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OWC Announces the Mercury Accelsior PCIe Solid State Drive

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Other World Computing (OWC) http://www.macsales.com, a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, today introduced the OWC Mercury Accelsior, the industry's first both Mac-bootable and PC-bootable, fully supported PCIe SSD card.

By utilizing the fastest data interface available in a Mac Pro or PC-the PCIe slot-the Mercury Accelsior offers nearly 3x the performance vs. an SSD in a SATA 2.0 3 Gb/s drive bay with well beyond even 6 Gb/s speeds of up to 780 MB/s. Now owners of PCs and Apple Mac Pros can stop waiting for I/O-intensive apps like Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, or Avid Pro Tools to render, capture or process; and can experience near instantaneous booting and application launches. The Mercury Accelsior will be highlighted along with other OWC storage solutions in booth #SL14110 during the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show being held this week in Las Vegas.





Fully Bootable, No Drivers Needed

The OWC Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD card is AHCI compliant, so no drivers are required for a truly Plug and Play solution. Besides turning a computer into a speed demon, this high-performance SSD is bootable on PCs and is the only Mac-bootable, Mac supported PCIe SSD available.

A More Efficient and Reliable Computing Experience

Massively boosting data transfer rates is only one of the benefits to the Mercury Accelsior. With its custom SandForce Driven Accelsior SSD blades, the Mercury Accelsior card enables Mac and PC users to enjoy a more responsive and productive computing experience along with cooler, quieter, and more energy efficient operation compared to standard hard drives. Those benefits don't come at the expense of reliability, however, as SandForce RAISE technology provides RAID-like data redundancy protection and reliability.

Boosts Entry Level Server Applications and Gaming Too

In addition to video-editing and multimedia creation / management deployment, the Mercury Accelsior takes entry level servers and even gaming to entirely new levels of performance. With up to 100,000 IOPS, business-critical applications like online transaction processing databases are given an instant boost. For gamers, the Mercury Accelsior's extreme performance speed dramatically reduces game level-loading, object streaming, and save times for more play time and less waiting.

User-Friendly, Professionally Robust

As easy to install as a memory module, yet robust enough to handle the rigors of professional multimedia production environments, the half-height Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD card is the clear choice for pro audio and video studios producing HD-quality work. This game-changing, high-performance upgrade is designed and built in the U.S. from domestic and imported parts and backed by a three-year warranty.

Upgrade as Your Capacity Needs Grow

With OWC factory configurations from 120 GB (2 x 60 GB) up to 960 GB (2 x 480 GB) and the ability to upgrade to larger Mercury Accelsior SSD blades in the future, the Mercury Accelsior is future-ready for growing capacity needs.

Pricing, Availability

The Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD card is available for immediate ordering in the following dual Mercury Accelsior blade SSD capacity configurations:

- 120 GB (2 x 64 GB for 128 GB total flash) $399.99
- 480 GB (2 x 256 GB for 512 GB total flash) $979.99
- 960 GB (2 x 500 GB for 1.0 TB total flash) $2,179.99
- A 240 GB model (2 x 128 GB for 256 GB total flash) priced at $549.99 will be available in early May.

Mercury Accelsior PCIe SSD Features

- The only Mac-bootable, Mac-supported PCIe SSD available
- Easy, no drivers required installation
- Dual LSI SandForce SF-2281/82 processors
- Data transfer rates of 780 MB/s read and 648 MB/s write
- Features 24 nm Toggle-Synchronous high-performance NAND
- Performance Hardware RAID up to 960 GB (1 TB total flash)
- 3-year warranty
- SandForce DuraClass technologies:
● DuraWrite for extended SSD endurance
● Intelligent Block Management & Wear Leveling automatically distributes data evenly
● Intelligent Read Disturb Management spreads reads/writes across flash components to eliminate data corruption caused by constant use
● Intelligent "Recycling" for advanced free space management gradually re-writes data across the SSD over time to ensure data never gets corrupted
● RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) protects the data similar to a RAID setup
● Best-in-Class ECC Protection for longest data retention and drive life

"The performance boost Mercury Accelsior offers is just staggering," said Larry O'Connor, Founder and CEO, Other World Computing. "Adding well beyond 6 Gb/s speeds to a Mac Pro or PC with proven OWC SSD technology completely transforms the machine's capabilities. Then, when you consider its Plug and Play, yet future-ready design to enable adoption of emerging SSD technology developments, it simply is a 'must-have' for any PCIe-equipped computer user."

Most Comprehensive SSD Line For Macs And PCs OWC's Mercury line of performance leading, world speed record-breaking SSDs offers a model for nearly every Mac and PC produced over the past decade in capacities from 30 GB to 960 GB starting from $59.99. For more information, visit: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/

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omg its so expensive
 

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960 GB (2 x 500 GB for 1.0 TB total flash) $2,179.99

for that price you could already build a monster rig
 

Completely Bonkers

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Is this PR complete bullshit?

Now owners of PCs and Apple Mac Pros can stop waiting for I/O-intensive apps like Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, or Avid Pro Tools to render, capture or process;

How is this SSD going to help RENDER and PROCESS? These are CPU tasks.

By utilizing the fastest data interface available in a Mac Pro or PC-the PCIe slot-the Mercury Accelsior offers nearly 3x the performance vs. an SSD in a SATA 2.0 3 Gb/s drive bay with well beyond even 6 Gb/s speeds of up to 780 MB/s.

What BS is that? The SF-2200/2100 controllers are SATA controllers. So what this device is, is nothing more than a simple RAID 0 PCI card with mSATA slots for mSSD modules, set up to be transparent to the user/mainboard/OS.

...and that is how it is compatible with Macs. It is basically a SATA controller with onboard mSSD slots.

OW goes down in my perception of brand-trust. FAIL PR guys... go fall on sword... and OMG this is expensive for 2x standard mSSD devices.
 
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omg its so expensive

PCI-e based SSDs are expensive, right now the only alternatives on newegg are OCZ's RevoDrive 3 series, the 120gb version of which has a base model of $380 (though after rebate and coupon code it would be closer to $300) but $90 premium for upgradable modules isn't really unthinkable. But even compared to the based model RevoDrive 3 (and not the more X2 model) this OWC model does have slower max read/write speeds of 758/743 mb/s vs 975/875 mb/s despite both using the SF2281. Surely that's not all down to firmware?

The 240gb RevoDrive 3 series is also cheaper with current deals online can be found for almost $430 compared to $550 when they launch the 240gb model in May. For that price, I'd bet you could get the X2 model on some kind of deal, and that thing is rated at 1.5 gb/s max read and 1.2gb/s max write and up to 200,000 IOPS in 4KB random write...so quite a difference...

But from there the price at least gets a bit more in OWC's favor as newegg is charging $1070 (with the current 15% promo), but that's still $140 more than OWC's new 480gb model. And the 960gb model is $2167 after 15% promo vs OCW's $2095. So that's still more expensive and without the ability to upgrade the modules with faster or higher density sticks. Also that 15% deal ends in a few days, in which case those prices climb up quite a bit. Newegg does have $30 rebate cards on each as well, but factor those in at your own risk given the number of reviews as of late with people not receiving them on OCZ SSDs....

But really, these PCI-e SSDs are insanely fast once you get into your OS, but don't forget the delay that they add on post. Initializing a raid controller like this is going to add a good 15-30 seconds to your boot time if not more, so don't expect lightning fast boot times because it'll be slower than a cheapo SATA SSD once you factor that in. But really, remarkable tech and I think this innovation is good.

On a note for OWC, I've got two mac book air's I've upgraded from the stock apple SSDs (one was toshiba controller and the other was samsung) to the 180GB OWC/SF 1222 SSDs sticks and they have been solid. Performance has been excellent and consistent, and they were kind enough to throw in a USB enclosure so my old stick could become a handy external drive :laugh:
 
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Sandforce = useless.
No TRIM support = more useless.
$2 per GB = FORGET IT!

:banghead::banghead::banghead:
 
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