Corsair Gives Marvell Another Try With Performance Pro SSD

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by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/10/2011 7:44:00 AM
Posted in Storage , SSDs , Marvell , Corsair , Corsair Performance Pro

Corsair is no stranger to Marvell based SSDs. Prior to its current flagship Force 3 and Force GT (SF-2281 based) SSDs, Corsair released the Performance 3 Series using Marvell controllers. The attraction to Marvell is as follows: you get a much more affordable controller than SandForce's SF-2281 and you get the ability to roll your own custom firmware. The former is easy to benefit from, while the latter requires that you invest heavily in firmware development.

Today Corsair announced its second generation Marvell based SSD line: the Performance Pro. The drives boast sequential reads/writes of up to 515MB/s and 440MB/s, respectively. The drives come with a three year warranty and are available in 128GB and 256GB.

The big question is obviously what firmware development looks like for the Performance Pro and whether or not we'll see firmware updates going forward.

Gallery: Corsair Gives Marvell Another Try With Performance Pro SSD

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Stupid by FATCamaro on Thursday, November 10, 2011

The biggest benefit is the lower return rate compared to the BSOD happy Sandforce drives. Good of you to skip that part.

FATCamaro

SF? by FunBunny2 on Thursday, November 10, 2011

"and you get the ability to roll your own custom firmware."

Is that a veiled assertion that OCZ, for example, is lying when it says it writes its own, proprietary, firmware for its SF driven drives?

FunBunny2

RE: SF? by Glibous on Thursday, November 10, 2011

I believe OCZ has a special contract with Sandforce to write custom firmware for their drives. No other vendor has that luxury...yet.

Glibous

RE: SF? by jeremyshaw on Thursday, November 10, 2011

that hasn't stopped OCZ from failing, hard.

jeremyshaw

RE: SF? by Visual on Monday, November 14, 2011

That quote makes me wonder, is that just an "ability", or actually a necessity? Can't they just use firmware directly from Marvell?
And also, even if they roll their own, and do not update it, will end-users have the ability to switch to Marvell's stock firmware?

Visual

corsair by j3ff86 on Thursday, November 10, 2011

I'll wait for the inevitable recall before I buy one.

j3ff86

Firmware upgates?? by sequoia464 on Friday, November 11, 2011

Corsair has had the original performance 3 out for how many months now without a firmware update?? Seven or eight at least??

Does that mean that they got everything absolutely correct on the first try, or does that mean not to hold you breath waiting on firmware updates on this new drive also?

sequoia464

RE: Firmware updates?? by sequoia464 on Friday, November 11, 2011

firmware upDates .. Wish we could edit these comments, either that or I need to learn to proof read.

sequoia464

Review Coming? by MacGenius on Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Any chance of a review of this Anand?

MacGenius

RE: Review Coming? by Sm0kes on Thursday, January 12, 2012

I would second this -- any chance a review is coming on this?

I'd be very curious to see how this stacks up to like of the Crucial M4 and Samsung 830, particularly in the areas of garbage collection on non-TRIM enabled OS's (OSX).