OCZ Agility 3 SSD Review - PAGE 1

The dynamic of OCZ has really changed over the last year, as the company transitioned from being primarily a DRAM manufacturer to one that focuses mainly on the SSD (solid state drive) market. This shift is driven by the market's 380 percent year-over-year growth of the SSD market, which is expected to increase further still. With their focus now being on SSDs, OCZ has been releasing many great drives, with the majority utilizing the SandForce controller.

The latest drive from OCZ is the Agility 3, a consumer-grade SSD that uses the latest SandForce SF-2281 processor along with a SATA 6Gbps interface. This allows the Agility 3 to support read speeds of up to 525MB/s, write speeds of 500MB/s and random Write 4KB perfomance of 45,000 IOPS. For the most part these specifications are similar to OCZ's Vertex 3, which uses the same controller and SATA interface. However, the two models have a key difference that allows the Agility 3 to have a more mainstream MSRP.

The difference between the two models is that the Vertex 3 uses synchronous NAND, while the Agility 3 uses asynchronous NAND flash. Essentially, this lowers the price of the of the Agility 3, which currently is offered in 60GB, 120GB and 240GB capacities and is priced at $149, $249 and $469 respectively. Even while these prices are lower than the more expensive models, they are still all priced at roughly $2 per gigabyte of storage.