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REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
We never expected to get such an opportunity from Super Talent and kudos have to go out to the company and Peter Carcione for allowing us to return from Germany with it and conduct this report. Truth be told, I was a bit nervous on being questioned by Customs as to what this was as most wouldn’t have a clue and ones imagination can run rampid at times.
There were a great many factors that had to be considered prior to the review, two of which were that this upStream was nowhere near review quality and also that performance results are bound to change prior to final release of any product.
Consideration of product pricing factors in the final analysis is somewhat a difficult issue as we haven’t a clue what the release price will be nor where it will be once the dust settles. We think the fact that SuperTalent utilized LSI SandForce SF-1222 processors, as well as their choice of Micron asynchronous NAND flash memory, just may play a positive role in determination of whether it releases consumer hands.
Unfortunately though, both of those factors do limit performance and that should be stated right off because Super Talent is not making the sale for the fastest PCIe SSD card on the market, but rather a product that will reach the performance they were looking for in the first place, 1GB/s. It does that and even a card which has weathered a number of technology events still meets, and sometimes exceeds, their already posted performance benchmarks.
There is a key to this card that really excites me though and it is more than just the great lighting effects I see just to my right. It is the fact that I just plugged it in, turned the system on and it was recognized and ready to become the boot drive. That is something I haven’t seen yet and it shouts ‘ease of installation’ to each and every prospective customer.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I never clarified with Super Talent whether this RAIDDrive upStream PCIe SSD was a loaner or could remain for testing and will be frank, it is staying in our X79 Test Bench for long term analysis. Truth is I really love the card and it started with the installation. There have been some standard SSDs that were more work to install than the upStream and that is a huge factor to me. Performance is as stated, it runs great, frees up a standard SSD slot and I love the special effects always present through the side window of this Corsair 600T Window Chassis. Here is one last look!
Does the card support trim? What are the onboard LEDs used for? IO status or error indicators? Is there any DRAM cache on the board?
Just as has always been the case with every PCIe card or RAID 0 config, the board does not support TRIM. Stated that the LED lights are for activity and not for error and there has never been DRAM cache used by SF processors which is why it is not mentioned.
Thanks ahead.
so you cant secure erase the drive? also good 4k cmd results for a a single sf 1222 drive are much higher so its really not indicative of the sf 1222. what it is showing is the effects of no TRIM which is played out in the vantage results.
Les, is this by chance the card that we were guessing as to its manufacturer,etc. back in October/November from the pics you posted?
What is of further interest to me is the cards operating temperature range, power consumption, error correction abilities and data longevity. I’m not at all interested in a light show and can’t understand how anyone could find it interesting looking at the insides of a computer case as it it was a feature film. Seriously, doing so must get old very quickly and if this is the focus of the hardware design at the expense of the previously mentioned issues, then it’s indded a sad state.
Why did they go with this old Sandforce controller?
I am told value.
I don’t think they can put low enough price tag on it. Compare it to Plextor you reviewed earlier, it beats upstream almost in every situation and Vanatage shows it perfectly. And if you add more complexity with all that RAID stuff (more danger of failure, no TRIM etc) that’s getting really sad.
Upstream can only be used by those who need to sequentially read huge files and that’s a rare case, cause usually there’s another bottleneck.
The only positive thing is Super Talent steps into interesting market and could encourage other manufacturers to do so.
Good review, thanks.