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The Vertex series returns to it's roots with the Indilinx infused Everest 2 controller

Subject: Storage | October 7, 2012 - 03:05 PM |
Tagged: ocz, Vertex 4, indilinx everest 2, ssd, 240gb, Marvell 9145

The Vertex 4 series from OCZ will end up being an intermediary controller between the old Marvell 9145 based Indilinx design which OCZ now owns and a new controller that is being designed in house by OCZ and the Indilinx team which came as part of the acquisition.  That doesn't mean this drive should be avoided, the prices are quite good with the 512GB model being one of the most affordable new drives on the market. [H]ard|OCP's testing had it performing at the top of the pack in many benchmarks and the drive comes with a 5 year warranty so you are getting quite a lot for a relatively low price.

H_OCZVertex240.jpg

"The Vertex 4 is a departure from OCZ's tried and true model of using third party controllers and firmware for its SSDs. Taking control of the firmware with the Vertex 4 gives OCZ the ability to tune the SSDs for speed and performance at lower queue depths and optimize for low latency. We test to see if the Everest 2 Platform delivers."

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

Source: [H]ard|OCP

Acer Iconia W700 Detailed With Pricing - Available October 26

Subject: General Tech, Mobile | October 5, 2012 - 01:31 PM |
Tagged: windows 8, w700, tablet, ssd, Ivy Bridge, Intel, acer

First announced at Computex 2012, Acer is finally ready to share all the details (including pricing) on its upcoming Iconia W700 Windows 8 tablet.

For the uninitiated, the W700 is the top-end tablet in its Iconia W series. It will be based on an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i3 or Core i5 processor, 64GB or 128GB SSD, HD4000 graphics (intel processor graphics) and a battery that allegedly provides up to 8 hours of usage. That hardware is powering a 11.6” IPS display with 10-point multitouch and a resolution of 1920x1080. It further features a rear 5MP camera with autofocus and 1080p video recording and a front-facing webcam capable of recording 720p video.

ICONIA-W700_03.jpg

The tablet also includes 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi as well as various sensors for map applications including a(n oddly named) “G-sensor,” accelerometer, and an E-compass. [No mention of a GPS chip though, so it’s unclear how useful the other map technology will be…]

External I/O includes three USB 3.0 ports, a Thunderbolt port, micro HDMI port, headphone output jack, and DC power jack.

Because of the Ivy Bridge CPU, the tablet has ventilation slots along the top edge of the tablet. It is less than half an inch thick and weighs in at 2.3 pounds.

Also relevant is that the Acer Iconia W700 will have an accessory dock that will hold the tablet in portrait mode at 70 ° for reading or 20 ° for an angled touchscreen. The dock can also hold the W700 tablet in portrait mode for reading ebooks and the like. A Bluetooth keyboard and micro-HDMI to VGA adapter are also available as bundled accessories.

Engadget takes a tour of the Acer ICONIA W700 Windows 8 tablet.

As far as new information goes, the W700 will be available on October 26 (Windows 8’s release day). There will be several SKUs with different levels of hardware (ie. Core i3 vs Core i5). MSRPs of the W700 tablet will range from $799.99 to $999.99 depending on the particular hardware configuration. Further, if you are an Acer corporate customer, you will be able to get the W700 tablet with an extended two year warranty and Windows 8 Pro for $1,049.99. You can find read the full press release on the Acer website.

The prices do seem to be on the high end for a Windows 8 tablet, but ASUS’ leaked Windows 8 tablet prices are not far off.

Source: Acer

Podcast #221 - Intel Clover Trail, AMD's Trinity Desktop APUs, the Samsung 840 SSD with TLC, and more!

Subject: General Tech | October 4, 2012 - 02:56 PM |
Tagged: trinity, TLD, ssd, Samsung, podcast, nand, clover trail, APU, a8, A10-5800k, a10, 830

PC Perspective Podcast #221 - 10/04/2012

Join us this week as we talk about Intel Clover Trail, AMD's Trinity Desktop APUs, the Samsung 840 SSD with TLC, and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom Allyn Malvantano, and Scott Michaud

Program length: 1:21:21

Podcast topics of discussion:

  1. Week in Reviews:
    1. 0:02:23 Intel Clover Trail Details
    2. 0:16:05 Why Scott still uses Windows
      1. Mike Capps on Games for Windows Live
    3. 0:25:30 Borderlands 2 PhysX Testing
    4. 0:32:30 AMD Trinity A10-5800K APU Review
    5. 0:39:50 Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD Full Review
  2. 0:49:00 This podcast is brought to you by alxTech
  3. News items of interest:
    1. 0:52:00 4TB Western Digital Hard Drives
    2. 0:53:45 Apple A6 uses hand drawn ARM cores
    3. 0:57:00 Steam for Linux beta in October
    4. 0:58:45 AMD Vishera Info Leaks
    5. 1:00:20 ASUS Shows silent Trinity APU builds
    6. 1:01:30 Why you care that AMD can't keep up
    7. 1:04:45 Kickstart TINY PCs
  4. Closing:
    1. 1:06:20 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
      1. Ryan: Corsair Dominator Platinum Memory
      2. Jeremy: More gaming
      3. Josh: A fun, new combo!
      4. Allyn: Samsung SSD 840 - TLC, baby!
      5. Scott: Corsair HX 850W Power Supply
      6. Tim: Black Mesa: Source!
  1. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  2. http://pcper.com/podcast
  3. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  4. Closing/outro

Source: PC Perspective

Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD Full Review - Time for some TLC

Author:
Date: October 3, 2012
Subject: Storage
Manufacturer: Samsung SSD Product Page
Tagged: tlc, ssd, Samsung, pro, mdx, 840

Introduction, Specifications and Packaging

Introduction

Last week, Samsung flew myself and a few of my fellow peers in the storage review community out to Seoul, Korea. The event was the 2012 Samsung SSD Global Summit:

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At this event, Samsung officially announced their new 840 Pro, which we were able to obtain early under NDA and therefore publish in concert with the announcement. The 840 Pro was largely an incremental inprovement over their 830 Series. Newer, faster flash coupled with a higher clocked controller did well to improve on an already excellent product.

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As the event closed, we were presented with the second model of the lineup - the 840. This model, sans the 'Pro' moniker, is meant more for general consumer usage. The first mass marketed SSD to use Triple Level Cell (TLC) flash, it sacrifices some write speed and long-term reliability in favor of what should become considerably lower cost/GB as production ramps up to full capacity. TLC flash is the next step beyond MLC, which is in turn a step after SLC. Here's a graphic to demonstrate:

slc-mlc-tlc-glass.jpg

Read on for the full review!

Podcast #220 - Samsung 840 Pro SSD, a 1500W PSU from EVGA, AMD GPU leaks, and more!

Subject: General Tech | September 27, 2012 - 01:46 PM |
Tagged: tlc, ssd, Sea Islands, Samsung, PSU, podcast, nvidia, IOPS, Intel, evga, amd, 840 pro, 840, 1500W

PC Perspective Podcast #220 - 09/27/2012

Join us this week as we talk about the Samsung 840 Pro SSD, a 1500W PSU from EVGA, AMD GPU leaks, and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

  • iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
  • RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
  • MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom, and Allyn Malvantano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!

Program length: 1:07:28

Podcast topics of discussion:

  1. Week in Reviews:
    1. 0:02:55 Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD
    2. 0:17:50 EVGA SuperNOVA 1500 watt PSU
  2. 0:23:20 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI!
  3. News items of interest:
    1. 0:24:05 Raspberry Pi to get a Turbo button?
    2. 0:26:30 Looking for a $1200 Muderbox?
    3. 0:29:05 GLOBALFOUNDRIES goes 3D with FinFET
    4. 0:41:10 AMD Sea Islands GPU leaks
    5. 0:46:00 Maingear launches an All-in-One with a GTX 680
    6. 0:50:50 Catalyst 12.9 Released
    7. 0:55:20 Long term storage?
  4. Closing:
    1. 0:57:30 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
      1. Ryan: AVADirect Mini-ITX Gaming System
      2. Jeremy: and now I can't find the smegging disks
      3. Josh: A fun barebones- not perfect, but cheap!
      4. Allyn: Samsung 830 deals! (anywhere you can get 'em)
  1. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
  2. http://pcper.com/podcast
  3. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
  4. Closing/outro
  5.  

Source: PC Perspective

Samsung smashes the 830 series with the 840 Pro

Subject: Storage | September 25, 2012 - 05:02 PM |
Tagged: Samsung, 840 Pro 512GB, 840, mdx, pro, ssd

Allyn wasn't the only one blown away by the performance and efficiency increase of the new Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD, anyone who had a chance to review this drive saw incredible performance.  It is not yet available for purchase but you can expect to see the 256G at $270 and this 512GB at around $600 when they do become available.  Inside the 3-core eight channel MDX controller is paired with eight 64GB modules of Samsung’s new 21nm MLC DDR-2 toggle mode NAND, which give this drive its incredible speed.  SSD Reviews came to the same conclusion that Al did, we need a new interface as SATA 6Gb/s is already being saturated by high end SSDs.

DSC00689.JPG

"Our report on the Samsung 840 Pro SSD begins post take off from Pearson Int’l Airport in Toronto and on route to Seoul, South Korea. Having had this SSD in our hands for some time, even the enormity of the Samsung 840 family release celebration cannot overshadow the performance of what just might be the hottest solid state drive to hit the streets to date. How does just under an extra hour laptop life and 100,000 IOPS grab you to start?"

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

Source: SSD Review

Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD Full Review - Samsung Ups the Ante

Author:
Date: September 24, 2012
Subject: Storage
Manufacturer: Samsung SSD Product Page
Tagged: 840, mdx, pro, Samsung, ssd

Introduction, Specifications and Packaging

Introduction

Samsung has been at this SSD thing for quite some time now. The first SSD I bought was in fact a Samsung unit meant for an ultraportable laptop. Getting it into my desktop was a hack and a half, involving a ZIF to IDE adapter, which then passed through yet another adapter to convert to SATA. The drive was wicked fast at the time, and while it handily slaughtered my RAID-0 pair of 74GB VelociRaptors in random reads, any writes caused serious stuttering of the drive, and therefore the entire OS. I was clearly using the drive outside of its intended use, but hey, I was an early adopter.

Several SSDs later came the Intel X25-M. It was a great drive, but in its earliest form was not without fault. Luckily, these kinks were worked out industry-wide, and everyone quickly accelerated their firmware optimizations as to better handle random writes. Samsung took a few generations to get this under control. The first to truly get over this hump was the 830 Series, which launched earlier this year. It utilized a triple core Arm 9 CPU which was able to effectively brute force heavy random write workloads. It also significantly increased the speed and nimbleness of the 830 across the board, which combined with Samsung's excellent reliability record, quickly made it my most recommended series as of late.

DSC00687.JPG

...and now we have the 840 Series, which launched today. Well, technically it launched yesterday if you're reading from the USA. Here in Korea the launch started at 10 AM and spanned a day of product press briefings leading to the product NDA expiration at 8 PM Korea time. This review will focus on the 512GB capacity of the 840 Pro model. We will follow on with the 840 (non-pro) at a later date:

DSC00688.JPG

Read on for the full review!

Samsung Launches New 840, 840 Pro SSD Series at Global SSD Summit

Subject: Storage | September 23, 2012 - 10:00 PM |
Tagged: ssd, Samsung, pro, mdx, 840

Good morning from Seoul, Korea!

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I'm here at the Samsung Global SSD Summit, where Samsung has officially launched their 840 Series of SSDs. This new controller features many advancements which enable it to climb past 100,000 IOPS in random reads (!!!). Samsung also claims peaks of 90,000 IOPS in random writes. These are seriously high numbers for any SATA SSD, and we will be publishing our full review of the 840 Pro once the NDA lifts later this evening (tomorrow morning for everyone back in the states).

photo 1.JPG

Unfortunately there is nothing more I can disclose at this time, but stay tuned for more info! While all of you are sleeping tonight, I will be attending several briefings covering the 840, and those juicy tidbits will all be filtered into our review, so don't miss this one!

photo 2.JPG

Press Blast after the break:

Source: Samsung SSD Product Page

Hynix does Sandforce SSDs as well as LAMD

Subject: Storage | September 17, 2012 - 07:34 PM |
Tagged: Hynix, Strontium Hawk Series, ssd, SandForce SF-2281, synchronous NAND

Hynix jumped into the world of SSDs with the first model containing a LAMD controller, their Neutron series.  Obviously Hynix are not limiting themselves to that controller as the release of the new Strontium Hawk series demonstrates, with the well known SF-2281 controller making an appearance.  When the SSD Review began their testing they expected results in line with other SandForce based drives but soon found themselves very pleasantly surprised.  With compressed data, this drive surpassed other 120GB models and kept up with some 240GB models, a very impressive feat but not as impressive as the results they saw when checking out the incompressible data benchmarks.  It would seem that Hynix has found a way to beef up performance in a way no other SandForce drive has managed yet.  This review is well worth checking out.

SSDR_SSDFront1.jpg

"The production of a non-LAMD based SSD for Hynix is actually not that shocking as an exclusive contract between Corsair and LAMD was in place long before the Hynix purchase. The length of this contract is not known, however, it accounts for probably one of the smartest moves made by Corsair to date. The performance of their newly released LAMD controlled Neutron Series has taken the industry by storm and can be seen in our recent review of both the Neutron and Neutron GTX."

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

Source: SSD Review

OCZ's Ryan Peterson Resigns

Subject: Editorial | September 17, 2012 - 06:32 PM |
Tagged: ssd, Ryan Peterson, ocz, CMO, CEO, Alex Mei

OCZ started in a strip mall making heatsinks and fans in 2002.  Not exactly an auspicious beginning to a company that now is a dominant force in the SSD industry.  The guy that has helped the company make the massive jumps it has is Ryan Peterson.  Today OCZ has announced his resignation.  Alex Mei, current CMO (chief marketing officer) is taking over as interim CEO until a replacement can be found.

New_OCZ_Logo_Vector.jpg

It is hard to believe that just 10 years ago OCZ sprang into existence.  A few quick exposes from other tech sites revealed a small company that was situated in a strip mall.  Back in those years there was some questionable marketing tactics that the company used to present themselves as a much larger organization than they actually were (their website showed large, modern buildings and automated memory manufacturing equipment- neither of which the company had).  Through perseverance, decent technical support, and some really interesting products at a time where enthusiast style memory was starting to grow, the company thrived and expanded.

The memory market has softened, and seemingly OCZ was well aware of where the market was going.  They transitioned from being a memory company to a full blown SSD manufacturer.  Along the way they picked up Indilinx and are now finally starting to produce their first custom silicon.  The company continued to grow, and at the head of it all was Ryan Peterson.  Often known as a polarizing figure, he nonetheless helped to lead OCZ into a position of significance and authority when it came to SSD technology.

It seems that the recent downturn in the company’s profits, and the seeming failure of the sale to Seagate of the company, Ryan submitted his resignation and the board of OCZ accepted it.  Not much else is included in the release, other than thanking Ryan for his dedication to the company and wishing him and his family the best of luck.

This must be a hard day for Ryan, as he was truly a driving force in taking OCZ from the strip mall to the high rise.  Change is inevitable though, and rarely do we see CEO’s like AMD’s Jerry Sanders last for decades at the helm of a company.  The market is changing, and perhaps OCZ needs a new vision.  Still, OCZ is now synonymous with the growing SSD market, and their acquisition of Indilinx allows them some flexibility and differentiation in what is now a very crowded area.  Their introduction of inexpensive “server” style PCI-E SSD devices was another milestone, and it provided an inexpensive (and powerful) solution that competed well with other much more costly products from companies such as FusionIO.

It will be very interesting to see where the company goes, but we wish Ryan the best of luck.

The entire press release can be found here.

Source: OCZ

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