Intel ‘K’ Series SSD lineup coming soon!

[M-ursu]

Intel Previews SSD Overclocking Performance at PAX Prime

Intel is going to announce and discuss details regarding their new Bay Trail Atom Z3000 series and Ivy Bridge-E HEDT platform at IDF13 San Francisco. Aside from these, Intel is also going to discuss their new developments for PC enthusiasts which includes topics like SSD Overclocking which we just came to know a few weeks back.

Intel Previews SSD Overclocking Performance at PAX Prime

We know that the SSD Overclocking would be possible not only on Ivy Bridge-E but all other desktop platforms from Intel through their Intel XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility) which has become a necessary tool for PC enthusiasts and overclockers. At PAX Prime, Intel was showcasing their new SSD Overclocking tool and thanks to Legitreviews, we have more details regarding the configuration and performance of SSD overclocking.

The SSD previewed for overclocking at PAX Prime had the SSDSC2BB480G4 : BTWL3070050Z480QGN part number which corresponds to the high-end enterprise Intel SSD DC S3500 Series 480GB w/ 20nm MLC NAND Flash with some custom modifications by Intel. The drive capacity won’t be restricted to 480 GB as Legitreviews mentions that Intel is possibly preparing a new set of ‘K’ series SSDs which would be available in various capacity. The ‘K’ branding is known commonly for Intel’s Core series processors featuring an unlocked processor offering overclocking support.

There are several options and configurations which are going to be available with the updated Intel XTU allowing users to manually overclock their SSDs for faster speeds. Users would be able to adjust the frequency of the SSD controller in MHz and would also be able to set the power modes of the SSD ranging from ‘limited’, ‘typical’ or ‘unconstrained’. Last of all there would be a option to set the bus frequency of the NAND Flash memory to 83 MHz or 100 MHz. The description of each feature that would be released with the Intel XTU SSD overclocking tool are listed below:

-Controller Frequency - ‘Sets the frequency of the specified Intel SSDs on-drive micro-controller’

 

-Power Mode - ’Sets the power limits for the specified Intel SSD’ (Limited/Typical/Unconstrained)

-NAND Frequency - ‘Sets the NAND bus frequency for the specified Intel SSD’

 

The Intel XTU which would exclusively feature support for SSD overclocking currently comes with two options. One is to adjust NAND frequency from its default 83 MHz to 100 MHz frequency while the other options allows adjusting the controller frequency from the default 400 MHz to 625 MHz.

 

SSD at Default Settings (83 MHz/ 400 MHz):

SSD at OC Settings (83 MHz/ 625 MHz):

As you can note, the overall performance and speed have definitely gone up by a good gain but at the end of the day, its upto consumers or should i say the enthusiasts to decide what they care about the most? Intel also asked users at the PAX Prime to take a little survey which asked them if they prefer SSD Life, Data protection or SSD speed. For overclockers, i personally don’t think data matters most and it would become a hobby for overclockers to overclock SSDs as CPU and GPU overclocking. The more options for users, the better but it remains to be seen what kind of price would Intel want for their new SSDs.

Intel k series might be coming sooner than expected!

Anticipating it will make a big splash, Intel is planning to release an product late this year or very early next that will allow users to overclock solid-state drives. The overclocking capability is expected to allow users to tweak the percentage of an SSD's capacity that's used for data compression. At its Intel Developers Forum next month in San Francisco, Intel has scheduled an information session on overclocking SSDs. The IDF session is aimed at system manufacturers and developers as well as do-it-yourself enthusiasts, such as gamers. Interesting, but we will have to see how much performance and capacity it have over existing solutions

 

 

Source:

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/overclock_your_ssd_intel_makes_a_promise.html

http://wccftech.com/intel-previews-ssd-overclocking-performance-pax-prime-k-series-ssd-lineup-works/

http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-shows-pax-attendees-ssd-overclocking_122557

 

 

 

[jonasa97]

start the SSD overclocking debate shitstorm!!

[Skyfire]

SSD waterblocks here we come.

[ANIMAL_ORIGIN]

SSD waterblocks here we come.

It was only a matter of time! lol

[Lyons]

Absolutely pointless, marketing crap. You can hardly tell the difference between 400-500mb/s let alone 480-500mb/s.

 

Edit - AND you decrease stability doing it. This is an absolute joke. Some of the gains are less than 1%!

[MrSuperb]

LOL ... this performance 'gains' of SSD ocing  ... -.-

[JORDANonPC]

Remember ocing storage is risky but running 8 ssds in raid 0 is just fine

[KneesWeak]

I still want an IDE SSD

[Beskamir]

Absolutely pointless, marketing crap. You can hardly tell the difference between 400-500mb/s let alone 480-500mb/s.

Depends on the file sizes. I doubt someone could tell the difference between 9gb/s (ramdisk or a ton of SSD's in RAID 0) and 500mb if they just have firefox as the test program.

 

As for overclocking storage I agree with Linus. It shouldn't exist. If this becomes a thing; I wouldn't be surprized if manufactures underclocked SSD's since that would make overclocking them worth it...

[Lyons]

Depends on the file sizes. I doubt someone could tell the difference between 9gb/s (ramdisk or a ton of SSD's in RAID 0) and 500mb if they just have firefox as the test program.

 

As for overclocking storage I agree with Linus. It shouldn't exist. If this becomes a thing; I wouldn't be surprized if manufactures underclocked SSD's since that would make overclocking them worth it...

 

It's marketing bullshit. This seems like a desperate move which is very surprising for Intel, surely they aren't as far back in the SSD market as to think they need to come up with this crap to get sales. Just make a better product! That's how you get sales. This is an AMD-style move, like those silly FX9590 CPU's...

[Jozi]

If this becomes a thing; I wouldn't be surprized if manufactures underclocked SSD's since that would make overclocking them worth it...

[JujuShinobi]

I can see the use of these 'K' series SSDs however for what you get, I don't see if it's that useful as of yet. To me, SSDs are already as fast as it gets even with them being bottlenecked by the SATA 3 interface. To be fair, I am coming from a laptop 5400RPM drive so yeah. I would much rather see Intel making PCIe SSDs that you can boot from because that would be way to awesome

[TopWargamer]

[MdX MaxX]

I see the value for content creators who use an SSD as a scratch disk for editing video and such.  A few extra MB/s could measurably save some time in the long run.

 

But it's certainly not a good idea to overclock an SSD that you're actually storing an OS or data on for any significant period of time.  Especially since it won't affect every day performance at all; I assume random read/write speeds won't budge.

[Kayn]

Don't think that little performance boost is worth the instability that comes with overclocking it.

[gastew15]

I think I'll stick to the idea of leaving your storage alone, since I actually like having my data.

[Dravic]

Absolutely pointless, marketing crap. You can hardly tell the difference between 400-500mb/s let alone 480-500mb/s.

 

Edit - AND you decrease stability doing it. This is an absolute joke. Some of the gains are less that 1%!

 

Hmm it reminds me of something...

 

Oh, I KNOW!!!

 

Absolutely pointless, marketing crap. You can hardly tell the difference between 3400-4800MHz let alone 3,800-44000MHz.

 

Edit - AND you decrease stability doing it. This is an absolute joke. Some of the gains are less that few %!

[Simmytu]

"Lets overclock an SSD awesome! Lets set this to max and this too :rolleyes: " 3 minutes later a €350 SSD is gone in smoke, really 

[Lukiose]

If overclocking could make it go at least 25% faster, maybe..

But with that kind of crap performance gains, who the hell would do it? You're risking your hardware for meager performance increments

[Nicktrance]

I would never use it on a PC I'd use day to day, but why not have the option? I'm definitely curious how far the IOPS can be boosted.

[ivhyn]

Let's fry them

[bluepoodleguy]

If I would spring the cash for say an Intel 520 series SSD it would be for data integrity and long device life. I'll leave the overclocking to the benchers.

[Biased Opinion]

if you saturate the SATA 3 bus then there is no point in OCing ssd, now with PCI then maybe but really it just lets you swing your E-dick around a bit better that normal seeing as the performance gains are not really that amazing

[bchampion96]

I still want an IDE SSD

 

Wut?

[yesman]

how many mad people are going to try this...i know i am