Corsair Releases Force Series GS SSDs

by Kristian Vättö on 7/9/2012 12:01:00 PM
Posted in Storage , SSDs , Corsair , Force Series GS

Corsair has released a new member of its Force series SSDs called the Force GS. The Force GS is based on SandForce's SF-2200 series controller (most likely SF-2281) and uses Toggle-Mode MLC NAND (24nm Toshiba Toggle-Mode 2.0 NAND is the likely candidate). As expected, the Force GS uses a 6Gb/s SATA interface and comes in a 2.5" form factor. Corsair is providing three years of warranty, which is pretty common for consumer SSDs (some OEMs such as Intel, Plextor and OCZ have started offering 5-year warranties as a standard, though). Below is a specification table of the Force GS:

Corsair Force Series GS SpecificationsUser Capacity180GB240GB360GB480GBRaw NAND Capacity192GiB256GiB384GiB512GiBNumber of NAND Packages12161216Number of Die per Package2244Sequential Read555MB/s555MB/s555MB/s555MB/sSequential Write525MB/s525MB/s530MB/s455MB/sMax 4K Random Write90K IOPS90K IOPS50K IOPS50K IOPSStreet Price$175$220$320$450

Due to the use of Toggle-Mode NAND, there is a slight increase in write speeds (around 10MB/s in sequential and 5K IOPS in random speeds) compared to SF-2281 SSDs with ONFi 2.x NAND.

The biggest ddifference between the GS and most SF-2281 SSDs is the inclusion of 180GB and 360GB models. There are actually a few other 180GB SandForce SSDs including Intel's 330 and 520, OCZ's Agility 3 and Mushkin's Chronos; but 360GB is a much more uncommon capacity. The only other 360GB 2.5" SSD available at NewEgg is OCZ's Agility 3, although it's out of stock at the moment. Building 180GB and 360GB drives isn't rocket science thanks to the flexibility afforded by SandForce. SF-2200 controllers have a total of eight channels but they can also run in 6-channel mode. To achieve capacities of 180GB and 360GB, you simply run the controller in 6-channel mode and equip the PCB with twelve NAND packages. With twelve dual-die (16GB) NAND packages, the raw NAND capacity is 192GiB. Subtract the space taken by RAISE and over-provisioning and you're left with a usable capacity of 180GB. The 360GB model simply has twice as many NAND die per NAND package, hence doubling the capacity.

Corsair's Force GS is available immediately and at least NewEgg is already listing the drives on their site (check the street price links above). Pricing is quite fair as we are looking at less than $1 per GB at all capacities.

Source: Corsair

Print This Article 9 Comments View All Comments Post a Comment 6-Channels? by danjw on Monday, July 09, 2012 I would like to see benchmarks for those 2 models. If they aren't using all the available channels, wouldn't they see a performance hit? danjw Reply RE: 6-Channels? by Spunjji on Monday, July 09, 2012 In theory, although where performance is limited by other factors such as controller throughput (e.g. compression rate) or the SATA interface speed that may not be the case. Spunjji Reply RE: 6-Channels? by Kristian Vättö on Monday, July 09, 2012 We have 120GB and 180GB Intel 330 Series SSDs in our bench. That should give you an idea (the 180GB model has the same 6-channel layout):

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/590?vs=589

As mentioned above, the bottlenecks are elsewhere. Kristian Vättö Reply Double the die / half the IOPs? by Belard on Monday, July 09, 2012 Is it somewhat concerning that on the LARGER drives, that the IOPS drops down by half. Belard Reply Problem for me is... by JNo on Monday, July 09, 2012 Sandforce = wouldn't touch with a barge pole

Even the mighty, reliable Intel had problems with them. Sure they've resolved that now but Sandforce just seems to be cursed after all I've read. Competing controllers are now in the same ball park performance-wise so getting a Sandforce seems to say, "I don't care about my data".

Maybe I exaggerate for dramatic effect but why take the risk when there are M4s and 830s out there? JNo Reply RE: Problem for me is... by MadMan007 on Monday, July 09, 2012 M4/Marvell and Samsung have never had firmware problem. Oh wait... MadMan007 Reply RE: Problem for me is... by B3an on Monday, July 09, 2012 I think most of the problems with Sandforce have been fixed now. It's not like they're still new and have possible undiscovered issues. I'd happily buy Sandforce drives now. B3an Reply Hmmm... by Movieman420 on Monday, July 09, 2012 With any luck they'll crank out a few like the 240GT that uses a SF2282 to push 32 intel 25nm nand chips for max parallelism thus speed. Would love to see 2282 + 32 x 24nm toggle chips... :drool:

180 GT sports a 2282 with 24 ICs as well...

Movieman420 Reply Wow, cheap by ABR on Thursday, July 12, 2012 After years of going almost nowhere, looks like SSD prices have halved in the past year. (Unfortunately, I finally broke down just before the big drop started...) ABR Reply Subject Comment Post Comment Please login or register to post a comment.
User Name Password Remember me? Login 1 View All Comments Post a Comment Follow AnandTech
Latest from AnandTech Pipeline Submit News! AMD Radeon HD 7970, 7950, 7870 Price Cuts Inbound. 7970GE Available Next Week? NVIDIA Forums & Dev Zone Breached; Up To 400K Password Hashes Taken Plextor Releases M5S SSD Series Samsung To Sell Developer Edition Verizon Galaxy S III with Unlockable Bootloader Motorola Atrix HD Official: $99, LTE, 4.5" HD LCD on AT&T WD Introduces Red: NAS Optimized HDD Line Android 4.1 hits AOSP, Verizon Galaxy Nexus regains AOSP Support Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Goes Gold; GM Released To Developers Windows 8 To RTM In August, Retail In October Boston Releases Servers Based on Calxeda's ARM SoCs Motorola Atrix HD For AT&T Peeks Out, Looks Sharp DailyTech NVIDIA: We've Been Hacked, User Records Lost MIT Enhances LCD 3D TV Experience Without Glasses Virgin Galactic Announces "LauncherOne" Rocket for Small Satellites FCC, DOJ Worried About Verizon's "Noncompete" Deal With Cable Firms Apple Retreats, Admits That Pulling EPEAT Certification "Was a Mistake" 7/13/2012 Daily Hardware Reviews FBI Probing China's ZTE for Obstructing Investigation Into Iranian Shipments Accuracy of Iris Recognition Systems Degrades over Time According to New Study Quick Note: Tesla BMW 3-Series Competitor Coming in 2015 NYC Turns Phone Booths into Wi-Fi Stations Quick Note: Microsoft Leaks Info on Halo 4 Limited Edition Xbox 360 Console Quick Note: Amazon Claims Yet Another Microsoft Windows Phone Exec Yahoo Loses 453,000 User Passwords to Hackers Republican Rep. Wants Taxpayers to Pay for Piracy Police (Again) Sprint, AT&T Disable Universal Search on Galaxy S III to Appease Apple Amazon to Offer Same-Day Delivery, Could Pummel Brick-and-Mortar Retailers 7/12/2012 Daily Hardware Reviews Twitter @DavidMelgar I've got a few ;) what have you been writing to it? @rolphus @charlesarthur yeah it's clear that a lot of this is software related, scrolling under boot camp is fine @rolphus @charlesarthur mountain lion shifts some of the burden back over to the GPU but it's still not perfect @rolphus @charlesarthur depends on the workload, for a lot of the slow scrolling stuff it actually seems to be CPU believe it or not @rolphus @charlesarthur it shouldn't, but it's an easy example of how not all drawing processes occur on the GPU. @rolphus @charlesarthur …but many tasks are still done on the CPU (e.g. JPEG decoding, still CPU bound). We need faster CPUs & GPUs @rolphus @charlesarthur it's actually both CPU and GPU. The lack of fixed function scaling in the 1680 and 1920 scaled modes hurts (GPU)... @jjziv send me an email :) @oddeiriknes I noticed it with the original Transformer as well, asked NVIDIA at the time but actually never got a response, will ask again @oddeiriknes I've seen slowdowns when doing a lot of IO on a number of NV based tablets, I'm not sure if this is an SoC or bigger issue tho  

Copyright © 1997-2012 AnandTech, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms, Conditions and Privacy Information.
Click Here for Advertising Information