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G.Skill ramps up SSD speeds with new Falcon range

by Tarinder Sandhu on 20 April 2009, 13:29

Tags: Falcon SSD, G skill

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qarwu

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Barely a week goes by before a manufacturer releases faster and faster SSD drives. A large number of drives shipped in 2008 used a JMicron controller that could, under certain circumstances, lead to sub-optimal performance.

SSD manufacturers have since internally RAIDed drives for faster performance, attempting to beat out the Intel SSD drive - X25-M - that began seeping into the market in late 2008.

Now, G.Skill and OCZ have released newer, faster drives shipping with a controller from Indilinx.



G.Skill's Falcon 2.5in SATA SSD will ship in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities, and the company quotes 230MB/s read and 190MB/s write on the two larger-capacity MLC-based drives, whilst the 64GB runs at 230MB/s read and 130MB/s write - all quite speedy. All drives have a 64MB buffer, however.

No pricing has been put forward by G.Skill, but the OCZ Vertex - a drive using a similar controller with comparable speeds - currently etails for £320 for the 120GB model.

HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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Posted by TooNice - Mon 20 Apr 2009 15:36
Yes. Compete! And bring the price down while you are at it! :)
I don't need a drive that's twice as fast (until SATA 6 Gbit/s becomes standard), but one of those drives with half the cost per GB? That would seriously tempt my wallet :)
Posted by TheGeneral - Mon 20 Apr 2009 23:26
Bring on the SSD's!!
Posted by latrosicarius - Tue 21 Apr 2009 22:12
So the only reason this drive is fast is b/c it's RAIDed internally? It doesn't say what kind of RAID. Is there any parity? If so, is there a mechanism whereby it can inform the user that it needs to be replaced if a portion of it becomes damaged?


P.S. are the speeds quoted random read/write or sequential?
Posted by Funkstar - Tue 21 Apr 2009 22:21
Technically you could call it RAIDing, but really it's just having multiple bank of flash memory chips working in parallel with ai interfacing controller for each bank. It doesn't really matter how it's done internally, it's still one drive that if one part of it goes bad, the whole thing needs to be replaced. Just like you can't replace a single platter on a hard drive if it is damaged.

If there was parity, these drives would be even more expensive.