SSDs, Review

Rounding out our Computex 2024 SSD controller news, let's talk about the final major controller vendor at the show: Silicon Motion. Silicon Motion has been somewhat late to the PCIe Gen5 SSD party, as its rival Phison has been offering their high-end PS5026-E26 controller for almost 18 months now. But as Silicon Motion gets ready to make the transition to PCIe 5.0, the company has a trump card up its sleeve: the SM2508 controller, an energy-efficient high-end SSD controller that is intended for lower-power drives. A PCIe Gen5 x4 controller, SMI's SM2508 boasts a very low active power consumption of 3.5W. Which, installed in an M.2 SSD, is intended to allow drive manufacturers to built 7 Watt (or lower) SSDs, according to the company. The...

This Just In: OCZ's Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 120GB, The New Mid-Range King?

I mentioned in our Mid-Range SSD Roundup that most SSD vendors like sampling the best balance of capacity/performance when it comes to SSD review samples. For the SandForce SF-2281...

112 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/15/2011

Intel SSD 710 and 720 Series Specifications Revealed

In our Intel roadmap article published in May, we shortly previewed Intel's upcoming 700 Series SSDs. Back then there wasn't much to talk about as very few specs were...

21 by Kristian Vättö on 6/15/2011

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...

68 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/7/2011

Micron's P320h: A Custom Controller Native PCIe SSD in 350/700GB Capacities

SSDs are beginning to challenge conventional drive form factors in a major way. On the consumer side we're seeing more systems use new form factors for SSDs, enabled by...

22 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/2/2011

Kingston's HyperX SandForce SSD

Kingston is a pretty big player in the SSD space but mostly on the mainstream/value end of the spectrum. With a fairly conservative strategy we haven't seen Kingston be...

6 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/1/2011

Computex 2011: Diskeeper ExpressCache Provides an Alternative to SSD Caching for OEMs

As we found out in our Z68 review, Intel's SRT (SSD Caching) is basically a software tool baked into Intel's RST driver - there's no real hardware requirement in...

14 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/31/2011

The New Indilinx Everest SSD

OCZ acquired Indilinx not too long ago and today we're seeing the first new controller from the company since 2009. OCZ calls it the Everest Platform, and it's an...

11 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/31/2011

Computex 2011: OCZ's RevoDrive Hybrid, HDD & SSD on PCIe Card

OCZ is feeling quite experimental these days as it has announced a hybrid RevoDrive. Take the new RevoDrive 3 and use it as a cache in front of a...

12 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/31/2011

Computex 2011: OCZ Z-Drive R4 88, Eight SF-2281 Controllers in RAID-0

OCZ's consumer accessible PCIe SSD line is the RevoDrive, but if you're an enterprise customer and want a custom configuration OCZ will build you a Z-Drive. To show you...

13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/31/2011

Computex 2011: OCZ's RevoDrive 3 & RevoDrive 3 X2, Now With TRIM

There's a new PCIe SSD in town: the RevoDrive 3. Armed with two SF-2281 controllers and anywhere from 128 - 256GB of NAND (120/240GB capacities), the RevoDrive 3 is...

23 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/31/2011

Computex 2011: SandForce mSATA Drives & No More Supercap

I haven't been to Computex since 2005. I felt that for a while there the show had lost some of its appeal. Motherboards alone weren't all that interesting and...

10 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/30/2011

OCZ Agility 3 (240GB) Review

OCZ has been at the forefront of each generation of SandForce SSD release since the debut of the SF-1500 based Vertex Limited Edition. More recently the Vertex 3 was...

59 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/24/2011

Z68 SSD Caching with Corsair's F40 SandForce SSD

I have to admit that Intel's Z68 launch was somewhat anti-climactic for me. It was the chipset we all wanted when Sandy Bridge first arrived, but now four months...

81 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/13/2011

Intel Z68 Chipset & Smart Response Technology (SSD Caching) Review

The problem with Sandy Bridge was simple: if you wanted to use Intel's integrated graphics, you had to buy a motherboard based on an H-series chipset. Unfortunately, Intel's H-series...

106 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/11/2011

OCZ Vertex 3 (240GB) Review

Three months ago we previewed the first client focused SF-2200 SSD: OCZ's Vertex 3. The 240GB sample OCZ sent for the preview was four firmware revisions older than what...

90 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/6/2011

Intel’s Roadmap: Ivy Bridge, Panther Point, and SSDs

Last week, we told you about Sandy Bridge-E and X79 chipset. Today, we have a lot of interesting news about other Intel products, including a look at the Ivy...

74 by Kristian Vättö on 5/6/2011

SanDisk-Toshiba Take Back The Crown With A Different Kind of NAND

After 11 years of partnership, Sandisk and Toshiba's timing could not have been better. Just seven days after losing the NAND crown to Intel and Micron (IMFT) they announce...

35 by Jason Inofuentes on 5/5/2011

OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD Review (120GB)

I still don't get how OWC managed to beat OCZ to market last year with the Mercury Extreme SSD. The Vertex LE was supposed to be the first SF-1500...

44 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 5/5/2011

Apple Now Using Samsung SSDs in MacBook Air?

Last October after months of waiting, Apple finally refreshed their MacBook Air lineup, which we reviewed shortly after launch. The update introduced a new 11.6” form factor along with...

33 by Kristian Vättö on 4/15/2011

Intel & Micron Announce First 20nm MLC NAND Flash for Use in SSDs

We just started testing SSDs based on IMFT 25nm NAND Flash and look at what Intel/Micron just announced? The first 8GB MLC NAND device built on a 20nm process...

42 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 4/14/2011

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