There was no performance improvement in IOPS from the 1st gen to 2nd gen, which was very disappointing.
Hopefully they can address that this time.
Also they need to make their SSD crash safe. Right now a crash will lead to data loss in a SandForce SSD because it doesn't come with capacitors. I know their "enterprise-class" products offer capacitors, but charging 3X more expensive just to make their product carsh-safe is beyond ridiculous.
If Intel can make their consumer SSD crash-safe, then so should SandForce.
We need standardizing on bootble PCI Express Storage ASAP. SSD Speed is contantly being bottleneck by its interface SATA which was designed with HDD in mind.
You're not bottlenecked FOR REAL even by 3gbit/s SATA, and much less 6, because the vast vast majority of file transactions in computers use very small buffer sizes that don't run anywhere near the transfer rate limit of the interface.
Last time Anand revise his benchmarks it was shown Seq is still up to 60% of our daily work loads, with Random Read being the 2nd most important metric. Random Write has MUCH less impact then we anticipated.
Is the disk even the bottleneck in real world applications anymore? I wish anandtech still did tests like boot or application load times, but from what I've seen elsewhere on the net all recent generation SSDs perform about the same in non synthetic benchmarks, despite ostensibly varying widely in performance.
Even reviews for the incredibly expensive PCIe based disks like the revodrive and fusion io only showed impressive results in server type tests, they fell into the same pile as the rest for general use.
Maybe it's the random IO performance holding everyone back, and this drive will really break away from the pack, but I'm not hopeful for anything special here.
Back in March (when ONFI 3.0 was finalized) Sandforce said they were "proud supporters of the ONFI specification" and intended to have a controller supporting ONFI 3.0 in 2012. Do you really think we won't see ONFI 3.0 support on the SF-3000? It seems like a pretty big risk to wait until SF-4000, as by then there will probably be a lot of NAND around that Sandforce controllers can't use.
...OCZ and all the rest of the SSD makers invest enough time qualifying their consumer grade SSDs so that they are reliable and free of compatibility issues. Until then they are just marketing half-baked crap to the naive and gullible.
I don't want it as a cache, I want it as the primary and only drive. If it ain't reliable they should not be sold. On-the-job-training wasn't listed as one of the SSD requirments in the sales literature. ;(
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14 Comments
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jjj - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
Any chance you asked LSI/SF about hybrid HDDs SoCs? Something native/inegrated not like what Seagate is using now.neotiger - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
There was no performance improvement in IOPS from the 1st gen to 2nd gen, which was very disappointing.Hopefully they can address that this time.
Also they need to make their SSD crash safe. Right now a crash will lead to data loss in a SandForce SSD because it doesn't come with capacitors. I know their "enterprise-class" products offer capacitors, but charging 3X more expensive just to make their product carsh-safe is beyond ridiculous.
If Intel can make their consumer SSD crash-safe, then so should SandForce.
MrSpadge - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
That's a matter of building the SSD, not the controller. Anyone could add some capacitors to provide a failure safeguard.iwod - Thursday, January 12, 2012 - link
We need standardizing on bootble PCI Express Storage ASAP. SSD Speed is contantly being bottleneck by its interface SATA which was designed with HDD in mind.FaaR - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
You're not bottlenecked FOR REAL even by 3gbit/s SATA, and much less 6, because the vast vast majority of file transactions in computers use very small buffer sizes that don't run anywhere near the transfer rate limit of the interface.iwod - Saturday, January 14, 2012 - link
Last time Anand revise his benchmarks it was shown Seq is still up to 60% of our daily work loads, with Random Read being the 2nd most important metric. Random Write has MUCH less impact then we anticipated.Boogaloo - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
Is the disk even the bottleneck in real world applications anymore? I wish anandtech still did tests like boot or application load times, but from what I've seen elsewhere on the net all recent generation SSDs perform about the same in non synthetic benchmarks, despite ostensibly varying widely in performance.Even reviews for the incredibly expensive PCIe based disks like the revodrive and fusion io only showed impressive results in server type tests, they fell into the same pile as the rest for general use.
Maybe it's the random IO performance holding everyone back, and this drive will really break away from the pack, but I'm not hopeful for anything special here.
piroroadkill - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
This reason is why I bought an Intel 320 series 120GB after having my Vertex 2E fail on me.Reliability over all out speed, and you really don't notice the difference anyway...
LtGoonRush - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
Back in March (when ONFI 3.0 was finalized) Sandforce said they were "proud supporters of the ONFI specification" and intended to have a controller supporting ONFI 3.0 in 2012. Do you really think we won't see ONFI 3.0 support on the SF-3000? It seems like a pretty big risk to wait until SF-4000, as by then there will probably be a lot of NAND around that Sandforce controllers can't use.Beenthere - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
...OCZ and all the rest of the SSD makers invest enough time qualifying their consumer grade SSDs so that they are reliable and free of compatibility issues. Until then they are just marketing half-baked crap to the naive and gullible.MrSpadge - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
Use it as a cache in safe mode, so it doesn't matter if the drive dies.Beenthere - Friday, January 13, 2012 - link
I don't want it as a cache, I want it as the primary and only drive. If it ain't reliable they should not be sold. On-the-job-training wasn't listed as one of the SSD requirments in the sales literature. ;(islade - Thursday, August 9, 2012 - link
Hey,I'm still rocking a Vertex II, and a Sandforce PCIE SF-3000 sounds exciting, any updates on this?
danwat1234 - Sunday, July 26, 2015 - link
It's Q3 of 2015 and still no Sandforce 3000!