Podcast #200!!! - GTX 690, Intel 910 Series PCI-E SSD, our Podcast Life in Review, and much more!

Subject: General Tech | May 3, 2012 - 04:53 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: ssd, podcast, nvidia, intel., amd, 910, 690, 680

PC Perspective Podcast #200!!! - 05/03/2012

Join us this week as we talk about the GTX 690, Intel 910 Series PCI-E SSD, our Podcast Life in Review, and much 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, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, and Allyn Malvantano

Program length: 1:23:52

Program Schedule:

1. Introduction
2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
3. http://pcper.com/podcast
4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
   
5. PC Perspective Live Review - GTX 690
   1. http://pcper.com/live
   2. http://www.pcper.com/news/Editorial/Questions-GTX-690-Live-Review-Win-NVIDIA-Crowbar
6. Podcast Life in Review
   1. #1 - 5/3/2007 - NV 8800 Ultra
   2. #10 - 8/14/2007 - AMD takes wraps off 3.2GHz Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Black Edition 
   3. #46 - 2/4/2009 - NVIDIA ION
   4. #50 - 3/26/2009 - Bigfoot new Gaming Card, Original from 2006!!
   5. #75 - 9/24/2009 - HD 5870 Launch
   6. #100 - 4/7/2010 - VRaptor 600GB
   7. #150 - 4/13/2011 - HD 6000 mid-range rumors
7. Intel SSD 910 Series 800GB PCIe SSD First Look
8. Dying Atoms: The Failure Of Low-Power x86 Processors
9. SilverStone Nightjar ST50NF 500W Fanless Power Supply Review
10. ASUS P8Z77-V Premium motherboard announced.
11. Custom Gaming PC Being Auctioned Off For Charity Doing Multiple Sclerosis Research
12. NVIDIA Announces dual-GPU Kepler GeForce GTX 690
13. NVIDIA Announces GeForce Experience Cloud Service for Quality Presets
14. NVIDIA Crates the GeForce GTX 690
15. Cheaper GTX 670 GPU Spotted At Malaysian Retailer
16. Moore's Law End in Sight
17. Trinity Slides Leaked
18. HWLB Update
19. Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: LogmeIn Ignition - good and bad
    2. Jeremy: $60 3 LCD stand
    3. Josh:  Apparently quite CPU intensive. SRS gamers only!
    4. Allyn:  Mini SAS SFF-8087 to 4x 2.5in SATA/SAS 5.25in Hot Swap Backplane.
20. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
21. http://pcper.com/podcast   
22. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
23. Closing

1TB OCZ SSD Coming Later This Month

Subject: Storage | May 2, 2012 - 08:34 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: ssd, ocz, Octane, mlc, 1TB

According to a recent press release, OCZ Technology Co. is going to up the Octane ante with a 1TB solid state drive. Coming in at an MSRP of $3,238 USD (approx. 260,000 yen), the SSD features 1TB of synchronous MLC flash, 512MB of DRAM, and an Indilinx Everest controller bundled in a 2.5” form factor.

The SATA 3 (6Gbps) OCT1-25SAT3-1T SSD not only brings gobs of storage, but puts up some respectable performance numbers. It is capable of 460MB/s sequential reads and 330MB/s sequential write speeds. Also, it can deliver a maximum of 24,000 4K read IOPS (input/output operations per second) and 32,000 4K random write IOPS [the translation may be off here, I was expecting to see the higher IOPS reflected as 4K reads and not writes]. Other drive features include TRIP support, ECC (error correction), AES-256 drive encryption, SMART diagnostics, and a MTBF (mean time between failures) of 1,200,000 hours.

The 1TB SSD is slated for a mid-May release and will come with a 3 year warranty. You know, my birthday is coming up in a couple months... (hehe)

Fusion-io Supports Native Memory Access In SDK

Subject: Storage | April 21, 2012 - 12:32 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: ssd, sdk, ioMemory, fusion-io

Fusion-io, a manufacturer of various PCI-E based solid state drives, has released a software development kit (SDK) that allows developers to access the NAND flash memory directly. Debuting at the DEMO conference, the SDK gives software developers direct access to the memory and how it operates. As Allyn mentioned on the podcast, the Fusion-io drives use rather dumb controllers and rely on software and the host machines processor to do the heavy lifting.

But because of the way the Fusion-io drives work, and being PCI-E based, they are able to present the NAND flash to software without going through other layers of abstraction such as the SATA interface and internal drive controller processing. Software is then able use the NAND flash as storage for applications that demand high input/output operations per second.  And because of the direct access, latency is greatly reduced.

The full press release is below:

Kingston HyperX ... 240GB of SSD in RAID-0

Subject: Storage | April 19, 2012 - 06:09 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: ssd, sata 6Gbs, raid, kingston, hyperx 240GB

The only thing faster than a SATA 6Gbp/s SSD is a pair of them running in RAID-0, which was the inspiration of this review at Bjorn3D.  They took a pair of Kingston HyperX 240GB SSDs and formed a $600 RAID-0 array which sounds expensive but is still cheaper than many 480GB SSDs.  In many cases the RAID-0 will outperform the 480GB SSD, though some of the benchmarks produced some unexpected results which may signify improvements that need to be made on the Intel RAID driver.  Before you decide on heading down this route there is one thing of which you must be aware, once your SSDs are in RAID the Windows TRIM command will no longer function.

"If you're a gamer, and you'd like to improve your gaming experience with faster loading and less jumpy gameplay, the Kingston HyperX 3K SATA III SSD could be an option for you."

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

• OCZ Vertex 4 256GB/512GB review @ Hardware.Info
• Corsair Performance Pro 128 GB SSD Review @ Hardware Secrets
• Corsair Accelerator SSD Cache (60GB) Review @ HardwareHeaven
• SanDisk Extreme 120GB Solid State Drive Review @ eTeknix
• Intel 330 SSD; A New Budget Friendly Drive @ Hardware Canucks
• Kingston V+200 90GB SSD Upgrade Bundle Review @Hi Tech Legion
• Memoright MS-701 mSATA SSD @ SSD Review
• Corsair Accelerator 60GB Caching SSD Review @ VR-Zone
• Renice X3 50mm 240GB mSATA SSD @ SSD Review
• SMART Storage Systems XceedIOPS 2 200GB eMLC 6Gbps Enterprise SSD @ SSD Review
• Garbage Collection and TRIM in SSDs Explained - An SSD Primer @ SSD Review
• Areca ARC-1882i RAID Controller @ Tweaktown
• IcyDock MB994SP-4SB-1 Four-bay 2.5-inch SATA Hard Drive Rack @ PC Stats
• ADATA DashDrive Durable HD710 Portable HDD @ kitguru
• Buffalo USB3 Addon cards + Kingston HyperX USB3 64GB @ Rbmods
• Western Digital Velociraptor 1TB review @ Hardware.Info
• Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB Hard Drive Review @ Legit Reviews
• Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB @ AnandTech
• Western Digital's VelociRaptor 1TB hard drive @ The Tech Report

Podcast #198 - Maingear Shift with 3x7970s, Galaxy GTX 680, Intel PCIe SSD and more!

Subject: General Tech | April 19, 2012 - 02:17 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: ssd, podcast, pcie, nvidia, maingear, Intel, amd, 910, 7970, 680

PC Perspective Podcast #198 - 04/19/2012

Join us this week as we talk about a Maingear Shift with 3x7970s, a Galaxy GTX 680, an Intel PCIe SSD 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, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, and Allyn Malvantano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 1:15:40

Program Schedule:

1. Introduction
2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
3. http://pcper.com/podcast
4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
   
5. MAINGEAR Shift System Review - Triple HD 7970s and Sandy Bridge-E
   
6. Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB Review - 10K RPM Hits a Larger Capacity
7. Galaxy GeForce GTX 680 2GB Graphics Card Review
8. This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
9. Intel Releases 910 Series Enterprise PCIe SSD
10. Valve, tired of rumors, announces wearable computing
11. AMD Three for Free promo: HD 7900 Price drop & free games
12. Intel Announces Intel Solid-State Drive 330 Series
13. PC Perspective Live Review Recap: ASUS Z77 Motherboards
14. New Fusion ioFX Will Accelerate Professional Workloads
15. Microsoft Details Four Windows 8 SKUs, Seems Reasonable
16. The never ending story of TSMC's 28nm process
17. NVIDIA Teases Another Graphics Card
18. Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: Linksys power line networking...sucks.
    2. Jeremy: Something to do with that old walkman you haven't thrown out
    3. Josh: Finally! Down in price!
    4. Allyn: Stable Internet
19. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
20. http://pcper.com/podcast   
21. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
22. Closing

New Fusion ioFX Will Accelerate Professional Workloads

Subject: Storage | April 17, 2012 - 01:11 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: ssd, ioFX, fusion-io, enterprise ssd

Popular PCI-E SSD maker Fusion-io recently announced a new product aimed at professional content creators. Based on the company’s ioMemory technology, the new Fusion-io ioFX is a professional SSD designed to speed up video encoding, CAD work, 3D renders, and motion graphics.

The new solid state drive uses the PCI-E bus and 420 GB of fast QDP MLC NAND flash to deliver less than a millisecond of sustained access speed and an impressive 1.5 GB/s of bandwidth. The PCI-E SSD uses a physical x8 connector but is electrically a x4 connection. What I found interesting about the device was the presence of a fan, which our Storage Editor Allyn says is necessary in order to keep the super fast flash chips from overheating. When the SSD needs active cooling, that at least implies this drive is going to scream performance wise!

Another interesting aspect about this new drive is a piece of software called the ioSphere. The software will allow studios to remotely monitor all the Fusion ioMemory products deployed in the studio through a single interface. Unfortunately, there is not much more in the way of detailed performance specifications but I will definitely keep an eye on this for the drool factor alone. Fusion-io is currently listing the ioFX for $2,495 USD, and it will be available later this Spring 2012.  More information should be posted to their site as the SSD gets closer to launch here.

Intel Announces Intel Solid-State Drive 330 Series

Subject: Storage | April 16, 2012 - 01:14 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: ssd, Intel, intel 330, sata 6Gps

Intel has released an SSD aimed at the consumer and casual user market, as well as offering a choice which might help future Ultrabook models dip below the $1000 mark while keeping the speed of an SSD.  At a price of just under $1.50/GB on the smallest 60GB drive and better pricing on the 120GB and 180GB models, it is possible to upgrade your system to a good sized SSD for less than $250.  You don't lose much performance either, the drive beats the old 320 series and can come close to the new 520 series.  One thing to note is that those drives both carried 5 year warranties, while the 330 has only a 3 year warranty.  Check out the full scoop in Intel's news room.

 

SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 16, 2012 – Intel Corporation announced today the Intel Solid-State Drive 330 Series (Intel SSD 330 Series), a SATA 6 gigabit-per-second (Gb/s) solid-state drive (SSD) that gives consumers a more affordable entry into the accelerated storage performance of SSDs.

 

Ideal for upgrading desktop or notebook PCs, the Intel SSD 330 Series offers the price-conscious PC enthusiast a brand-name SSD that blends performance, Intel quality and value. Offered in the most popular capacity points, 60 gigabytes (GB), 120GB and 180GB, the Intel SSD 330 Series boosts overall system performance and responsiveness for a broad range of applications.

“An SSD is still the single best upgrade you can make to your existing PC, and the Intel SSD 330 Series gives users the latest Intel SSD technology at a price to meet their budget,” said James Slattery, product line manager for client SSDs, Intel Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. “Backed by Intel’s rigorous testing process, the Intel SSD 330 Series offers our users the speed they need at a great price, backed by world-class manufacturing, reliability and tech support.”

Unlike a traditional hard disk drive (HDD) with spinning disks and moveable parts, SSDs offer a more rugged, low-power storage solution that dramatically improves system performance to keep up with today’s I/O-intensive applications. The Intel SSD 330 Series contains Intel 25-nanometer (nm) multi-level cell (MLC) NAND memory. Its SATA 6Gb/s interface doubles the bandwidth of its current SATA 3Gb/s Intel SSD 320 Series, providing up to 500 megabytes-per-second (MB/s) sequential read speeds and up to 450MB/s sequential write speeds for faster data transfers. Random read performance can go up to 22,500 Input-Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) and 33,000 write IOPS to boost overall application and system responsiveness, significantly outperforming a typical consumer hard disk drive.

Intel offers a broad range of SSD choices within four product families. The Intel SSD 300 Family is aimed at entry-level, mainstream client users. The Intel SSD 500 Family offers more fully featured, higher-performing client SSDs for computer and gaming enthusiasts. The Intel SSD 700 and Intel SSD 900 Families are targeted for data center applications.

The Intel SSD 330 Series comes in a standard 2.5-inch/9.5mm form factor as a replacement to a slower-performing HDD. It can be used in a dual-drive desktop PC configuration to speed up boot times and applications speeds, or as a single-drive notebook upgrade.

Available beginning today at worldwide retailers and online e-tailers, the Intel SSD 330 Series is offered at the suggested channel price of $89 for a 60GB drive, $149 for a 120GB drive and $234 for a 180GB drive. It is also backed by a 3-year limited warranty.