID-0 as my boot drive on my gaming pc for about a year now with not a single issue or crash related to them.There now you've heard *almost* all horror stories about them.
Jaegs Reply RE: Have they even fixed their recent QA issue with these drives? by Qapa on Wednesday, February 29, 2012 I would imagine posting random rumours without any real info is... (you choose the ending).In other words:
1 - there were bsods in sandforce (all brands using SF!);
2 - ocz helped fixing sandforce's problem;
3 - didn't hear about anything afterwards;
So, either I didn't hear and you know more than me, in which case not indicating any hint or fact just makes your post rather... st..id. Or there wasn't anything else, which makes it even worse!!
Qapa Reply RE: Have they even fixed their recent QA issue with these drives? by Proxy711 on Wednesday, February 29, 2012 I'm using a 120gb version I've never had any issues. I bought mine during the BSOD "outbreak", like always you rarely hear from the people having no issues just the people that are having a hard time.I've had the drive for 6 months and never experienced any BSOD even on old firmware that didn't have the sandforce crash fix.
Proxy711 Reply RE: Have they even fixed their recent QA issue with these drives? by JNo on Thursday, March 01, 2012 Actually I agree with martyrant - all I've read on forums etc is negative reviews on both OCZ drive reliability and OCZ customer service. For a hard drive, reliability is more important than speed and I certainly wouldn't get one - OCZ fix or not, the damage is done. And no I can't be bothered to back it up with a scientific peer reviewed study - it is what it is i.e. anecdotal evidence and impressions. But they tales of users' frustrations resonated.Why risk it when there are other vendors? Admittedly with even Intel, Crucial and Samsung having issues at one time or another, it is virtually impossible to find anyone with a clean record (OWC?) however OCZ appears worse than most.
JNo Reply RE: Have they even fixed their recent QA issue with these drives? by josephjpeters on Thursday, March 01, 2012 "OCZ appears worse than most."Only because they sell significantly more SSD's than most. You need to keep that in perspective.
Failure rate is a percentage. Can't compute a percentage without accounting for sales volume.
josephjpeters Reply RE: Have they even fixed their recent QA issue with these drives? by Filiprino on Thursday, March 01, 2012 But if the percentage is done over OCZ returned drives on OCZ total drives instead of OCZ returned drives on all drives of any brand, then it's all OK.I read somewhere that 3% of OCZ sold drives were returned, while Crucial was at a 2% rate and Intel was at 1% rate, more or less.
Filiprino Reply RE: Have they even fixed their recent QA issue with these drives? by josephjpeters on Thursday, March 01, 2012 I think I know which report you're referring to. There was a report that used data from 2010. Data that is 2 years old is irrelevant now. We're approaching Vertex 4 now. This time, OCZ owns the controller.I'm just making the point that no one on any message board or forum knows the real failure rate (including myself). Just because you read that X drives failed does not necessarily correlate to Y failure rate. You don't know the size of the population.
josephjpeters Reply RE: Have they even fixed their recent QA issue with these drives? by MrSpadge on Thursday, March 01, 2012 Using my Agility 3 since 3/4 of a year now, no problems. Shout loud enough and enough people with similar experience will eventually speak up. No saying that there were no problems, but this whole OCZ bashing is geting rediculous. 
MrSpadge Reply RE: Have they even fixed their recent QA issue with these drives? by LB-ID on Thursday, March 01, 2012 It's interesting to see how many shills OCZ has begun employing on popular message boards these days. I guess it's easier and cheaper to pay for people to try to quash the facts rather than spend the money to engineer their products properly in the first place.The fact is that OCZ's entire "3" line of SSDs (with SandForce controllers) suffered from crippling firmware issues for over six months before even a partially successful fix was finally released. Even with that, many users still suffer from BSODs. OCZ's response then, as now, was to deny the issues, or to try to push the blame elsewhere.
Call feedback like this what you will. My purpose is to make sure that people are aware of what they're getting into if they deal with OCZ. With so many better, more stable and reliable products out there at comparable prices, there is simply no reason to deal with a company like OCZ.
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