Items tagged with solid state
Intel is launching its latest Optane-branded family of solid state drives today, the Intel Optane SSD 800P. Unlike the Intel Optane Memory devices, which accelerate hybrid storage configurations through intelligent data caching, or the Optane SSD 900P that’s aimed squarely at hardcore enthusiasts with big budgets, the Intel Optane 800P targets the meat of the mobile and desktops markets, with higher capacities than Optane Memory, but much more affordable pricing than the 900P. The Intel Optane SSD 800P can technically be used as a data caching accelerator like Optane Memory, but these drives are designed to be used as boot volumes to boost performance of mainstream systems. When you...
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Intel gave us a taste of what its Optane could do on consumer desktop systems a few months back when it launched its Optane Memory technology. Those miniscule drives did a great job caching data to give compatible systems packing slower hard drives a huge boost in responsiveness and overall performance. The performance characteristics of Optane Memory also left many enthusiasts chomping at the bit for higher-capacity, speedier Optane SSDs for high-end desktops, however. Fortunately, the wait is now over. Intel recently launched the brand-new Optane SSD 900P series of drives and we can with certainty say that it was absolutely worth the wait.We’ve got one of Intel’s 280GB Optane SSD 900P...
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Although NVMe PCI Express solid state drives are all the rage as of late, due to their relatively strong performance and inherent feature benefits, manufacturers continue to tune and refine their SATA based offerings as well. Case in point: the brand new OCZ VX500 series solid state drives we’ll be showing you here today. The OCZ VX500 series targets the mainstream computing segment and initially consists of a quartet of 2.5mm SATA SSDs, packing all, in-house, Toshiba made technology. The hook is, even though these new drives are priced aggressively, they eschew less expensive TLC NAND in favor of more durable MLC, and performance is relatively strong too.We’ve got the full list of features and...
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A couple of weeks back, Intel announced a slew of new solid state drives, targeting a wide array of market segments, that leverage 3D TLC NAND. One of those offerings was a new series of M.2 NVMe drives, dubbed the SSD 600P. According to Intel, the SSD 600P series is “designed to deliver PCIe performance at near-SATA prices”. To date, most NVMe PCIe solid state drives are roughly 1.5 – 3x the cost per gigabyte of SATA based drives, due to the inherent performance benefits and likely the added cost of NVMe controllers. But, as the company has done a number of times in the past dating all the way back to the venerable X25, Intel is pushing hard to drive down prices in the segment. In fact, the...
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AMD Announces Radeon Solid State Graphics Technology At AMD's latest Capsaicin event, happening right now at the Hilton Anaheim, adjacent to SIGGRAPH, the company just made a handful of major announcements. AMD just revealed a brand-new line-up of Polaris-based Radeon Pro WX series professional graphics cards and that it was not only launching Radeon ProRender (formerly previewed as AMD FireRender), but also making it open source, as part of the GPUOpen initiative. The unveiling of its upcoming AMD Radeon Solid State Graphics Technology and the Radeon Pro SSG, however, could have a major impact on workflows for content creators that manage massive data sets.We don’t have many deep,...
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The last time we saw OCZ, there were tearing up CES with an upcoming NVMe solid state drive that could transfer data at upwards of 2.7GB/s that was featured alongside a few new SATA-based solutions, like the Trion 150 series we’ll be showing you here today.The OCZ Trion 150 is an update to last summer’s Trion 100, which was the first drive from OCZ to feature TLC NAND and all in-house, Toshiba-built technology. The Trion 100 series of drives proved to be good performers overall, especially considering their relatively affordable price points. As its branding suggests, the new Trion 150 kicks things up a few notches over the Trion 100, thanks to some cutting edge 15nm NAND flash memory and a tweaked...
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OCZ Technology is at the ready with yet another new Solid State Drive, built around the company’s tried-and-true Barefoot 3 controller. The Vector 180 series drive we’ll be showing you here today is packing some of Toshiba’s latest A19nm MLC NAND flash memory and has some welcomed features and additions normally reserved for more expensive, enterprise-class drives.And the Vector 180 isn’t the only thing OCZ has in store today. Launching alongside this new SSD is a brand new utility, dubbed OCZ Guru, geared for easy management and tuning of OCZ’s enthusiast-class drives. The OCZ Guru utility will ultimately replace the OCZ Toolbox utility, OCZ has been cultivating for the last few years, with...
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Last year, Plextor introduced its M6e family of solid state drives. The drives are / were offered in M.2 and PCI Express flavors, though technically the PCIe-based models were the same M.2 drives parked in a PCIe-to-M.2 adapter card. Regardless of the technicalities involved, the Plextor M6e’s specifications and performance were relatively strong, with peak read speeds topping the 770MB/s mark.The original Plextor M6e, however, wasn’t much to look at. It featured a basic, green PCB and the M.2 SSD sat right in the middle for all to see. Plextor decided to kick things up a few notches with a new revision of the M6e, dubbed the Black Edition. The upcoming Plextor M6e Black Edition is similar to...
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When we took at look at SanDisk's Extreme II series of solid state drives in June of last year, we began our article by noting, "odds are, if you’ve bought anything that uses flash memory in the last 20 years or so, you already own a small piece of SanDisk technology. The company has been a leader in flash memory storage since the late ‘80s and manufactures products used in everything from smartphones and portable media players to digital cameras and camcorders. With such a long history in the flash memory business, it’s should be no surprise that SanDisk offers an array of solid state storage solutions for desktop and mobile PCs as well. In fact, SanDisk recently expanded...
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When we took at look at SanDisk's Extreme II series of solid state drives in June of last year, we began our article by noting, "odds are, if you’ve bought anything that uses flash memory in the last 20 years or so, you already own a small piece of SanDisk technology. The company has been a leader in flash memory storage since the late ‘80s and manufactures products used in everything from smartphones and portable media players to digital cameras and camcorders. With such a long history in the flash memory business, it’s should be no surprise that SanDisk offers an array of solid state storage solutions for desktop and mobile PCs as well. In fact, SanDisk recently expanded their...
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OCZ is launching a brand-new series of solid state drives today, targeted squarely at budget-conscious, mainstream consumers. The new ARC 100 series doesn’t stray far from its roots, however. The ARC 100 features the very same OCZ Barefoot 3 M10 as the higher-end Vertex 460, but these new drives feature more affordable Toshiba A19nm NAND flash memory. The ARC 100 also ships without any sort of accessory bundle, to further bring costs down. We’ve got a 240GB OCZ ARC 100 in-house and have put it through an array of benchmarks, versus a number of other popular solid state drives... OCZ ARC 100 240GB Solid State Drive Review...
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OCZ is launching a brand-new series of solid state drives today, targeted squarely at budget-conscious, mainstream consumers. The new ARC 100 series doesn’t stray far from its roots, however. The ARC 100 features the very same OCZ Barefoot 3 M10 as the higher-end Vertex 460, but these new drives feature more affordable Toshiba A19nm NAND flash memory. The ARC 100 also ships without any sort of accessory bundle, to further bring costs down. We’ve got a 240GB OCZ ARC 100 in-house and have put it through an array of benchmarks, versus a number of other popular solid state drives. Before we get to the results though, take a look at the ARC 100’s features and specifications...
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It was about a year ago that we first took a look at the Samsung SSD 840 EVO series of solid state drives. If you recall, those drives featured a new controller and the latest generation of Samsung’s TLC NAND flash memory, which allowed the company to offer the SSD 840 EVO series at very competitive prices, despite their relatively strong performance. Those the SSD 840 EVO series of drives was originally designed for client-PC applications, Samsung has since evolved and refined the design and deemed it suitable for read-centric enterprise applications. The Samsung SSD 845DC EVO series of drives we’ll be showing you here offer many of the same features as the 840 EVO series, but performance...
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It was about a year ago that we first took a look at the Samsung SSD 840 EVO series of solid state drives. If you recall, those drives featured a new controller and the latest generation of Samsung’s TLC NAND flash memory, which allowed the company to offer the SSD 840 EVO series at very competitive prices, despite their relatively strong performance. Those the SSD 840 EVO series of drives was originally designed for client-PC applications, Samsung has since evolved and refined the design and deemed it suitable for read-centric enterprise applications. The Samsung SSD 845DC EVO series of drives we’ll be showing you here offer many of the same features as the 840 EVO series, but...
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Intel’s solid state storage offerings are as diverse as they come. Although Intel started with only a single family of enthusiast-class drives a number of years ago, the company has since expanded its scope to include everything from ultra-high-end PCI Express-based offerings to small, entry-level SATA drives, meant to be used solely as a cache. The product we’ll be showing you here, the just-announced Intel SSD 2500 Pro, falls somewhere in the middle of Intel’s SSD line-up. The SSD 2500 Pro is the follow-up to last year’s SSD 1500 Pro series, which targets corporate and small-business clients. The drive shares much of its DNA with some of Intel’s consumer-class...
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Intel's just-announced Intel SSD 2500 Pro, falls somewhere in the middle of Intel’s SSD line-up. The SSD 2500 Pro is the follow-up to last year’s SSD 1500 Pro series, which targets corporate and small-business clients. The drive shares much of its DNA with some of Intel’s consumer-class drives, but the Pro series cranks things up a few notches with support for advanced security and management features, low power states, and an extended management toolset. We’ve got one of Intel’s 240GB SSD 2500 Pro series drives in house and have run it through a suite of benchmarks. Intel SSD Pro 2500 Enterprise SSD Review...
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In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a steady stream of new solid state drive releases, from the likes of Plextor, Crucial, and SanDisk. Today, however, Samsung is unveiling something new we think you'll really take interest in. Up next for your reading pleasure, we have Samsung’s brand-new SSD 850 PRO series. The 128GB and 1TB Samsung SSD 850 PRO drives we’ll be showing you here are the company’s latest flagship solid state drives, targeted at client applications. Like the previously-released SSD 845 EVO series, the 850 PRO leverages Samsung’s MEX controller, but these drives are also packing bleeding-edge 32 layer, stacked, 3D V-NAND flash memory that purportedly...
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In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a steady stream of new solid state drive releases, from the likes of Plextor, Crucial, and SanDisk. Our review of the Plextor M6M mSATA drive can be found here, and we covered Crucial’s MX100 series here. And reviews of some new SanDisk drives are currently in the works. Today, however, Samsung is unveiling something new we think you'll really take interest in. Up next for your reading pleasure, we have Samsung’s brand-new SSD 850 PRO series. The 128GB and 1TB Samsung SSD 850 PRO drives we’ll be showing you here are the company’s latest flagship solid state drives, targeted at client applications. Like the previously-released...
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Fusion-io just took the wraps off a new, high-performance series of MLC NAND flash-based accelerators that push the limits in terms of speed and capacity. There are two families of products in the new Fusion-io Atomic series, the high-end PX600 series and the not quite as high-end, but still drool-worthy SX300 series. The Fusion-io SX300 Atomic Series products will be offered in capacities of 1.25TB all the way on up to a massive 6.4TB. The 1.25, 1.6, and 3.2TB devices feature low-profile PCBs, while the larger 6.4TB Atomic SX300 has a half-length, but standard full-height PCB. All of the drives have PCIe 2.0 x8 connections. The maximum read bandwidth on all of the SX300 series parts is...
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Crucial has been on a tear as of late. In the last few weeks alone, the company has released a couple of new series of solid state drives, one targeting the enthusiast segment (the M550) and the other targeting data centers (the M500DC). Today, Crucial is at it again with the launch of the brand new MX100 series. The Crucial MX100 series of solid state drives is somewhat similar to the M550 in that they both use the same Marvell controller. The MX100, however, it outfitted with more affordable 16nm NAND flash, and as such, the drives are priced more aggressively. Take a look at the full line-up and their specifications in the chart below, and then step through the rest of the review to see how...
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Crucial has been on a tear as of late. In the last few weeks alone, the company has released a couple of new series of solid state drives, one targeting the enthusiast segment (the M550) and the other targeting data centers (the M500DC). Today, Crucial is at it again with the launch of the brand new MX100 series. The Crucial MX100 series of solid state drives is somewhat similar to the M550 in that they both use the same Marvell controller. The MX100, however, it outfitted with more affordable 16nm NAND flash, and as such, the drives are priced more aggressively. Take a look at the full line-up and their specifications in the chart below, and then step through the rest of the review to see how...
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A few weeks back, we took a look at a new series of solid state drives from Crucial, the M550, which leveraged Marvell controller technology, 20nm MLC NAND flash memory, and firmware optimizations gleaned from the last couple of years of SATA SSD advancements. Ultimately, we found the M550 series of drives to be solid offerings, with well-rounded performance and competitive pricing. Well, today, another major player—ADATA—is releasing its own family of drives featuring similar technology at its core. The brand new ADATA SP920 Premiere Pro family of drives we’ll be showing you here use the same controller and NAND as the M550 series, though ADATA takes a few steps to help...
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