Posts Tagged ‘OCZ’
November 18th, 2011 | 
Absurd speed—for an absurd price
OCZ just keeps pushing the envelope on its PCI Express SSDs. The first RevoDrive contained two 60GB SF-1200-powered SSDs in RAID 0, with a Silicon Image PCI-to-SATA controller. The RevoDrive X2 kept the same architecture, but added a second PCB with two additional controllers and two more 60GB sets of NAND. OCZ’s RevoDrive3 X2 updates the platform to second-generation SandForce, but the new SSD controller isn’t the only change.
The OCZ RevoDrive3 X2 contains four second-gen SandForce SF-2281 solid-state drive controllers, each with 16 8GB Micron 25nm asynchronous NAND modules. The RevoDrive3 X2 is, then, … [Read More...]
Posted in 
Tags: Corsair’s Force GT comes in a bright red chassis, which by Ork logic (in the Warhammer 40K universe) would make it the fastest SSD ever. So is it?
The Force GT consists of a 6Gb/s SATA bus, SF-2281 controller, and 16 64Gb Micron 25nm synchronous NAND modules (as opposed to the eight 128Gb modules on the Patriot Wildfire). This is the same Micron NAND found in the 240GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G, except that drive had 128Gb modules instead of 64Gb. (Corsair is also shipping the Force 3, which bears the same relationship to the Force GT as OCZ’s … [Read More...]
Any fears we had that the OCZ Vertex 3’s speeds were due solely to some voodoo magic or secret deal with SandForce were unfounded. OWC’s Mercury Extreme Pro 6G—a product name that contains three too many buzzwords—goes toe to toe with the Vertex 3 in nearly every benchmark, and exceeds it in some.
Like the Vertex 3, the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G (and why not tack on “Enhanced Premium Plus” while you’re at it, OWC?) utilizes 256GB of synchronous, 25nm NAND (Micron, in our review unit). As with other SandForce drives, 16GB are reserved for redundancy and overprovisioning; the rated … [Read More...]
OCZ already ships two drives with the blazing-fast SF-2281 controller—the Vertex 3 and the firmware-tweaked Max IOPS Vertex 3. So, why a third? Like its predecessors the Agility and Agility 2, the Agility 3 is OCZ’s “mainstream” SSD for this generation. So what distinguishes it from the Vertex 3, and is there any reason to buy it?
Like other 240GB SandForce drives, the Agility 3 uses 256GB of NAND, with 16GB devoted to overprovisioning. Unlike the Vertex 3 and OWC’s Mercury Extreme Pro, which use synchronous NAND for their storage, the Agility 3 uses asynchronous, which is slower.
Does the … [Read More...]
