G.Skill Falcon II 128GB SSD review

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 02/21/2010 02:00 PM [ 0 comment(s) ]

Final Words and Verdict

Final Words & Conclusion

The G.Skill Falcon II is a top notch product. It is however also a little confusing based on the Falcon name. See, as a follow-up to the original Falcon series, you expect the Falcon II products to be faster, but the fact is that the original Falcon SSD with Samsung NAND Flash is faster. So that's doesn't make much sense.

That aside, it's a grand product though. The usage of the new ECO barefoot controller with Micron 34nm flash memory makes the Falcon II a very high-performing product that can be a little more affordable. We expect the product in the end to be 15% to 20% cheaper opposed to the original Falcon SSD. And that would make the 128GB version hover at roughly 300 EUR.

The biggest problem for you the end user will be the actual availability. To date it is very hard to spot any SSD from G.Skill anywhere in the stores. We do hope that improves real soon, as the G.Skill product definitely oozes value and offers rock hard, good performance. Unfortunately if a product is hard to find, typically the e-tailers increase pricing (question vs. demand).

We hope very much that there will be a high-volume of the Falcon II series available on the market as the product would simply be worth every penny -- whether that is in your desktop PC or laptop.

The performance is as advertised with read speeds up-to roughly 220 MB/sec and write performance at roughly 150 MB/sec, depending on how you measure. It's good to see the new Firmware support TRIM, so if you use Windows 7 that increases performance over a long time-span. We would prefer a Garbage Cleaning feature like the OCZ Agility and Vertex drives offer though, drives with such embedded technology optimize themselves once they are in IDLE, keeping advertised performance at 99% at all times.

Concluding -- it still amazes me where we are anno 2009/2010 with Solid State technology. It was only two years ago where JMicron based controllers took the market by surprise with a lot of performance issues and high prizes. Prices are now stabilizing. Volume went up, performance went up and the performance consistency is stable.

The Falcon II carries a price tag of roughly 300 EUR for the 128GB model making it roughly 50 EUR cheaper than the competition, it's a grand product and we hope to see some good availability very soon.

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What's next in SSD development you ask? Well, we feel that garbage control should be implemented on all SSDs, SATA 3 (6GBPs) to clear out the SATA2 bandwidth limitation and even faster drives with higher volumes. Yes Sir .. you can expect a lot more SSD innovation in 2010.

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