OCZ's Agility 2 Reviewed: The First SF-1200 with MP Firmware

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 21, 2010 7:22 PM EST
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Random Read/Write Speed

This test reads/writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). I perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time.

I've had to run this test two different ways thanks to the way the newer controllers handle write alignment. Without a manually aligned partition, Windows XP executes writes on sector aligned boundaries while most modern OSes write with 4K alignment. Some controllers take this into account when mapping LBAs to page addresses, which generates additional overhead but makes for relatively similar performance regardless of OS/partition alignment. Other controllers skip the management overhead and just perform worse under Windows XP without partition alignment as file system writes are not automatically aligned with the SSD's internal pages.

First up is my traditional 4KB random write test, each write here is aligned to 512-byte sectors, similar to how Windows XP might write data to a drive:

4KB Random Write - MB/s

Here we see the first real impact of the SF-1200's final, shipping firmware. Random write performance drops down a bit, but not by a lot. However the SandForce controllers perform best when run in OSes that align across 4K boundaries:

4K Aligned - 4KB Random Write - MB/s

Here we see a dramatic drop. While the SF-1500 and SF-1200 (3.0.1) based SSDs manage over 160MB/s, the standard SF-1200 (3.0.5) can only push 44.2MB/s. That's still much faster than a HDD, but it ends up being slower than both a C300 and Intel's X25-M G2.

4KB Random Read - MB/s

The performance limitation only applies to small file random writes. Random read performance remains unchanged with version 3.0.5 of the SF-1200 firmware.

Sequential Read/Write Speed Random Data Performance
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  • pattycake0147 - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link

    On the second page, there is no link where the difference between the 1500 and the 1200 are referenced. Reply

  • Roland00 - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link

    The problem with logarithmic scales is your brain interprets the data linerally instead of exponentially unless you force yourself not too. Reply

  • Per Hansson - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link

    I agree
    Just as an idea you could have the option to click the graph and get a bigger version, I guess it would be something like 600x3000 in size but would give another angle at the data
    Because for 90% of your users I think a logramithic scale is very hard to comprehend :)     Reply

  • Impulses - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link

    Not sure if this is the best place to post this but as I just remembered to do so, here goes... I have no issues whatsoever with your site re-design on my desktop, it's clean, it's pretty, looks fine to me.

    HOWEVER, it's pretty irritating on my netbook and on my phone... On the netbook the top edge of the page simply takes up too much space and leads to more scrolling than necessary on every single page. I'm talking about the banner ad, followed by the HUGE Anandtech logo (it's bigger than before isn't it), flanked by site navigation links, and followed by several more large bars for all the product categories. Even the font's big on those things... I don't get it, seems to take more space than necessary.

    Those tabs or w/e on the previous design weren't as clean looking, but they were certainly more compact. At 1024x600 I can barely see the title of the article I'm on when I'm scrolled all the way up (or not at all if I've enlarged text size a notch or two). It's not really that big a deal, but it just seems like there's a ton of wasted space around the site navigation links and the logo. /shrug

    Now on to the second issue, on my phone while using Opera Mini I'm experiencing some EXTREME slowdowns when navigating your page... This is a much bigger deal, it's basically useless... Can't even scroll properly. I've no idea what's wrong, since Opera Mini doesn't even load ads or anything like that, but it wasn't happening a week or two ago either so it's not because of the site re-design itself...

    It's something that has NEVER happened to me on any other site tho, they may load slow initially, but after it's open I've never had a site scrolls slowly or behave sluggishly within Opera Mini like Anandtech is doing right now... Could it be a rogue ad or something?

    I load the full-version of all pages on Opera Mini all the time w/o issue, but is there a mobile version of Anandtech that might be better suited for my phone/browser combination in the meantime?     Reply

  • ogc - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link

    That file 512mb in size which compresses 1000x seems to simply full of zeros, so it represents best case performance for sandforce. On the other hand pure random writes are not expected in typical computer usage so they also are not very meaningful. Any chance to feed iometer with data from your storage bench for example? Reply

  • arehaas - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link

    I actually think random writes with compressed files are meaningful.
    JPEG files are highly compressed - you can gain only 1-3% by zipping them. Those who work with such files a lot - write to the disk or move around jpegs or similar compressed graphic and video files - should be paying most attention to these new tests for Sandforce. It may be a good idea to add the results for all (most) drives to the page with random writes chart as another chart "Random Writes - Compressed files".     Reply

  • arehaas - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link

    Thanks to the new tests, it appears the charts of rnd or seq writes are currently misleading with respect to Sandforce, if most of your important files (e.g., for a graphic designer) are compressed. The charts are easier to read than text. Currently, one has to flip pages to and from the "Random Data performance page" in order to get the true picture. Maybe Anand can add a bar with "Corsair with compressed data" to the read/write charts? Thanks. Reply

  • davepermen - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link

    I guess that drive is not that well suited for video editing, where you have mostly random data (compressed and uncompressed, both look rather random to the drive). it wouldn't be bad in any way, just lose it's peak performance. Reply

  • FragKrag - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link

    Up until about a week or two ago I was set on an Intel X25-M G2 80GB, but now I'm not so sure anymore. If I got a Vertex 2/Agility 2, it would be a 50GB version... decisions decisions.

    Oh, and prompted by this article, I looked for the pricing of the Vertex Indilinx on Newegg, and I found this 50GB Vertex LE at $200
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

    never knew they had a 50GB run of Vertex LEs...     Reply

  • willscary - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link

    After my problems last week, I ended up going back to the Crucial M225 series with the Indilinx controller. It is not quite as fast, but it does have a 5 year warranty. I paid $325 for the 128GB drives and a very low $579 for a 256GB drive from Newegg.

    I have been using these drives in several machines since the beginning of the year. They all support TRIM and I have had no problems. They are very fast in daily use. I had hoped the Sandforce drives would be faster, but I guess I will have to wait for a later date to find out (I will be purchasing another pair of computers in July after the new fiscal year begins...perhaps I will purchase the Sandforce SSDs at that time).     Reply

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