OCZ have always been a well respected brand in the SSD community and tend to offer up products available to the high-end market. This came in the likes of the Vertex range of drives with the Vertex 2 and Vertex 3 giving lightning fast performance but a big price tag comes attached as well.
For users wanting a balance of performance and value, it seemed they would have to look elsewhere, until OCZ launched their SandForce SF-2281 based Agility 3 drive. The Agility range of drives offer the blistering fast performance that we expect, but with a respectable price tag and some funky styling too.
When looking at how the Agility 3 and Vertex 3 compare, not a lot is in it, when taking a look on paper and by using a lot of the same internals, that’s no surprise. We find the same SandForce SF-2281 controller and very similar firmware, so what’s different? The Agility 3 features asynchronous flash memory which as you may or may not know isn’t as good as synchronous. Whilst on paper they both look very similar, the proof lays within real-word tasks and sadly asynchronous lets it all down a bit, but the OCZ custom firmware should allow for some improvements in this area, especially compared to other drives of a similar nature who plump for a basic firmware that doesn’t offer anything new.
Keeping all this in mind, the Agility 3 isn’t aimed at the high-end market, and therefore we are expecting some different results to what the Vertex 3 shows on paper, but we aren’t writing this review to pit the two drives against each other, but instead want to show where the Agility 3 has its merits and also its pitfalls.
Interesting, I wonder when we'll see the arrival of the 'perfect' drive?
We already have, the OCZ RevoDriveGreat drive 😀
Imo, pci-e ssd is not perfect yet. Not enough users who have a spare x4 slot apart from enthusiasts (granted its an enthusiast drive). The revo drive 3 looks awesome tho!
I use mine in an x16 slot running at x8 speeds 😀