Intel SSDs still hold the market for the ultimate in performance, but that could change very soon.
Intel, being a manufacturer of memory products, designed and manufactured its own SSD controller. To the surprise of many in the industry, its controller really kicked ass and left other SSDs in some real hurt. However, this was mostly all due to SSD companies utilizing controllers from JMicron, specifically the 602 controller. Not only did that controller perform horribly in random access performance, it also caused stuttering.
To combat this, some manufacturers utilized two JMicron controllers and added more cache memory. Unfortunately, this drove up cost some and still, the dual-controller drives failed to impress.
Super Talent, along with several other companies like Patriot Memory and OCZ, are now moving over to SSD controllers from Indilinx. So far, we've been impressed with these new SSDs, and while they do come very close to matching Intel's fastest, they're still slightly slower.
Super Talent says that its Indilinx SSDs not only match but also exceed Intel's best. MLC to MLC, SLC to SLC--Super Talent says that it has finally cracked the SSD code, and claims now it can bring to market a drive that actually beats Intel's SSDs in performance but also cost lower.
We're holding out on making a conclusion until we get Super Talent's drives in our labs, but this is great news for those who have been holding out on making the SSD upgrade.
The good thing is that competition due to new models/technology and more companies in the market will eventually force for lower prices!
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=25
Where Intel owns the market, is its ability to perform real workloads, i.e. mixtures of small random reads and writes at the same time.
This article touches on the fact that SuperTalent once before sold JMicron based drives that had horrible performance, but it doesn't really make it clear that they've made performance claims before, about drives that were very disappointing.
Yes, you should hold off judgement. Until you get the drive in and test it, there is just nothing newsworthy yet. Indilinx drives do not perform as well as Intel's...let me be clear, not even close.
And SuperTalent is not a company that has shown engineering skill, they resell SSDs other people make, usually very close to the reference design...and then market, market, market.
But I want these to completely smoke Intel.
(Though also for Intel to quickly pull something out that taxes SATA 3.0 bandwidth to compete, because I'd rather use Intel, and that would be awesome.)
Innovation and competition makes the world go round.
Lol. Intel had the edge at first because of their vast knowledge and experience with storage controller tech. They really had a leg-up in the performance sector of SSD's and they brought some ideas that also made their drives more reliable and durable against heavy use than other brands as well.
But if there's one underdog I like to see gunning for a fight, it's Super Talent. Even though they are a relatively young company, they sure have been making some killer budget/mainstream memory technology products. I've got a Pico 8GB flash drive that rivals some of the best 4GB flash drives for read speeds, and is the tiniest flash drive I've ever owned, all in a nice-looking metallic shell. And it was CHEAP. I also know their RAM for PCs is solid.
Go Super Talent! I like Intel, too, but competition is the best thing in the world for consumers.
Cant complain about competition but we are talking reliability in terms of read/write and long term etc - intel can do it, not so sure and im sus at the competition with reguards to that etc, im sure there products are ok but yeah.
Mobos, CPUs, RAM, HDDs/SSDs, TVs, Cars, Planes, Tanks, hek, throw in even some candy bars for good measure!
Sheesh, fanboys make me sick!!!