Storage editor Christopher Ryan returns from LSI's Accelerating Innovation Summit 2013 with details about SandForce's next-gen controller. Read along as he walks us through some of the processor's features, and then updates our monthly recommendations.
Detailed solid-state drive specifications and reviews are great—that is, if you have the time to do the research. However, at the end of the day, what an enthusiast needs is the best SSD within a certain budget.
So, if you don’t have the time to read the benchmarks, or if you don’t feel confident enough in your ability to pick the right drive, then fear not. We at Tom’s Hardware have come to your aid with a simple list of the best SSD offered for the money.
December Updates: We Have Next-Gen SandForce On Our Lists!
SandForce was once a goofily-named and unknown firm, but its first SSD controller quickly put the company on the map thanks to stellar performance tied to ingenious proprietary technology. Back then, a number of drive vendors were stepping into the SSD space with turnkey Indilinx-based solutions. But SandForce's 1200-series processors quickly became a top choice for everyone except the lucky few with their own in-house controllers.
That position strengthened when the SF-2281 was introduced. Despite some teething pains with firmware and TRIM/power issues, SandForce's 6Gb/s-capable logic went on to power swarms of desktop-oriented SSDs. With success in the client and enterprise spaces, SandForce became a tempting target, and LSI eventually bought the firm in 2011.
But in this business, a lot happens in two years. Samsung rose to prominence, for instance. Marvell's controllers picked up a lot of traction, too. Some vendors relying on SandForce's controllers even fell by the wayside. Don't get us wrong; SSDs packing second-gen SandForce processors are still fast in absolute terms. But they're slower than the competition. SandForce maintains huge sales thanks to OEM and enterprise shipments. It's just not showing as prominently in retail as it once was. Even after a silicon spin, the B02-stepping controller's reduced power consumption and DevSleep support aren't huge selling points.
Although it won't be dropping until sometime in the first half of 2014, SandForce's third-gen processor could revitalize the company. Dubbed the SF3700, it comprises a new family of silicon able to address PCIe- and SATA-enabled storage using AHCI or NVMe. Based on a 14-core processor manufactured at TSMC, it presages the next round of products sporting SandForce technology.
With several versions of the controller planned, SandForce's SF3739 is the model that most enthusiasts will sell a kidney to own. It'll drive more traditional-looking SATA drives and newfangled PCIe/M.2-based SSDs across as many as four PCIe 3.0 lanes. Right now, that configuration is good enough for a searing 1800 MB/s of sequential reads, and LSI says up to 150,000 IOPS are possible. Speculating on performance at this point doesn't mean much since firmware is still in its early stages, but there we go.

Although we're excited about next-gen form factors, most drives will continue utilizing the venerable SATA interface. SandForce's SF3700 attached to SATA will still be quick. And fortunately, much of what makes the controller exciting isn't necessarily tied to performance. Today, DuraWrite is one of the big SandForce innovations. It lets the processor represent stored data with less space, assuming the information isn't completely random. Writing less to the flash means fewer P/E cycles are expended, and that translates to improved endurance and more speed. The company takes critical feedback when the data isn't compressible, and its technology cannot work as effectively, hitting performance hard. LSI says the SF3700 will change that. SATA 6Gb/s-based drives are expected to read and write at 500 MB/s, even faced with fully random workloads. You're lucky if you get 200 MB/s less than that from today's SSDs with second-gen controllers.
As we adopt flash manufactured using ever-smaller transistors, reliability becomes a more prominent issue. It was already a hot-button topic as we shifted from 3x nm NAND to 2x nm, and even more so as we dip under 20 nm. RAISE, or Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements, writes data across multiple flash die to facilitate recovery from a page or block failure. The tradeoff is that SandForce's controller reserves one full die for parity data. If part of a die fails attached to the SF3700, a new die can be allocated to RAISE, eating into over-provisioning.
More recently, some SandForce drives did away with RAISE and over-provisioning to expose more usable capacity. In the future, SF3700-based SSDs that would otherwise skip RAISE support can take advantage of a ninth memory channel to enable the feature.

RAISE is a last-resort feature, though. Most of the time, errors are handled by ECC. The SF3700 relies upon low-density parity check (LDPC) error correction to dynamically address the types of issues inherently affecting solid-state storage. As NAND becomes more error-prone, more thorough implementations of ECC are needed to compensate for the negative side-effects of smaller NAND geometries. Industrial-strength ECC is effective, but requires more processing resources that can choke a controller. Use too little ECC and the drive won't last long enough to install Battlefield 4. SandForce's solution is branded as Shield, and it combines LDPC and DSP technology to apply progressively stronger error correction, as needed. Right out of the box, you don't need much ECC to keep errors at bay, while more sophisticated ECC is required to keep the same drive going at end-of-life wear levels.
Traditionally, this disparity required ECC engines to balance performance with strength during the design process. The Shield solution is based on the idea that, by using less ECC at first, higher performance is possible. By progressively increasing ECC, the drive maintains its integrity for longer in exchange for performance. It's a trade-off that will results in a quantifiable slow-down. However, we have to imagine most folks will gladly give up some throughput in the interest of data preservation.
Much of the SF3700's story is already written in stone, though some of the particulars are up in the air. No matter what final shipping products look like, or which partners end up integrating them, it's fair to say we're waiting anxiously. We should know more after CES; next year should be an interesting one in the world of SSDs.
Storage Reviews For The Month:
Intel SSD 530 Review: A Revised Controller And 20 nm Flash
Disaster Strikes: How Is Data Recovered From A Dead Hard Drive?
OCZ Vector 150 SSD Review: A New Flagship With 19 nm Flash
SanDisk Optimus Eco SSD: A SAS Interface And Up To 2 TB Of Flash
Some Notes About Our Recommendations
A few simple guidelines to keep in mind when reading this list:
- If you don't need to copy gigabytes of data quickly or load games in the blink of an eye, then there's nothing wrong with sticking with a mechanical hard drive. This list is intended for people who want the performance/responsiveness that SSDs offer, and operate on a specific budget. Now that most Intel's 115x chipsets have caching baked in, the idea of SSD-based caching could come into play for more entry-level enthusiasts, too.
- There are several criteria we use to rank SSDs. We try to evenly weigh performance and capacity at each price point and recommend what we believe to the best drive based on our own experiences, along with information garnered from other sites. Some people may only be concerned with performance, but that ignores the ever-present capacity issue that mobile users face ever-presently. Even on the desktop, other variables have to be considered.
- Prices and availability change on a daily basis. Our picks will be valid the month of publication, but we can't extend our choices very far beyond that time frame. SSD pricing is especially competitive, and a £10 difference can be the reason why one SSD makes the list, while another does not. As you shop, use our list as a guide, but always double-check for yourself.
- The list is based on some of the best U.S. prices from online retailers. In other countries or at retail stores, your mileage will most certainly vary.
- These are new SSD prices. No used or open-box offers are in the list; they might represent a good deal, but it’s outside the scope of what we’re trying to do.