Super Talent Claims Its SSDs Can Rock Intel's

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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.

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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.

Tuan An Nguyen
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23 Comments Comment from the forums
  • kelfen
    wait; some benchmarks to back it up cuz intel got some beastly sdd speed
    Reply
  • eklipz330
    actually, because of the indilinx controllers, the newer ocz/g.skill ssd's are way faster than intel's drives at read speeds, enough to justify the small speed increase the intel's have on write
    Reply
  • apache_lives
    Intels first gen still kicks ass, and as for other brands being quicker, dont care i dont trust them compared to Intel who knows what to do with sillicon etc, and this is the same reason no other company tries to make hdd's like WD, Seagate etc - who would you trust? a company that has been doing it for years, or an amateur company? Ill stick with Intel here.
    Reply
  • mirkos
    Having a 10%-20% speedup would be nice! But having a -50% drop on the price would be nicer! :) What's the point on reading for faster SSD when you can't buy them?

    The good thing is that competition due to new models/technology and more companies in the market will eventually force for lower prices!
    Reply
  • Dave K
    NEWS FLASH! Marketing guy at one company claims next product will be better than other companies current product... First time we've ever heard this claim from a marketing group... article submission date: June 4, 4000 BC.
    Reply
  • wicko
    I call bullshit. Random read/write crown is being held far above the competition's head by intel. More sequential write/read speed is fine and dandy but I really hope they're talking about random as well.

    http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=25
    Reply
  • BorisChechev
    SSD technology is evolving so quickly that today's stuff is outdated by tomorrow. Some company is going to make a great, inexpensive SSD and come out on top. And make a bundle of cash too.
    Reply
  • rdupuy
    I agree totally. SuperTalent can put out a marketing message, and if past history is any indication, they've tweaked sequential read speeds, which is not going to make a big difference for everyday use.

    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.
    Reply
  • moe2freaky
    Can't wait till the prices drop on the 32gb SSD. Buy four of those and set them up in a RAID 0.
    Reply
  • moe2freaky
    Can't wait till the prices drop on the 32gb SSD. Buy four of those and set them up in a RAID 0.
    Reply