5-Way SSD Round-Up: Sandforce vs. JMicron

 It is hard to believe that almost two years has passed since we first rounded-up some of the first solid state drive offerings for the PC. Since that time, the landscape has changed dramatically. Capacities have increased somewhat, but performance has been improved significantly. Many early solid sate drives suffered from terrible stuttering issues and offered performance that was actually lower than much more affordable, traditional hard drives. Today though, SSDs are far more stable and reliable and their performance is orders-of-magnitude better than even the fastest of hard drives.

Despite the rapid pace of advancement in the SSD space, innovation doesn't seem to be slowing. With that in mind, we've pulled together a quintet of the newest drives to hit the market, based on recently released controller designs from SandForce and long-time player JMicron, the SF1200 and JM612, respectively. We've got drives from OCZ, OWC, Corsair, and Patriot Memory on tap, but before we dig into the products themselves, let's take some time to talk about the controllers at the heart of the drives. It is, after all, the SSD's controller that determines much of how a drive will behave and perform in the real-world... SandForce and JMicron Based Drives From OCZ, OWC, Patriot and Corsair -- One of These Drives Is Not Like the Others...

5-Way SSD Round-Up: Sandforce vs. JMicron