Corsair discovers that Indilinx Barefoot controller and Samsung MLC NAND flash memory are good ingredients.
We love SSDs, but we have extra love for the fast ones. Corsair this week announced its Extreme Series SSD, which help to make us love it instantly thanks to its use of the Indilinx Barefoot controller and Samsung MLC NAND flash memory.
The Corsair Extreme SSD model line consists of the X32, X64 and X128 – predictably in 32 GB, 64GB and 128GB densities respectively. All models boast the same impressive read speeds of up to 240 MB/s and write speeds of up to 170 MB/s.
“The combination of the Indilinx Barefoot controller, Samsung flash memory, and 64MB of on-board cache delivers blistering, stutter-free performance, eliminating the bottleneck imposed by traditional mechanical hard disks,” said Jim Carlton, VP of Marketing at Corsair. “The new Extreme Series SSDs are ideal for use as primary drives in desktop and notebooks systems, and also for RAID 0 configurations in high-performance desktops for enthusiasts who want extreme performance.”
The Extreme Series SSDs feature end-user upgradable firmware to add new features such as the upcoming TRIM command for Windows 7 and other operating systems for maintaining optimal performance over time.
Corsair hasn't given official pricing for these SSDs, but expect the usual premium pricing.
Not that I can afford the 2 of these things I'd want for RAID 0. Really, 4 for RAID 0+1.
My complaint here though is about the word 'blistering'. Why is everything half a percent faster called 'blistering'? Fact is, this thing is just catching up to Intel and OCZ, it's not 'blistering' anything, it's 'also can run fast'. Great that we have more tech that is competitive (which kind of thing WILL bring prices down), but quit over-hyping. It impresses no one. Corsair is a solid company with a good rep, it doesn't need hype that just makes them look cheap, trite, and trashy.
QQing done, lol
aka You can stop caring about these because they're not going to be affordable and they won't make any other SSDs afforadable.
Indilinx is for pure speed with no "self-healing" to maintain top speed for years down the road.
Samsung is slightly slower but still pretty quick and does offer the "self-healing" which prolongs the speed and life of the drive.
JMicron is for budgets and people that like mi-mi-mi-micro stuttering.