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Corsair Performance Pro 256GB SSD Review - PAGE 1
Chris Ledenican - Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 Like ShareThe SSD market is flooded with SandForce based drives, and in just a year’s time one would be hard pressed to review an SSD that didn't feature a SandForce controller. This highlights the sheer popularity of SandForce, but there are still additional solutions on the market. One such option is the Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2, which is an 8-channel controller that supports 500+ Mb/s speeds via SATA 6Gbps interface. Additionally, the latest Marvell controllers no longer suffer from the stuttering issues that initially harmed the controller’s popularity, allowing the SandForce controller to take over the market.
The drive Neoseeker reviews today is the Corsair Performance Pro, which is the successor to the Performance 3 SSD. Like its predecessor, the Performance Pro series is based on Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2 controller and utilizes the SATA 6Gbps interface. However, the Pro series uses ONFI 2.1, thus offering a simplified flash controller design, and performance levels ranging from 166 megabytes per second (MB/s) to 200 MB/s. The Pro series also includes high quality Toshiba synchronous MLC NAND flash memory rated at speeds of up to 515 MB/s sequential read, 440 MB/s sequential write and 65K IOPS (4K aligned).
Since most of the SSDs in our test bed utilize the SF-2281 controller, it is going to be interesting to see how the Corsair Performance Pro compares. In terms of pricing there is very little difference between the drives using the SandForce and Marvell controllers. Quickly glancing e-tailers, we found the 256GB Corsair Performance Pro priced at $399, while the 240GB Corsair Force GT sells for $379.
I'm actually pretty impressed with this. My only annoyance is that lower storage models with SSDs tend to also have lower speeds as well. I will NOT need a whopping 250GB of storage for an OS and high priority programs, I just won't >_>
Would be nice if there was a high speed 60GB to 80GB drive that had a lower price (Like I could live with $180 even. Bit under half the price with a fraction of the storage yes, but all the same speed). Ah, I can dream eh?
As far as the AS SSD goes I wonder how well it would scale with a RAID0 setup? It wouldn't match the RAID0 setup of the Pyro SE in terms of read time, but considering the overall score difference between a single Performance Pro and the Pyro SE in RAID0 is about 160 points, I'm curious as to the score it would get. Certainly it would be considerably higher overall. It's write time would get a nice boost out of it, and it's already better as it is.
But really, those access times blew the Pyro SE out of the water, in fact it's the only drive tested with access times below 1/10th of a millisecond 0_o More than that, the read and write access times being comparable is another significant thing, since SandForce controller seems to have problems with that.
Consistent AND fast indeed!
My next SSD will probably be a Marvell 9174 (or later, improved generation) controller based since its ability to deliver consistent and fast performance across the board is winning me over. Hah, two SSD reviews in two days, and I was very impressed with the results of both
60GB Force 3 = 525/490
60GB Force GT = 555/495
90GB Force GT = 555/505
120GB Force GT = 555/515
240GB Force GT = 555/525
Whereas a last gen (SF-1200) 60GB Force is 280/270