Conclusion

OCZ Technology appears to be focusing a lot of effort on their solid state drives. They offer so many SSD choices that it can get a tad confusing for newbies. But their efforts are definitely paying off.

The extended-capacity Agility 2 solid state drive is the first OCZ SSD that we have had the opportunity to test, and it sure impressed us. It delivered the highest sustained throughput of all solid state drives we ever tested, and came up top in most of our benchmark tests.

In fact, it blew the competition out of the water in the High-End Disk WinMark 99 test, where it delivered a phenomenal score of 232 MB/s! That's almost twice as fast as the fastest desktop hard disk drive right now - the 600 GB Western Digital VelociRaptor.

OCZ rated the Agility 2 (E) solid state drive with a random 4 KB write performance of 10,000 I/Os per second. We tested that with IO Meter 2008 and found that, even after averaging its performance with compressible and non-compressible data, the Agility 2 (E) actually delivered a peak transaction rate of over 15K IOPS, although that fell to just above 10K IOPS with 32 simultaneous I/Os.

It also did well in our Surface Temperature test, where it scored a close second place to the Kingston SSDNow V+ (Gen 2) - it was slightly hotter while idling but slightly cooler at full load. It's definitely well-suited for mobile applications where lower power consumption and thermal output is greatly desired. Of course, the OCZ Agility 2 solid state drive would work just as well in a desktop PC. To that end, OCZ even included a 3.5" drive bay adaptor in the package.

If there is a "potential" issue we have to point out, it is the extended-capacity Agility 2 models' use of spare memory cells to boost the drive's storage capacity by 20% - from 50 GB to 60 GB in this model's case. This leaves the Agility 2 (E) with a flash memory reserve of just 7%. This reserve is important not only as a reservoir of spare memory cells to replace cells that degrade over the drive's lifespan, it also allows the SandForce SF-1222 controller to better perform garbage collection.

Of course, most solid state drives have a similar reserve of just 7%, and MLC NAND flash memory are rated for at least 10,000 writes and should last at least 2-3 years. So one could argue that most of the SSD's spare memory cells are being wasted sitting on the bench, used only for garbage collection or just waiting to replace active memory cells that would only start to die after 2-3 years of use.

Extended-capacity models of the OCZ Agility 2 solid state drives are sold at around the same price as their standard capacity brethren. This is only fair as both models are physically the same, and are therefore equal in cost as well. However, the extended-capacity models have the advantage of not only a higher storage capacity, but also a much lower cost per GB, making them much more attractive to those who are looking for more bang for their buck.

Overall, we are very impressed with the performance of the OCZ Agility 2 (E) 60 GB solid state drive. It combines a usable amount of storage capacity, ground-breaking read and write performance in an affordable (click here for the lowest prices) package that is backed by an excellent 3-year warranty. In fact, we think so highly of it that we feel it deserves no less than our Reviewer's Choice Award! Congratulations, OCZ!

To find the lowest price for OCZ Agility 2 solid state drives, click here!

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