SanDisk Extreme II SSD Review: Striking At The Heavy-Hitters

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boulbox

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I have always been a fan of Sandisk SSDs, can't wait until to try this out in someone else's build as they usually sell their products that is very acceptable for budgets.
 

slomo4sho

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I am also curious about the selection of the comparative models. Having the Extreme (not II) in the charts for comparison between the two generations would have been a welcomed addition along with the inclusion of the 840 series.
 

flong777

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I know a lot of people have already pointed this out but can't Tom's Hardware afford a damn 256 GB 840 Pro? I mean come on, it is the fastest SSD on the planet right now.
 

raidtarded

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Seriously, what is the point of this article? The fastest car in the world is as Yugo if you dont test against a Lamborghini.
 

merikafyeah

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Want an 840 Pro comparison and far more in-depth review?
See here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7006/sandisk-extreme-ii-review-480gb

It's Anand's new favorite SSD, and based on the results, I'm inclined to agree.
It's peak performance is right up there with the 840 Pro, but what's really extreme is the drive's consistency. It's performance when the drive is close to full is unmatched.

There are no high peaks accompanied by low valleys in performance when it comes to the Extreme II. It's pretty much smooth and fast sailing all the time, which in my book, places the Extreme II a step above the 840 Pro. The 840 Pro would have to be at least $30 cheaper than the Extreme II for me to even consider it over the Extreme II.
 

JPNpower

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Why is the 840 Pro the fastest SSD on the planet? It has its share of drawbacks, and is slower than the OCZ Vector, and the Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme on many benchmarks. Don't make broad statemets that aren't always true.
 

JPNpower

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To Toms,
The "Heavy hitters" for modern SSDs include the fastest SSDs on the market right now, which are The Plextor M5 pro Xtreme, the OCZ Vector and Samsung 840 pro. Of these, you have only included the OCZ, and the slower version of the Plextor. Also, you have also included the old Crucial m4, which is a good drive, but old, and not one of the heavyweights now. At least include the improved "M500" version. I also find it confusing why you include the older Samsung 830.
These are minor points though. Thank you for the great comparison. I look forward to more storage comparisons
 

Branden

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you call the article "striking at the heavy-hitters" yet you don't compare it to THE heavy-hitter: the samsung 840 pro.
that single omission itself made this review critically flawed.
 

bucknutty

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About a year ago I got a Sandisk extreme 120gb on sale for $90. I knew it was not the fastest drive or the most high-end drive, but the price was right. It has been running 12-15 hours a day every day for the past year and it works great. Its fast for video editing and loading video games, and that's all I wanted it. Sandisk has put out 3 updated firmwares in that time as well as a little, ssd health program, so you can monitor your read writes, update the firmware or check the ssd for errors. I feel that I got a great value for my $90.
 

cangelini

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We're working on getting Christopher multiple capacities of the 840 Pro to add to his library of drives. We have nothing against the 840 Pro. In fact, the rest of our staff is using them as our reference for 2013. The fact that Christopher doesn't have one is simply an artifact of him recently coming on-board as our consumer SSD editor.
Thanks,
Chris
 
I would REALLY like to see RELIABILITY, NOT about just speed reviews. Like the 840 pro that has MANY post on newegg about dying drives (and other models/makes as well). CORSAIR is the only one that doesn't but they also don't have that many post.
 

danwat1234

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Why wasn't the Intel X25-m G2 SSD in these benchmarks? It's still a very good reliable drive and I'm interested in how it compares in random reads/writes.

What we are seeing is stagnation. We have a great Marvell controller, Indilinx Barefoot 2 controllwer and a solide Sandforce 2000 series controllered SSDs.
I'm waiting for the next generation, maybe for the Sandforce/LSI 3000 series controllers that can do 200,000 IOPS! Google it. Though that drive was using a PCIe 4x interface rather than SATA but it was in the 2.5" drive form factor.
 

danwat1234

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I agree with you but it would finally be an SSD that would saturate the SATA 3 interface with Tomshardware's 'Storage bench 1.0'. Right now the fastest SSD maintains an average speed of 268MB/s. Probably significantly faster real world desktop traces too and PCmark.
Maybe increase queue depth of 1 4KB random reads and write speeds too. So far I've only seen as high as about 30MB/s 4K random read with a queue depth of 1 on Crystaldisk Mark.
 
Yeah, that's because it has to wait for the computer to receive the last IO, process it, and send the command for the next. My guess is that's a latency issue, largely on the platform. At 100K, that's 10 microseconds per IO, for the software to receive it, work out what it's doing next, and send it back to the SSD. That's likely a driver/controller limitation IMO.
 

danwat1234

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Good point I have always wondered if the modern Intel and AMD I/O controllers were a limitation at low queue depths and it makes sense that they are. But faster SSDs would help real world desktop traces quite a bit towards achieving full SATA 3 saturation I hope.
 

utomo

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Now the most important things to do is not the performance.
The most important things to do is to make the price lower and affordable.
many people feel the price still too high
 
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