Solid
state drives (SSDs) have come a long way in the past year. Long gone
are the early days when SSDs like OCZ's Core Series were plagued with
stuttering problems in every day usage scenarios courtesy
of the JMicron JMF602 controller. Now we have SSD controllers
from Indilinx, Intel, Samsung, Marvell,
and Sand
Force which aim to not only provide reliable operation on a
day-to-day basis, but also offer blistering read/write performance.
However,
just when we thought that we had heard the last from JMicron, the
company is crawling its way back into the mainstream SSD market with
its new
JMF612 controller. Corsair is now using the controller in its new
Reactor Series SSDs which are available in 60GB and 120GB capacities.
According
to Corsair, the 60GB version offer read speeds of 250MB/sec and write
speeds of 110MB/sec. The 120GB version bumps write speeds up to
170MB/sec.
Perhaps
in a nod to the fact that the JMF602 controller was panned by many
reviewers, Corsair's press release actually makes it clear that the
JMF612 "incorporates
128MB of DDR2 cache memory for stutter-free
performance."
Hopefully
customers won't be disappointed once they start receiving the drives.
In
addition to the Reactor Series, Corsair is also launching the new
Nova Series which is built around the venerable Indilinx Barefoot
controller featuring 64MB of cache. The drives are offered in 64GB or
128GB capacities, and both drives offer read speeds of 270MB/sec. The
former features write speeds of 130MB/sec while the latter features
write speeds of 190MB/sec. Naturally, both the Reactor and Nova
Series drives feature TRIM support in Windows 7.
The
60GB and 120GB Reactor Series SSDs are listed for $185
and $350
respectively on Newegg.com. The 64GB and 128GB Nova Series SSDs are
retailing for $200
and $370
respectively.
Both
Reactor and Nova Series drives are backed by a two-year warranty.
