OCZ's Agility 3 is the company's latest mid-range solid state drive based on the Sandforce SF-2281 which supports the SATA 6 Gbps interface. As flash chips Micron 25 nm chips are used which promise to provide excellent performance for this 240 GB SSD.
Intel's latest 510 Series SSD is designed to deliver maximum performance at today's workloads. It supports the SATA 6 Gbps interface for maximum transfer speed and comes with a custom firmware that is optimized in performance. Being priced at $600 for the 250 GB version the drive is not cheap, but worth it?
Crucial's m4 128 GB SSD uses Micron's latest and greatest 25 nm flash chips and supports the modern SATA 6 Gbps interface. As controller a Marvell 9174 is used, in the new BKK2 revision. It also seems that Crucial has optimized their firmware's performance profile slightly differently than on the previous generation C300.
ZALMAN recently entered the solid-state storage market with SSDs based on Sandforce controllers. Their first model we test is the N128 GB model which is based on SF-1222 with 128 GB of capacity.
Mach Xtreme is a fairly new player to the memory and storage market. Their new MX-DS 120 GB SSD is based on the popular SF-1222 chip from SandForce which means it delivers leading performance without breaking the bank. In our review we test how it fares against other SSDs using SandForce and other controllers.
A-DATA's S599 128 GB SSD uses the well-established SandForce SF-1222 controller. This results in a high-performance solution - actually it is the fastest SandForce drive we tested so far. Excellent performance and an outstanding price of $225 make this one of the best SSDs available on the market at this time.
Crucial's ReadSSD C300 is the first solid state drive to support the new SATA 6 Gb/s standard. Unlike many of the competition, the drive is not based on a Sandforce controller, but uses one from Marvell instead. We tested both on SATA-II and SATA 6 Gb/s to check if the new interface can really make a difference.
Corsair's Force F40 is the smallest Sandforce based drive the company offers with just 40 GB capacity. It is also the most affordable at $120. Thanks to a 7-channel design and the SF-1222 controller the drive delivers great performance for users who want to get on the SSD bandwagon without breaking the bank.
Mushkin's Callisto 60 GB comes at a very affordable $145 which makes it the cheapest 60 GB Sandforce-driven SSD on the market today. With a capacity of 60 GB it is a great choice for a Windows 7 boot drive. TRIM is also supported, so you get the maximum out of your SSD even after it's aged a bit.
G.SKILL's Phoenix Pro 240 GB offers a huge amount of extremely fast solid-state storage that goes well beyond 'boot drive'. It also features the latest Sandforce SF-1222 controller in a tweaked version that allows up to 50,000 IOPS which is a solid step up from the 20k of the normal consumer version.
Patriot's 100 GB Inferno SSD drive uses the Sandforce SF-1222 controller which is the company's latest and has found its way into many SSDs from major manufacturers on the market. Patriot is offering a unique five year warranty with their drive that uses a massive 28 GB overprovisioning to keep performance high at all times.
OCZ's Agility 2 SSD is built around the Sandforce SF-1200 controller which is one of the latest and greatest SSD controller chips on the market. It offers outstanding read and write performance of well above 250 MB/s. We test several synthetic and real-life scenarios to see if the $329 Agility 2 120 GB should be on your shopping list.
