The 2011 Mid-Range SSD Roundup: 120GB Agility 3, Intel 510 and More Compared

A year ago whenever I'd request an SSD for review I'd usually get a 128GB drive built using 3x nm 4GB 2-bit MLC NAND die. These days the standard review capacity is twice that as most drives ship with 25nm NAND, using 8GB die. Seeing a bunch of scores for 240GB+ drives however is frustrating to all involved. At these capacities you're almost always looking at two die per NAND device, which has significant performance benefits due to interleaving. Most SSD controllers have eight NAND channels and with sixteen NAND deviecs with two die per device that's four NAND die that the controller can interleave access between for each channel. The 128GB drives by comparison halve the number of NAND, which only allows the controller to interleave requests among two die.

How read interleaving works on a single channel

Not only are these 240GB+ drives the best case performance you'd see from a particular SSD, they are also very expensive. At around $2/GB you're looking at over $500 for a high end 240GB+ SSD. I've spent the past few weeks gathering modern SSDs with 128GB of NAND on-board to provide a look at a more balanced point in the price/capacity spectrum.

Mid-Range 2011 SSD RoundupSpecs (6Gbps)Corsair P3 128GBCrucial RealSSD C300 128GBIntel SSD 320 160GBIntel SSD 510 120GBOCZ Agility 3 120GBOCZ Vertex 3 120GBControllerMarvell 6GbpsMarvell 6GbpsIntel 3GbpsMarvell 6GbpsSF-2281SF-2281Raw NAND Capacity128GB128GB176GB128GB128GB128GBSpare Area~6.9%~6.9%~15.3%~12.7%~12.7%~12.7%User Capacity119.2GB119.2GB149.0GB111.8GB111.8GB111.8GBNumber of NAND Devices81612161616Number of die per Device421 - 2211NAND Type32nm Toggle34nm ONFI 2.025nm ONFI 2.134nm ONFI 1.025nm ONFI 2.125nm ONFI 2.1Street Price$229.99$234.99$304.99$284.49$242.04$252.99Cost Per GB$1.797$1.836$1.906$2.222$1.891$1.976

Read on for our roundup of 120GB drives.

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