Corsair's Neutron GTX SSD uses a new Link A Media SSD controller, which is a great addition to a market that's full of SandForce and Marvell drives. The SSD performs very well in our real-life testing, we also added a new MySQL Enterprise benchmark to the test suite.
The Samsung 830 Series SSD is based on Samsung's own controller design, which uses a triple core ARM processor, promising better stability. In our performance testing we see outstanding results, which makes the drive the fastest one we ever tested, together with the Corsair Performance Pro.
OCZ's Agility 4 is positioned as a high-end, mid-range drive based on Indilinx Everest 2 controller technology. Our real-life performance testing will investigate whether this drive is a worthy opponent of the SandForce drives available on the market now.
Corsair's new Force GS SSD introduces toggle mode NAND flash, which promises increased performance at similar pricing. In our testing we see excellent real-life performance results from this SandForce based drive.
Today we have on our testbench OCZ's 256 GB Vertex 4 SSD, using the latest version 1.5 firmware. In our testing we see excellent performance from this Indilinx based drive. OCZ also brought the price of the SSD down to $210, which makes it one of the most affordable drives on the market both in terms of performance per Dollar and GB per Dollar.
Corsair's Performance Pro 256 GB SSD is based on Marvell's 88SS9174 controller which promises great performance at affordable price levels. In our testing we see the drive claim a leading performance spot thanks to some clever firmware tuning by Corsair.
Kingston is a big name in the memory business and their HyperX system memory is legendary. When they decided to put that name on an SSD many people were sceptical, but it seems Kingston achieved their goal. In our testing we see the HyperX SSD cruise past the competition, making it the fastest SSD we ever tested.
The Silicon Power Velox V30 60 GB SSD is built around Sandforce's successful SF-2281 flash controller which promises outstanding performance and full support for the SATA 6 Gbps interface. After a closer look we noticed that the drive uses only half the flash channels available, will this turn out to be a dealbreaker?
OCZ's Synapse Caching SSD offers a unique way to achieve SSD-like performance for your big hard disk, which could be up to 3 TB in size. In our testing we see a performance improvement of 250% when compared to a SATA 6 Gbps HDD alone.
Intel's 320 Series SSD has been on the market for a while now. Recently the drives were plagued by a series of failures which caused the drive to report as 8 MB. A recent Intel firmware update adresses this issue. The installed the new firmware and gave the drive a spin.
Patriot's new Wildfire SSD is based on the popular Sandforce SF-2281 controller, but is advertised as "enterprise" model by Patriot. In our real-world testing we are amazed by the drive's performance, which makes it the fastest Sandforce SSD we tested so far, even the mighty Intel 510 SSD is only 1% ahead.
Mach Xtreme's MX-DS Turbo SSD is based on the Sandforce SF-2281 controller which features support for the SATA 6 Gbps interface among other improvements. In our real world testing we pit the MX-DS Turbo against a handful of competing solid state drives to check whether it can stand out in the crowd of Sandforce drives.
OCZ's Vertex 3 is the company's flagship solid state drive. It is based on the fast Sandforce SF-2281 controller which offers support for the latest SATA 6 Gbps interface. We tested the 240 GB version against ten other SSDs in both 6 Gbps and 3 Gbps mode.
ADATA's S511 SSD is built upon the winning combination of the new Sandforce SF-2281 and Intel 25 nm NAND flash. In our testing the 120 GB drive delivers excellent performance scores that benefit from support for the latest SATA 6 Gbps interface.
Patriot's Torqx 2 128 GB SSD is based on the less-well-known Phison PS3105 flash controller which is a cost effective alternative to more expensive controllers from Indilinx or SandForce.
OCZ's Agility 3 is the company's latest mid-range solid state drive based on the Sandforce SF-2281 which supports the SATA 6 Gbps interface. As flash chips Micron 25 nm chips are used which promise to provide excellent performance for this 240 GB SSD.
Intel's latest 510 Series SSD is designed to deliver maximum performance at today's workloads. It supports the SATA 6 Gbps interface for maximum transfer speed and comes with a custom firmware that is optimized in performance. Being priced at $600 for the 250 GB version the drive is not cheap, but worth it?
Crucial's m4 128 GB SSD uses Micron's latest and greatest 25 nm flash chips and supports the modern SATA 6 Gbps interface. As controller a Marvell 9174 is used, in the new BKK2 revision. It also seems that Crucial has optimized their firmware's performance profile slightly differently than on the previous generation C300.
ZALMAN recently entered the solid-state storage market with SSDs based on Sandforce controllers. Their first model we test is the N128 GB model which is based on SF-1222 with 128 GB of capacity.
Mach Xtreme is a fairly new player to the memory and storage market. Their new MX-DS 120 GB SSD is based on the popular SF-1222 chip from SandForce which means it delivers leading performance without breaking the bank. In our review we test how it fares against other SSDs using SandForce and other controllers.
A-DATA's S599 128 GB SSD uses the well-established SandForce SF-1222 controller. This results in a high-performance solution - actually it is the fastest SandForce drive we tested so far. Excellent performance and an outstanding price of $225 make this one of the best SSDs available on the market at this time.
Crucial's ReadSSD C300 is the first solid state drive to support the new SATA 6 Gb/s standard. Unlike many of the competition, the drive is not based on a Sandforce controller, but uses one from Marvell instead. We tested both on SATA-II and SATA 6 Gb/s to check if the new interface can really make a difference.
Corsair's Force F40 is the smallest Sandforce based drive the company offers with just 40 GB capacity. It is also the most affordable at $120. Thanks to a 7-channel design and the SF-1222 controller the drive delivers great performance for users who want to get on the SSD bandwagon without breaking the bank.
Mushkin's Callisto 60 GB comes at a very affordable $145 which makes it the cheapest 60 GB Sandforce-driven SSD on the market today. With a capacity of 60 GB it is a great choice for a Windows 7 boot drive. TRIM is also supported, so you get the maximum out of your SSD even after it's aged a bit.
G.SKILL's Phoenix Pro 240 GB offers a huge amount of extremely fast solid-state storage that goes well beyond 'boot drive'. It also features the latest Sandforce SF-1222 controller in a tweaked version that allows up to 50,000 IOPS which is a solid step up from the 20k of the normal consumer version.
