OCZ Agility 2 with SandForce SF-1200 Controller Tested
The OCZ Agility 2 is the first solid-state drive with the fully developed version of the Sand Force firmware, according to the manufacturer. This apparently means that SandForce throttles the performance slightly compared to the SF-1200 controller when writing small files, but it also drives the price down compared to the SF-1500 based devices and OCZs own Vertex 2-series, which uses the SF1200 controller but with better performance when randomly writing small files.
SandForce otherwise has one of the most impressive specifications on the market with its solid-state drive controller, and the key is file compression; SandForce flash memory compresses data before writing it to memory cells, which greatly reduces the amount of writes and simultaneously increases the amount of data moved around at any given time.
The problem is that with random and already compressed data it cannot take advantage of its controller design – something looked in at the Anandtech tests of the Agility 2. With random and non-compressable writes the performance drops by half and joins more or less all other competitors in the market, including to Intel X25-M series.
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