SPECIFICATIONS, OVERVIEW, AND FEATURES Here is a quick stat-sheet of the different chipsets and what they offer. As you can see, the Z68 chipset is identical to the P67 except only in two areas: Core elements and enhancements the Z68 chipset brings: To start off the review, I would like to explore some of the unique features of the ASRock …

The Force Series GT 120GB SSD is Corsairs premium SATA 3 SSD Series offering and our review today falls directly on the heels of its younger brother, the Force Series 3 SSD a few days back. As similar as these SSDs are, there is a key physical difference that affects performance and cost of each Corsair Force SSD significantly.  Conceivably, reading …

The front of the Force Series GT PCB displays the SandForce SF-2281 processor which is proving to be the hottest thing in solid state drives these days.  There is not a company around that has moved to SATA 3 and not shaken hands with SandForce in some way, shape or form. In fact, I only know of one SSD manufacturing …

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.64 Up until recently, ATTO was the only benchmark created specifically for SSD testing and it uses incompressible data.  AS SSD, for the most part, gives us the ‘worst case scenario’ in SSD transfer speeds while using ‘SandForce Driven’ SSDs as they use compression in storage as discussed earlier.  Many enthusiasts like to AS SSD for …

HDTUNE PRO VER. 4.60 BENCHMARK Once again, we are not going to do a direct comparison between the Force Series GT and the Force Series 3 but you can refer to our Series 3 review here.  HDTune Pro offers and excellent opportunity to confirm what we have seen in testing thusfar, but remember, benchmarks are again based on compressible data …

The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The …

A definite plus in the SSD arena these days is the range of configurations available to meet consumer needs. Corsair was one of the first to jump in with its Performance 3 series which is now followed by the Force 3 for those seeking the power of a ‘SandForce Driven’ SSD minus the cost premium seen in enthusiast SSDs such …

Once the device is physically installed into the computer, the next task is to setup the program that allows us to control and configure the RunneR, the HyBrid GUI (Graphical User Interface) The user can install an operating oystem directly to the drive at this time if it will be used as a boot drive.  Power up the device and …

IOmeter 2008 We ran some IOmeter configurations to test several access patterns on the device. Again, we are looking to compare the differences of the different setups. The Sequential 64mb test is to measure the overall speed with large files, and the 32mb test is to test with medium file sets. As you can see the SSD Alone still shows …

Operating System Load Times Once again we are going to see the performance of real world usage except this time in regards to the amount of time it takes to load the operating system (Win7) using the three different scenarios. The lower time of loading is best. The SSD Alone only slightly outperforms the SSD/HDD combo inside of the HyBrid …