Although a seemingly diverse array of SATA 6Gb/s SSDs accept launched in contempo months, nigh all of them are powered past the Marvell 88SS9174 or SandForce SF-2200 controllers. The former made its debut with the Crucial RealSSD C300 and has survived longer than anticipated, surfacing once again in Crucial's m4 series. Intel also adopted it for its latest-generation products. Betwixt those two drives, we favor the m4, but information technology'south far from today'due south top contender.

SandForce'due south second-generation controller got off to a rocky starting time. OCZ'due south Vertex 3 stormed out of the gates in Apr, seizing command of our performance graphs. Despite an impressive showing, early adopters reported many glaring bugs with SF-2200-based drives. Those claims sent OCZ and other manufactures scrambling to release a serial of firmware updates.

Fortunately, most of the major kinks seem to have been ironed out now and that's given even more vendors, such every bit Patriot and Kingston, the confidence to launch SandForce-flavored SSDs. Despite an increasingly saturated market place, OCZ has maintained a stiff grip on the competition as it still offers the best operation versus price ratio of any SF-2200 SSD.

Through that whole fiasco, a tertiary competitor has been quietly lurking in the shadows: Samsung. Following the success of its 470 Series, the company announced its new 830 Serial flash drives earlier this year. At the time, little was mentioned virtually the drive except that it would utilize the company's in-house hardware and software, much like the 470 Series.

As a maker of retentiveness and logic controllers, Samsung has been present in the SSD (OEM) market for years, only it wasn't until the 470 Serial that the visitor earned a seat in the limelight. With little hype, the 470 Series quietly slipped nether the radar, but to snipe the Crucial RealSSD C300 and Vertex 2 in many of our tests last yr. The drive was impressive plenty to deserve our "Outstanding" award and so far it's proven itself in the reliability department.

Unsurprisingly, Samsung'due south latest offer embraces the SATA 6Gb/s interface, touting 520MB/s reads and 400MB/s writes. The 830 Series carries a Samsung-crafted controller and retentivity, and it will be sold exclusively under the Samsung brand name. Considering the visitor's delayed entry, we promise it's had plenty of time to assess and demolish the competition. Volition we come across a repeat of final year's impressive demonstration? There's only one way to find out…