Tag Archives: 3dmark

Up bright and early this morning to put the finishing touches on what has been a whirlwind of SSD reviews over the past few weeks. In less than 48 hours, I’ll be setting the keyboard aside for a month as I embark on a coast-to-coast-to-coast motorcycle journey across North America in under three weeks, Atlantic to Pacific and back again. …

I absolutely love world firsts. Even more than that, I love seeing genuine technological innovation. Not long ago, we introduced the Longsys Gen4 mSSD, and we were fortunate enough to receive the drive directly from Longsys Chairman Huabo Cai, giving us the opportunity to publish what turned out to be an unexpected world exclusive. That 1TB SSD, no larger than …

When it comes to SSDs, I can’t help but wonder whether the latest price spike is simply a temporary shock driven by AI demand, or whether it was inevitable all along. For a while, we had it incredibly good. High-performance, DRAM-equipped SSDs with generous capacities and five-year warranties were selling at prices that would seem unbelievable today. Those days are …

I’d like to say change is coming to the SSD market, but the reality is that it’s already here. Looking back, it’s a bit amusing because long before the current NAND and DRAM shortages, I wondered whether SSD performance would eventually plateau with PCIe Gen4. What I didn’t anticipate, and neither did anyone else, was the memory shortage that would …

It has been a while since this release, but we received an SSD in the mail today that deserves a quick look: the XPG Mars 980 Blade by ADATA. This 1TB SSD stands out because we can’t remember the last time we had a drive of this capacity in hand, let alone reviewed one. Times are changing, however, and NAND …

It is not often that we start a report off speaking to the interior components of an SSD.  This is that exception so bear with us as this will play out very well.  Last June, we attended Computex and discovered a new PCIe 5.0 SSD controller by SMI, the SM2504XT.  Its extremely small footprint tied into great performance, while having …

QLC NAND flash memory has been available in an SSD for sometime now, and as with TLC before it and MLC before that, it has experienced some growing pains.  With every generation of memory comes the naysayers and haters that prefer to look back rather than forward.  Luckily companies such as Micron look forward.  The unfortunate reality, however, is that …

There is a new SSD that is about to make its mark and it changes things.  It is the mSSD, short for microSSD, and Longsys holds the patented IP (intellectual property) with Lexar already pushing forward with their Play X Gen4 SSD and AI Storage Core releases.  It has been discussed at some length by other companies, however we have …

Samsung introduced an SSD last week that just happens to be a ‘Samsung first’.  It is the Samsung 9100 Pro Gen 5 SSD and we have reviewed this previously in its 4TB capacity.  Samsung has a reputation of being one of the best in the industry and we might bet that their sales reflect such by a healthy margin.  Deservedly, …

It is always refreshing when we get something on our bench that is new…maybe even a bit out of the ordinary.  On our Test Bench today is the SK hynix Platinum P51 Gen5 2TB SSD and this SSD is as proprietary as they come.  The controller, DRAM buffer chip and NAND memory are all SK hynix manufactured and this SSD …