Fusion-io Unviels PCI-e SSD for Gamers
A little late on this one, but we wanted to spill the beans anyway.
Fusion-io, the purveyor of all things SSD on PCI-e, announced last week that it has a gamer/enthusiast version of its ioDrive. Essentially, a stripped down version of the faster ioDrive, the new ioXtreme is an 80 GB PCI-e SSD card that will be priced at less than $900. The drive will plug into a PCI-e x1 slot and offer speeds that break through current SATA standards--even the new and not yet available SATA 6 Gbps.
Unfortunately, one major feature holds back the ioXtreme from true greatness: boot.
Fusion-io said that while the new ioXtreme isn't bootable, the company will release a firmware update at a later date to enable booting and other features. We recommend early-adopters to hold out until Fusion-io does update the ioXtreme to be bootable, since this is a cried-for feature of many PCI-e SSD solutions.
Performance wise, Fusion-io said that the ioXtreme 80 GB will deliver an "average" read speed of 520 MB/sec. Fusion-io compares its ioXtreme to Intel's X25-E SSD (the fastest SSD currently available) to a tune of 246 MB/sec.
Just for comparison's sake, the Super Talent RAIDdrive GS does 1.5 GB/sec. read and 1.3 GB/sec. writes, sustained.
We forgot to mention that Fatal1ty officially has his name stamped onto Fusion-io's ioXtreme. According to the company's press release:
Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, the world’s best known PC gamer, and Fusion-io join up at the Fatal1ty E3 booth to launch the ioXtreme, a solid state storage device for high-performance PCs and workstations using 64 bit operating systems. The ioXtreme eliminates application latency, delivering the kind of storage performance once limited to the world’s fastest supercomputers.
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Why this for gamers? Is it just branding sales crap?
I've been waiting for this for a long time but to be honest now it's arrived (in a cut down pcie x1 rather than the original x4 version)...its not so good....the super talent one compares much more favourably on speed, size and price. Don't know if supertalent are going to make theirs bootable though?
Also doesn't PCIe X1 only support 250MB/sec? So how are those speeds of 520 MB/sec going to be supported
Jeess...I wish you people would check your facts....this uses a pcie x4 interface not x1 as you have stated???
http://www.fusionio.com/ioxtreme/specs.php
Listen, I dont want these things on a card, I want a cartridge based system, bootable of course where I can keep different Os's on different carts and boot my machine to whatever I need at that particular time!
Is that so difficult?
Something stuck in a slot inside my machine simply doesnt cut the mustard. Portability and variability is the key with these SSD's and of course, they can take a knock or two during transportation.
Just imagine, you can take your whole machine to work with you in a little cart in your breast pocket, now thats what I call sensible.
Eddie7 - Trust me on this, you want one. You want it on the pcie bus. You want it big, and you want it bad. If you really want portability, plug your USB3 key in and drop it across. I've just moved 65gb of data between 2 of these things big brothers in the time it took to read this article. They are insane. Truly.