OCZ Agility 120GB SSD review

I/O Performance

There is little point of having an SSD drive that has blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can’t handle reading and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new SSD drive to store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able to cope with the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive continually. So we feel it is very important to test how many of these random files that a drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 400 I/O’s per second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade mainstream PC, and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the more I/O’s that a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave more headroom for those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage in.

The things that we should look closely at, are the total I/O per second, average and max latency (response time in ms), and total MB/s.

Our first test involves creating continual 4KB files on the target drive with IOMeter. We use a 4KB file size, as it is believed that Windows will create and modify many of this size of file constantly in the background during a typical Windows session.

We also tested using simulated OS boot patterns, and also a Workstation simulation.

IOMeter 4K RW test – Total IOPS.

The OCZ Agility is slightly ahead of the OCZ Vertex, which we were not expecting. A very good start. Also note how the OCZ Apex didn’t do well in the test.

IOMeter 4K RW test – MB/s.

Once again, the Agility is the winner.  Of course we expected this from the total IOP’s that the Agility delivered.

IOMeter 4K RW test – Average response time

Once again, the Agility wins, and the two Indilinx drives are way out in front. Once again, the OCZ Apex did not show a good result.

IOMeter 4K RW test – Maximum response time

This time the OCZ Vertex wins, the Agility coming a close second. Once again, the OCZ Apex is struggling.

IOMeter – boot simulation – Total IOPS.

The OCZ Agility and Vertex are very close this time, both drives leaving the rest in their wake.

IOMeter  boot simulation – MB/s.

As expected from our previous result, the OCZ Agility and Vertex are very closely matched.

IOMeter boot simulation – Average response time

We can see that the OCZ Agility just beats the OCZ Vertex, but they are once again, very closely matched.

IOMeter boot simulation – Maximum response time

The OCZ Vertex once again has the lowest maximum latency, closely followed by the OCZ Agility.

IOMeter Workstation 1 simulation – Total IOPS

At the start of the test run, the Agility is faster, but the Vertex catches up near the end of the test run. Again, the OCZ Agility and Vertex are way out in front.

IOMeter Workstation 1 simulation – MB/s

As expected, the OCZ Agility is slightly faster at the start of the test run, with the OCZ Vertex catching up near the end.

IOMeter Workstation 1 simulation – Average response time

Again the OCZ Agility is the winner, but the Vertex is very close behind.

IOMeter Workstation 1 simulation – Maximum response time

Again, the OCZ Vertex has overall the lowest maximum latency. The OCZ Agility is once again, very close, and both drives are very much ahead of the other comparison drives.

Summary

The OCZ Agility is the winner in our IOMeter test results, but the OCZ Vertex is very close behind. Both these Indilinx based SSD drives are way out ahead of our other comparison drives.

On the next page we will checkout performance using AS SSD benchmark….

 

• Benchmarks
• AS SSD Benchmark results