Thread: G.Skill Falcon 2 One Twenty Eight gigabyte solid-state drive

In our first solid-state drive round-up previous year we rapidly learned that a SSD can just be as well as the controller functioning the magic behind it. That was the last time we assured a solid state drive from G.Skill, who is well known for its overclocking friendly storage examples.


As you might think G.Skill's before insert in the SSD arena, the 128GB Titan was plagued with stuttering troubles attributed to the little buffer size utilized through its dreaded JMicron 602B controller. This controller was an development upon the 16KB on the actual 602A, but even paled in comparison to the 256KB cache extended through the Intel X25-M and the 64MB off-chip DRAM supported through the Indilinx Barefoot controller.


It became broadly familiar then that the deficiency of a correct cache would cause bad write function, particularly when dealing with little documentation as evidenced in random 4 KB write tries. Struggling to sell any products utilizing JMicron's chip, producers rapidly moved to fresher controllers from Samsung and Indilinx, adding G.Skill, who eventually dropped their Titan line in prefer of the the Indilinx Barefoot-founded Falcon serial.




Intel subsequently freed their second era X25-M SSDs utilizing fresher 34nm MLC NAND flash memory to increase information density and assist to create the product cheap. And eventually, more cheap it became. Whereas their actual 80 gigabyte X25-M SSD was introduced, the 'G2' edition offering the similar to base capacity is recently priced anywhere.


In an effort to stay competitive G.Skill declared the Falcon 2 series last November. This fresh SSD line characteristics an informed Indilinx ECO controller, which as you might have imagined furnishes support for 34nm NAND flash memory as good as the new firmware from Indilinx (v1819) with developed support for the Windows 7 TRIM order.


Interestingly, these specifications are less than the claimed velocities of the actual Falcon series at 230 and 190MB/s. Apparently this has to do with the fresh v1819 firmware supporting Windows 7's TRIM command.


The function penalty might look similar to a worse deal on paper. However, with TRIM support enabled the fresh G.Skill Falcon 2 SSDs should be capable to function at peak process consistently over time instead than suffering the basic degradation troubles of early MLC-founded drives. It can not be emphasized sufficient that the controller's efficiency plays a chief role in solid state drive function, so we are keen to see how the new Indilinx ECO-based SSD couples up opposite the competition. Read on for an in-depth appearance.