SandForce's Second Generation SSD Controller Gets Previewed, Surpasses Every Other SSD Processor

Announced for the first time in the third quarter of 2010, SandForce's second-generation SF-2000 SSD controller promised to deliver impressive performance levels that would blow even the fastest SSD processors out of the water, so many wondered how this solution will actually work when it reaches the market.

Fortunately, all these questions can be answered now as the very first preview of an SF-2000-based SSD has made it to the Web, courtesy of the AnandTech hardware review website that managed to get its hands on an OCZ Vertex 3 Pro solid state disk based on the new controller.

OCZ's drive carries a total of 256GB of NAND Flash of which 200GB are available to the consumer and is built using the SF-2682 processor as well as Toshiba 32nm Toggle Mode MLC NAND.

The memory chips are arranged in an 8 channel architecture, each one of the 16 NANDs featuring 16GB of storage space, much like the SSDs based on the first-generation SandForce controller.

But this is where the similarities end as the SF-2000 is a different beast all together, as it is capable of clearly surpassing any other SSD that is available out there when coupled with a fast enough 6Gbps SATA motherboard controller.

Top get a sense of just how fast the drive is, its nearest competitor, when it comes down to 4K random writes (8GB LBA and QD=32), manages to achieve “only” 198.4MB/s compared to the whopping 330MB/s of the OCZ Vertex 3 Pro.

This represents a 67% increase in speed, and goes to show the massive transfer speeds that the SF-2682 is capable of.

Sequential read and write speeds are also well above what the competition can achieve as during the test the drive managed to reach 381.3MB/s read and 396.1MB/s write transfer rates (it failed to reach the 500MB/s promised by SandForce back in Q3 2011).



The first OCZ Vertex 3 Pro drives will be available in mid-Q2 and the 200GB version tested should be listed at $775.00.