Tag Archives: Crystal DiskMark

Perhaps the two most notable recent trends in SSDs have been the inevitable introduction of M.2 SSDs and the unexpected announcements of ‘driverless’ PCIe SSDs, that require no more than inserting the device into an available PCIe slot and rebooting the PC system. Very close and long-standing industry relations placed us in a position to provide exclusive analysis and report …

When it comes to SSD controllers, up until recent times LSI/SandForce and Marvell have pretty much “ruled the roost”.    Other than a few instances of utilizing proprietary controllers (such as Samsung does in most of their SSDs), and a smaller player in Indilinx (acquired by OCZ),  there were no other options for manufacturers to engineer a new SSD with.  That has …

A few weeks back, we posted an article that stated our opinion of the new Apple MBA as being one of the top ultraportable laptops available today, and quite possibly, untouchable.  The backlash from Sony fans was amazing, many clearly noting that we hadn’t tested, or included, the new VAIO 13 Pro as a comparison system in that report…and they …

Our attendance at the Samsung Global SSD Summit in South Korea brought us a first glimpse of a new standard in ultrabook storage performance.  At the Summit, the Samsung XP941 M.2 PCIe SSD was displayed reaching 1GB/s transfer speeds and Apple has since released their 2013 MacBook Air which has a customized variation of the XP941; this attaining native performance of …

For the first time in awhile, I am sitting here stunned at what I just learned, and experienced, in new technology.  Just as I could use words such as amazing, unbelievable and remarkable to describe the Super Talent USB 3.0 Express Dram Disk, I could also grab your attention telling you that the ST Dram Disk’s PCMark Vantage Total Point …

Imagine that you could simply plug a PCIe SSD into your PC and immediately realize performance of over 2GB/s data transfer speeds.  For the average PC user that may not seem like much, but for the media professional, or even enthusiast, being able to manipulate and move large amounts of media in seconds can save both time and money, as …

PCIe SSDs are a funny animal as they have been out for a few years yet haven’t really caught on just yet. They are very limited to either very expensive and system specific enterprise variations or require driver installation that isn’t always as simple as instructions seem. We have yet to see an affordable plug and play PCIe SSD solution …

NGFF stands for ‘Next Generation Form Factor’ and was a working name for the new generation of PCIe solid state drives, now affectionately known as M.2 SSDs. While many imagined the M.2 to be industry standardization for mSATA and similar small SSDs today seen in ultrabooks, a closer look at PCIe demonstrates that unbelievable performance will soon be seen in …

Our SSD analysis today is perhaps the most detailed typical SSD report we have published to date, and so it should be.  Actually, the word ‘typical’ doesn’t quite fit as the Samsung 840 EVO SSD, that I am now using as my mainstream system drive, is pushing over 1GB/s sequential speeds and an unbelievable 685MB/s low 4K random write performance.  …

A few weeks ago we posted a review on the SanDisk Extreme II 240GB capacity SSD and it turned out to be one of the stronger contenders we have seen to date, and most definitely the strongest using a Marvell controller. We wanted to today follow that up with an analysis of that same drive, this time in the 480GB …