This Just In: Corsair Force 100GB SSD (SF-1200)


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Testing is nearly complete on the <a href="http://anandtech.com/show/3645/this-...28gb-ssd">last Corsair SSD that came my way</a>, but this morning UPS dropped off another surprise: the Corsair Force SSD. Based on a derivative of the controller in the <a href="http://anandtech.com/show/2944">OCZ Vertex LE I reviewed earlier this year</a>, the Force uses the mainstream version of SandForce&#39;s technology. Here&#39;s how it breaks down. Last year&#39;s <a href="http://anandtech.com/show/2899">Vertex 2 Pro</a> used a SF-1500 controller, the Vertex LE uses something in between a SF-1500 and SF-1200 (closer to the SF-1500 in performance) while the Corsair Force uses a SF-1200.</p>
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The SF-1200 has all of the goodness of the SF-1500, just without some of the more enterprise-y features. I haven&#39;t been able to get a straight answer from anyone as to exactly what you give up by going to the SF-1200 but you do gain a much more affordable price. The Vertex LE is only low in price because it is using a limited run of early controllers from SF, presumably so SandForce can raise capital. The SF-1200 based SSDs should be price competitive with current Indilinx offerings.</p>
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<img src="http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/...b/fplarge.jpg" /></p>
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You&#39;ll notice that like the Vertex LE there&#39;s no supercap on the Force&#39;s PCB. There&#39;s also no external DRAM cache thanks to a large amount of on-die cache and SandForce&#39;s real time data compression/deduplication technology. As you may remember from my Vertex 2 Pro and Vertex LE reviews, SandForce achieves higher performance by simply <a href="http://anandtech.com/show/2899/3">reducing the amount of data it has to write</a> to NAND (similar to lossless compression or data deduplication).&nbsp;</p>
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I&#39;ve got the Force on my SSD testbench now and I should have the first results by the end of the day today. This one is exciting as it could give us a preview of what the performance mainstream SSD marketplace will look like for the rest of 2010.</p>
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More pics of the drive in the <a href="http://anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/642">Gallery</a>!</p>



http://www.anandtech.com/show/3654/t...0gb-ssd-sf1200