OCZ updates its Agility and Solid SSDs to SATA3

FLASH STORAGE VENDOR OCZ has released a pair of solid state disk (SSD) drives that build on the firm's popular line of Vertex drives.

OCZ has enjoyed significant success with its line of SSDs and was the first vendor to adopt the Sandforce controller that challenged the dominance of Intel's X25 SSDs. Now the firm has updated its low-end Solid and mid-range Agility drives with SATA3 support.

Since OCZ really made its name by using Sandforce controllers in its SSDs, it's no surprise to see both of its Solid 3 and Agility 3 drives sporting a Sandforce SF-2200 controller. Both models are available in 60GB and 120GB capacities with the Agility 3 also available in 240GB capacity.

Capacities are not the only things OCZ has kept similar between the two models. The Solid 3 has a claimed read bandwidth of 500MB/s and write bandwidth of 450MB/s with 20,000 4KB random write I/O operations per second (IOPS). The Agility 3 drives offer a modest increase in data transfer rates with a 525MB/s reads and 500MB/s writes, while their IOPS throughput increases to 60,000 per second.

Last month OCZ updated its top-of-the-range Vertex drives to support SATA3 connectivity. Those drives feature the same controller found in its less expensive lines of Agility and Solid drives, while sporting 75,000 IOPS.

OCZ's 60GB Agility 3 drives start at £120, going all the way up to £385 for the 240GB model. The Solid 3 starts off at £115 for the 60GB model, moving up to £200 for the 120GB model. With their prices being so similar, it's hard to see why anyone would choose the Solid 3 range over the Agility 3.

OCZ provides a three year warranty on these SSD drives and they are in stores now. µ