OCZ Releases 180GB and 360GB Models of Agility 3
by Kristian Vättö on February 29, 2012 3:52 PM ESTToday 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 SSDs | ||
| Capacity | 180GB | 360GB |
| Raw NAND Capacity | 192GiB | 384GiB |
| Controller | SandForce SF-2281 | |
| NAND Type | Asynchronous 25nm MLC | |
| Sequential Read | 525MB/s | 525MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 500MB/s | 495MB/s |
| 4KB Random Read | 35K IOPS | 35K IOPS |
| 4KB Random Write | 50K IOPS | 25K IOPS |
| Price | 19,000 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
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menting - Friday, March 2, 2012 - link
OCZ doesn't sell significantly more SSDs than most.They are ranked #5.
First is Samsung, forgot #2 and #3, 4th is Micron, and 5th is OCZ.
josephjpeters - Tuesday, March 6, 2012 - link
Of the fabless SSD players they are #1. When you design an SSD for an unknown system configuration, it's much harder to make every drive compatible.Samsung and Toshiba make the SSD's for Apple, but it's a lot easier to make those drives reliable because you know exactly what the configuration is going to be.
MrSpadge - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
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.LB-ID - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
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.
MadMan007 - Friday, March 2, 2012 - link
Yeah, because users who have been registered for years are all shills.Also, it wasn't *just* OCZ drives that had a problem it was *every single* Sandforce-based drive regardless of brand. It was a *Sandforce* issue not an *OCZ* issue. Idiots blame OCZ and think it was their fault and that only OCZ drives were effected, then there are the rational people...
LB-ID - Friday, March 2, 2012 - link
Certainly it affected all SandForce-based drives. The differences were that OCZ took over SIX MONTHS to resolve the situation, and in the meantime engaged in a pattern of obfuscation and blaming their user base for the issues. Just be honest and own up to the situation...for this customer at least, I don't ask for much more than that.androticus - Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - link
I recently built a Win 7 desktop and used an Agility 3 120 as the main drive. It came with the .17 bios revision (one users reported was stable) and the system has worked perfectly for me. Granted, I don't use it that often, but it works very well. I also have an older Vertex 2 in my MacBook, and that has also worked flawlessly now for over a year of frequent use. But obviously some people have had issues...jimbo2779 - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
As others have already stated, you only ever hear from the people having troubles, rarely from those without issue.I bought the OCZ Vertex 3 while the drives were apparently having troubles with BSODs and have been happy using it since. I have never had a drive related BSOD pre-fix or since.
josephjpeters - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
10 months with my Vertex 3, no problems.OCZ sells 130k+ SSD's every month. Keep that in mind.
RaistlinZ - Thursday, March 1, 2012 - link
I'm still happily chugging along with my 120GB Vertex 2,