14 DAY TRIAL // The market for solid state drives is expanding as always, and it looks like Team Group has more than one new series in store, featuring support for the latest-generation SATA 6.0 Gbps interface.
Apacer may have stuck to the less speedy SATA 3.0 Gbps connection when it developed the Pro II AS203 solid state drive line, but team Group aimed for higher speeds.
It was thus that the Xtreem S2 line of drives came into being, featuring the 2.5-inch form factor and controller chips form the SandForce SF-2000 line.
Those products are indisputably fast and have a maximum capacity of 240 GB but, nonetheless, some users may wish for more in terms of both storage space and speed.
To respond to such needs, Team Group decided to also deliver the Xtreem S3 (1.5 million hours MTBS, TRIM support, MLC NAND, SandForce chips), which goes beyond the S2 in terms of IOPS and even capacity.
There are four members in this series, of 60 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB, respectively, and their transfer rates and Input/Output Operations Per Second grow along with the territory.
The read speed for them all, except the 480 GB one whose abilities are kept under wraps, is 550 MB/s, with the writing rate as main difference.
The 64 GB writes at 480 MB/s and the 120 at 500 MB/s, while the 240 GB works at 520 MB/s, more or less similar to what the Xtreem S2 can do.
Still, the S3 are superior in that, while the 60GB drive does have the S2's 50,000 IOPS 4K random writes performance, the others do not.
The 120 GB Xtreem S3 attains 80,000 IOPS, while the 240 GB one jumps even higher, to 90,000 IOPS.
It is possible that the 480 model will be similarly endowed as the 240 GB one, though one cannot be certain as of yet. Unfortunately, no prices, for this and the others, were mentioned either.