G.Skill's Phoenix Blade SSD Reads And Writes At 2 GB/s
G.Skill's latest PCI Express-based SSD promises to be very fast.
SSDs over the SATA3 (6 Gb/s) interface have reached a performance ceiling, and high-performance M.2 SSDs still need to make their way onto the market in masses. That doesn't mean that you cannot buy a faster-than-SATA3 SSD though, as some manufacturers make PCI Express-based SSDs that perform quite admirably. The latest contender to make such an SSD is G.Skill, which has built the "Phoenix Blade."
The Phoenix Blade goes by the cryptic yet somewhat-understandable model number FM-PCx8G2R4-480G, and it's designed to be very, very fast. It operates over an 8x PCI-Express 2.0 interface and is capable of reading and writing at up to 2000 MB/s. Sequentially and continuously, though, it will write at about 1050 MB/s and read at around 1900 MB/s, which is still mighty fast. 4K Random Read performance sits at up to 90,000 IOPS, while 4K Random Writes will go all the way up to 245,000 IOPS.
Such performance is accomplished by using four LSI SF-2281 SSD controllers, each linked to 120 GB of MLC flash and slapped into a RAID0 array. Despite the RAID array and PCI Express interface, G.Skill has still managed to get TRIM commands to work on the SSD, so you can rest assured that performance won't degrade either.
The 480 GB G.Skill Phoenix Blade will be available next week on NewEgg.com for $699 and ships with a three-year warranty.
Clarification: This article was updated at 9:19 AM EST on October 23 to include pricing and availability information.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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MeteorsRaining Corsair be like:Reply
PS: On a serious note, this is just Godly, 2GB/s (and 1.05GB/s sequential write) is what workstation users will be after. -
soldier44 And yet still will be limited to the ready check box in BF4 since they nerfed it getting in sooner than everyone else with a SSD. Bs.Reply -
Wow, that looks like an awesome SSD. :D Big Read & Write speeds. 480GB is a great capacity for storage but still maintaining very fast speed.Reply
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SirKnobsworth Couldn't 2 GB/s (16 Gb/s) be handled over an x4 (20 Gb/s) rather than x8 interface?Reply -
cypeq well this ssd will most likely double dollar value of regular gaming rig ;-)Reply
It will still be good value... to get this performance with 15k HDDs would definitely cost more... and power requirement throught the roof. Sadly the PCI-e SSD pricing is still in workstation segment. -
Ninjawithagun Ahhh, but everyone is forgetting about the price range. This product will NOT be affordable by 99% of the gaming community, so what's the point? Nice to look at, but now time to move along...nothing to see here that can actually be had to enjoy :(Reply -
oxxfatelostxxo while its nice and compact... and looks awesome, my raid card with 4 ssds in 0 outperform this while most likely also being cheaper. Not to mention the extra versatility I have of being able to change what raid type I want to use.Reply
Also most raid cards have onboard memory also allowing you to basically do the same thing that hybrid hdds do. Except rather than hdd/ssd, its ssd and memory which has transfer speeds more around 20GB/s for the higher end cards.