OCZ-Agility2 falls kinda flat?

[SilentAvenger]

I just finished with my new build. This is my first computer build in well over 5 years. and i decided to go with a SSD for my OS and Programs. Everything runs great, smooth, windows startup from Bios screen to usable desktop in under 15 seconds. its brilliant.

Or so i though.

I am getting a disk score diskof 901.6

Disk - Sequential Read: 105.5
Disk - Sequential Write: 49.7
Disk - Random Seek + RW: 94.1
Disk Mark: 901.6

This is a lot off of the 1400, but in not a complainer, until i ran it on my data HDD and i get these results and im like.. OK what did i just spend 100 bux for 37.5 gigs when this 500g is so close to the same..

Test Name: This Computer
Disk - Sequential Read: 122.8
Disk - Sequential Write: 120.9
Disk - Random Seek + RW: 3.8
Disk Mark: 894.8

i KNOW the difference in random (most important is HUGE) BUT this SSD is rated at

• Sequential Access - Read: up to 280MB/s
• Sequential Access - Write: up to 270MB/s

ITs not even close to this , what might i have done wrong here?


System information: This Computer
CPU Type: AMD Phenom II X4 965
MOBO: M4A89GTD PRO
O/S: Windows 7 (64-bit)
Total RAM: 4094.2 MB.
Available RAM: 2710.5 MB.Video settings: 1920x1200x32
Video driver:
DESCRIPTION: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Drive Letter: C
Total Disk Space: 37.2 GBytes

[David (PassMark)]

I have a OCZ-Vertex and get similar but slightly worse disk benchmark results.

The fact of the matter is that these drives only do spectacularly well in some particular test scenarios.

You can play around with this in the advanced disk test (ADT).

So in the ADT I can get 188MB/sec for sequential read if I use a large block size (256KB). But if I use a small block of 512 bytes I only get 7MB/sec. This is a 26 fold speed difference. The block size determines how much data is written to the drive in a single operation.

You don't get this level of dependency on the block size with traditional drives.

So to some degree we have all been sucked in by the marketing. It is only in a limited set of circumstances that the drives can reach full "rated" speed. In fact I could never get my drive to match the rated speed of 230MB/sec. So I think the marketing claims are somewhat bogus. But I am still pretty happy with getting to ~190MB/sec some of the time and having the super low seek time (which makes the drive seem faster than it is).

[SilentAvenger]

Oh wow. that was great to hear. Thank you very much for getting back to me.

As i said, i am extremely pleased with its performance, The benchmarks and advertised values threw me for a loop though.

BUt as long as its performing normally (i will adjust the block size, didnt know of that option) then i am a happy camper. I was just afraid i had a faulty drive or hooked up to a slow SATA port, of crummy bios support for it.

Thanks again.

Will post larger block size results soon

[SilentAvenger]

Yes, when i adjust the size of the test read/writes it gives me a closer value in relation to the advertised value. around 185mb/s . so i'm happy.

To be honest though, I would have thought a Solid State Drive would outperform HDD by a much larger margin than 2:1.

Maybe that's why HDDs have been industry standard for data for so long.

[David (PassMark)]

The memory used in these SSDs isn't nearly as quick as normal DRAM. Especially for writing.

If you really want to see big numbers try a true RAM disk. Then you can see numbers a full order a magnitude higher than a traditional HDD.