ASUS Maximus VI Extreme Z87 motherboard review
ASUS GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II OC review
Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 review
Corsair Vengeance K70 review
MSI GeForce GTX 770 Lightning review
EVGA GeForce GTX 770 SC review
Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA SSD review
AMD A10 6800K review
SanDisk Extreme II 120 - 240 and 480 GB SSD review
ASUS Sabertooth Z87 motherboard review
G.Skill SSD Solid State Disk 64 GB review -
Introduction
Posted by on: 12/22/2008 02:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]
| Product: | Solid State Disk 64 Gb 2.5" SATA II |
| Manufacturer: | G.Skill |
| SKU code: | FM-25S2S-64GB |
| Information: | website |
| Street price: | 159 USD/EUR |
It's time for another Solid State Disk review you guys; this time from the folks at G.Skill. Man the performance of SSD drives seems to get faster with each month that passes. A month or two ago when we reviewed the OCZ Core MLC SSD we where overwhelmed really. Such an SSD ended up in my primary work PC as a boot drive and is now running Vista. And yeah, I like it a lot. It's speedy and fast for sure. Within the same MLC segment (we'll explain MLC shortly) a lot of manufacturers jumped on-board with SSD development. One of them is G.Skill and they just launched a rather nicely priced series of SSDs.
Today we'll peek at one of their finest drives available in a 64 GB flavor. It comes with an advertised performance of 155 MB/sec read speed and a 90 MB/sec write speed, which makes it faster than the OCZ Core product I am so fond off.
This new SSD is MLC-based and measures in at just 2.5-inchehbgvsghbv, easily placed in a desktop PC, and obviously a perfect fit for your laptop. With a SATA II interface type and a built-in EDC/ECC protection, this G.SKILL drive is ready to handle your data for sure. The G.SKILL FM-25S2S will be in two sizes, the 64GB model and the 128GB model.
So in this review we'll look at the G.Skill 64GB SSD which you can find under part number FM-25S2S-64GB at a sales price of roughly $159 (USD). The 128 GB version costs roughly 279 USD.
I've stated it before, SSD storage is the future, make no mistake. Pricing is still a bit hefty, but with prices roughly halving each year, we entered a stage in this industry where they are slowly getting affordable. Next to the prices going down, the overall read and write speeds are going up. It's a serious win-win situation in the industry, and any manufacturer that is not getting on the big SSD boat is making a big mistake in my opinion.
The FM-25S2S is small, compact, but knows how to deliver a punch. Let's check her out.
G.Skill Sniper 8GB CL7 DDR3 memory review
G.Skill designed another 8GB low voltage DDR3 kit (2x 4GB) that can be set at 1600 MHz yet still run a CAS latency of 7. And that is truly interesting because the denser the ICs get, the higher latency typically gets.
G.Skill 2x4GB CL7 1600 MHz Trident DDR3 review
We feel that more memory is rather important, and in that trend memory manufacturers have started to increase the density of DIMM modules. Where 1 and 2GB DIMM modules have been the standard, we now see very good progress in 4 GB DIMM modules. Today we\'ll do things a little different, G.Skill designed a 8GB low voltage DDR3 kit (2x 4GB) that can be set at 1600 MHz yet still run a CAS latency of 7. And that is truly interesting because the denser the ICs get, the higher latency typically gets.
G.Skill Flare DDR3 2000 MHZ C7 AMD kit review
We test and review the G.Skill Flare DDR3 2000 MHZ C7 AMD kit. These kits are optimized for AMD platforms preferably with the new six-core X6 processors, and in specific some ASUS motherboards. The kit we'll be testing today obviously comes from that series and is a 2,000MHz CL7-9-7-24 1.65V 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3 kit with its latest Flare heatsinks.
G.Skill Phoenix PRO 120GB SSD review
The SSD tested today once again is the Phoenix series from G.Skill. After we tested their 100GB Phoenix SSD (which received a very positive review) G.Skill instantly requested if we would like to review the 120GB PRO model. Both drives pretty much are the same thing, same controller ... The 100GB Phoenix uses Samsung memory though but the trick is that there is 20GB extra volume space available on the new 120GB Pro (compared to the 100GB model) for nearly the same price. A new Firmware for the SandForce 1200 based controller that is inside this 120GB model simply reserves less NAND flash memory for its data-compression scheme. As a result the overall write performance could be a tiny bit slower, but only a few percent as best. It however will give you 20 GB more space to play around with at the same price. And since price per GB is everything in the land of SSDs -- this certainly is a significant for any vendor and for you as an end-user.
G.Skill designed another 8GB low voltage DDR3 kit (2x 4GB) that can be set at 1600 MHz yet still run a CAS latency of 7. And that is truly interesting because the denser the ICs get, the higher latency typically gets.
G.Skill 2x4GB CL7 1600 MHz Trident DDR3 review
We feel that more memory is rather important, and in that trend memory manufacturers have started to increase the density of DIMM modules. Where 1 and 2GB DIMM modules have been the standard, we now see very good progress in 4 GB DIMM modules. Today we\'ll do things a little different, G.Skill designed a 8GB low voltage DDR3 kit (2x 4GB) that can be set at 1600 MHz yet still run a CAS latency of 7. And that is truly interesting because the denser the ICs get, the higher latency typically gets.
G.Skill Flare DDR3 2000 MHZ C7 AMD kit review
We test and review the G.Skill Flare DDR3 2000 MHZ C7 AMD kit. These kits are optimized for AMD platforms preferably with the new six-core X6 processors, and in specific some ASUS motherboards. The kit we'll be testing today obviously comes from that series and is a 2,000MHz CL7-9-7-24 1.65V 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3 kit with its latest Flare heatsinks.
G.Skill Phoenix PRO 120GB SSD review
The SSD tested today once again is the Phoenix series from G.Skill. After we tested their 100GB Phoenix SSD (which received a very positive review) G.Skill instantly requested if we would like to review the 120GB PRO model. Both drives pretty much are the same thing, same controller ... The 100GB Phoenix uses Samsung memory though but the trick is that there is 20GB extra volume space available on the new 120GB Pro (compared to the 100GB model) for nearly the same price. A new Firmware for the SandForce 1200 based controller that is inside this 120GB model simply reserves less NAND flash memory for its data-compression scheme. As a result the overall write performance could be a tiny bit slower, but only a few percent as best. It however will give you 20 GB more space to play around with at the same price. And since price per GB is everything in the land of SSDs -- this certainly is a significant for any vendor and for you as an end-user.