14 DAY TRIAL // Those that have been keeping track of the developments on the SSD market, being eager to see how soon solid state drives will get mainstream prices, likely know of the number of SandForce-enabled drives that should flood the market shortly. G.Skill is one company that adopted this highly capable controller in its SSDs, in the Phoenix series to be exact, which was unveiled back in March, at CeBIT 2010. Now, these very units seem to have entered the final stages of development and are looking ready to enter mass-production stage, if they haven't already done so.
The SandForce SSD controller has already distinguished itself from the others thanks to the very high read and write speeds that it enables. This controller also seems to circumvent the usual problem of SSDs, the one where they have significant read speeds but much slower writing rates. In the case of G.Skill's Phoenix SSDs specifically, this difference is of only 10MB/s.
The Phoenix line is composed of drives with 50GB and 100GB of storage space. They make use of both the compact 2.5-inch form factor and the SATA 3.0Gbps interface. As for the exact data-transfer rates, the units can show off a performance of no less than 280MB/s when reading and of 270MB/s when writing.
One can only imagine what performance the SSDs will achieve in the future, when they are equipped with a controller capable of taking advantage of the next-generation SATA 6.0Gbps connection.
The G.Skill Phoenix solid state drives have an MTBF (mean time before failure) of 1.5 million hours and are accompanied by a two-year warranty. They have already started being listed as available for pre-order on European online stores, or, at least, the 100GB version has been paired with a price tag of 389 Euro. Actual deliveries will supposedly start being carried out next week.