| Windows 7: Computex 2011: SuperTalent Introduces SandForce Powered USB3 Stick |
04 Jun 2011
|
#1 | | Windows 7 Ult x64 - SP1/ Windows 8 Pro x64 Wanderer |
Computex 2011: SuperTalent Introduces SandForce Powered USB3 Stick Portable USB3 25/50/100GB SF controller NAND flash drive! Quote: The very first enthusiast SSDs had their roots in USB drives. Memory vendors that were making USB sticks thought to put a bunch of NAND in parallel behind a rudimentary NAND to SATA controller and you had an SSD. Performance characteristics looked great on paper but of course there were teething problems. These days the reverse has happened. High end USB sticks now look a lot like small SSDs. USB 3.0 SSDs were either too bulky to carry around or weren't that impressive from a performance standpoint, but SuperTalent just showed me one that is quite tempting. This is the SuperTalent USB 3.0 Express RC8, it's a USB stick that has a SF-1222 controller just like the previous generation of high end SSDs: With four NAND devices on board, the RC8 actually has 8-channels feeding two die per package. Two channels are routed to each device, hence the use of BGA NAND vs. TSOP. SuperTalent uses 25nm IMFT NAND for the drive. Performance as a result is quite impressive. Over USB 2.0 you're looking at a maximum of around 40MB/s, but over USB 3.0 you can hit 200MB/s with highly compressible data: Worst case performance for incompressible sequential writes over USB 3.0 is still only 32MB/s thanks to the one-die-per-channel architecture (as well as inherent SF limitations). Read speed is still excellent however at nearly 180MB/s. The performance characteristics make this drive less ideal for copying large compressed videos to, but great for general use. In fact, running/installing applications or even running a full OS environment from the drive is likely a pretty good experience. SuperTalent will offer the RC8 in 25GB, 50GB and 100GB capacities (with 32GB, 64GB and 128GB of NAND on board). Expect availability starting late this month and pricing to be inline with standard SF-1222 based SSDs (~$110 for the 50GB drive). Source... | My System Specs |
| Computer type PC/Desktop System Manufacturer/Model Number 76~2.0 OS Windows 7 Ult x64 - SP1/ Windows 8 Pro x64 CPU Intel Core i5-3570K 4.6GHz Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z77X UD3H, f18 Memory 8GB (2X4GB) DDR3 1600 Corsair Vengeance CL8 1.5v Graphics Card Sapphire HD 7770 Vapor-X OC 1GB DDR5 Sound Card Onboard VIA VT2021 Monitor(s) Displays 22" LCD Dell Screen Resolution 1680x1050 Keyboard Logitech Wave Mouse CM Sentinel PSU Corsair HX650W Case Cooler Master Storm Scout Cooling Corsair H80 2x12cm Noctua NF P12 , 2x14cm case fans Hard Drives Samsung 840Pro 128GB SSD,
Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA2 7200rpm 32MB cache, Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA2 7200rpm 32MB cache, Internet Speed Dismal Antivirus Avast Browser Opera Next Other Info eSATA ports,
External eSATA Seagate 500GB SATA2 7200rpm,
External USB WD 500GB |
04 Jun 2011
|
#2 | | |
I don't see a clear value or place for it. I can do almost 32 MB/s with my CF, SD card or even USB stick with USB 2.0 on incompressible data. I imagine most data you would want to transfer in practice with a USB sick is not compressible (like images, video, executables). What iops can it do I wonder? I bet it is not good at all since the CrystalDiskMark they show only shows the sequential speeds! Why would they not show the rest - 512k and 4k random ...hmmm? Without iops that it isn't much good for an OS IMO
Last edited by GeneO; 05 Jun 2011 at 12:30 AM..
| My System Specs | | Computer type PC/Desktop System Manufacturer/Model Number Home built (GeneO industries)/Model 3 OS Windows 7 64 bit SP1 CPU i5 2500k @ 4.5 GHz, 1.264V 124 GFlop (IBT with AVX) Motherboard ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 Memory 16GB (4GBx4) 1600MHz G.skill Ripjaws X 8-8-8-24 Graphics Card MSI GTX 660 Ti PE/OC, 2GB 7160 MHz DDR5 clock, 1228 Mhz Core Sound Card Onboard Realtek HD Monitor(s) Displays NEC Spectraview 2490WUXi-SV Screen Resolution 1920 x 1200 Keyboard HP Wireless Mouse HP wireless PSU Seasonic X-850 (2012 KM3 model) Case Fractal Design "Define R3" Cooling CM TPC 812 push/pull, 3 120mm, 2 TY-140 case fans Hard Drives Samsung 128GB 840 Pro SSD (System), Crucial 128GB M4 SSD, 2x WD Caviar 1TB Black internal (data), 1x WD Blue 6Gb/s 1TB Internal, 1x 2TB eSata WD20EARS Green, 2x 500GB Seagate external USB, 1x 350GB exte Internet Speed 27.8 Mb/s down, 5.6 Mb/s up Other Info USB 3.0 x4 , SATA III x4, eSATA x3, SATA II x4, USB 2.0 x8. 2 Samsung DVD R/W drives.
WEI: CPU 7.7, Memory 7.8, Graphics 7.9, Disk 7.9 |
04 Jun 2011
|
#3 | | Windows 7 Ult x64 - SP1/ Windows 8 Pro x64 Wanderer |
One use might be a standalone OS, Linex or WinPE, with some other standalone apps, for a portable system you can take anywhere.
Take files from work to home, trouble shooting apps, etc. that can go anywhere. All of this can be done now but, this may be faster and is a larger capacity.
Only time and testing will tell if there is an advantage to this type of hardware.
Interesting concept though. | My System Specs | | Computer type PC/Desktop System Manufacturer/Model Number 76~2.0 OS Windows 7 Ult x64 - SP1/ Windows 8 Pro x64 CPU Intel Core i5-3570K 4.6GHz Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z77X UD3H, f18 Memory 8GB (2X4GB) DDR3 1600 Corsair Vengeance CL8 1.5v Graphics Card Sapphire HD 7770 Vapor-X OC 1GB DDR5 Sound Card Onboard VIA VT2021 Monitor(s) Displays 22" LCD Dell Screen Resolution 1680x1050 Keyboard Logitech Wave Mouse CM Sentinel PSU Corsair HX650W Case Cooler Master Storm Scout Cooling Corsair H80 2x12cm Noctua NF P12 , 2x14cm case fans Hard Drives Samsung 840Pro 128GB SSD,
Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA2 7200rpm 32MB cache, Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA2 7200rpm 32MB cache, Internet Speed Dismal Antivirus Avast Browser Opera Next Other Info eSATA ports,
External eSATA Seagate 500GB SATA2 7200rpm,
External USB WD 500GB Computex 2011: SuperTalent Introduces SandForce Powered USB3 Stick problems? All times are GMT -5. The time now is 01:03 AM. | |