Sandforce discontinued?

Whats going on. Latest FW is 7 month old... is it discontinued?

No firmware updates are usually a good thing. That means everything works as it should. It's not like drivers you know. Performance Pro had only one firmware revision 1.0 and was the best drive out there all-around, until it got axed.:(:

Mushkin FW 5.04

SanDisk FW 5.05

ADATA FW 5.07

 

Corsair and Kingston 5.03...

ya can't go by version numbers as each version is proprietary to the company its sold to IIRC. ie: ADATAs 5.07 could be the same as Corsairs 5.03. i dont think there is a way to tell.

I think is LSI FW versioning. OCZ and Intel are using their own versioning (OCZ 2.5, Intel 335t)

Everybody and their higher numbers means a better product. Thanks Google Chrome. lol :roll:

Usually firmware updates beeing rolled out to

- fix bugs

- maintain or improve stability

- maintain or improve performance

 

My Force 3 runs neither stable with 5.03 or does perform well, compared to other sandforce-drives on the market.

 

ADATAs 5.07 could be the same as Corsairs 5.03. i dont think there is a way to tell.

Every resellers gets the base-FW from LSI. You definetly can tell that Corsairs 9 month 5.03 in some way is not as actual as other ones just by DATE.

 

Users tell us that new drives have FW 5.06 by factory default, so obviously yes, Corsair got one.

See here:

http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117370

 

Question is why is it not released for download.

Question is why is it not released for download.

 

Part of our internal validation process is testing new firmwares with EVERY SSD that is applicable to the update. Among other things, we make sure that the update works with the field update tool (which is different from how firmwares are loaded in the factory) and also that the firmware and the process does not create "bricks". When that is done, we'll release a new firmware.

 

Check in again in a week or so. ::pirate::

The Firmware does not expire like a carton of Milk, so I am a little confused by your question. But there is no planned update for the Force series SSD's at this time. However if there is a reason to release a new F/W version it will be posted under the firmware update section.

 

Umm,my 5.03 firmware is starting to smell:D:

So i check back 2 weeks again, still 5.03.... anything new?

 

Dave, in your case (YOUR firmware, not the one of the SSD), holding your breath should fix the problem!

 

Honestly, do you just regularly spam topics with no-content or do you always do small-talk in technical-forums? Consider gaining some more free-time instead avoiding it.

My Force 3 runs neither stable with 5.03 or does perform well, compared to other sandforce-drives on the market.

 

 

How are you able to determine if your drive does not perform well compared to other drives? Your drive will depend on the specs provided for the drive, not based on what other devices can do.

 

Ex: DDR3 1600 Memory, one stick has a CAS 11, another has CAS 7, the memory that has the CAS 7 will likely perform better than one with CAS 11 even tho the memory is DDR3 1600.

 

Practical Example: The Corsair Nova runs the sandforce drive but only does 280ish MB/s read whereas the Force 3 GT running the same sandforce would run at 555ish MB/s. Two different drives running the same firmware with two different performances.

 

Someone please correct me if I am wrong with these examples. But you can't just compare two drives and say x should be the same as y because of z.

 

This is where maybe the stability of your drive is an issue, but I have two Force 3 GT's in a raid 0 config and have no issues with stability. However, I thought when I first installed my first force 3 I did have stability issues, but it was not the drive at fault. I had upgraded my bios then installed the drive and I would have random system freezes. I rolled back my ASUS boards bios to 1504 and had no issues, sometimes things just aren't compatible and you may have to run older things to keep things working right and performing well. I still can't use the latest version of the bios from ASUS as it still causes system stability issues.

 

Have you ran a benchmark tool that allows you to measure performance, if so which one(s)? Also what are the symptoms of your stability issues, like what happens?

Someone please correct me if I am wrong with these examples. But you can't just compare two drives and say x should be the same as y because of z.

 

The only suitable comparison for the force 3 (not GT or GS versions) is other sandforce drives with async NAND.

 

Drives with Toggle or Sync based NAND will always perform better than the force 3 because they have much better NAND. Particularly for incompressible data.

 

Additionally, so much is dependent on what controller you connect the drive to. If you are not connecting your drive to an Intel SATA 6 port, you can't directly compare your results to others running on an Intel SATA 6 port.

Right, so that is why I am confused as to how someone can say that their drive doesn't perform up to the specs of what other drives can do as there are so many variables...

Yeah, let me deconfuse your imagination:

 

At first i dont compare against specs, because theres only ATTO, and ATTO measuring max. compressible transfers is far away from reality. I compare against each other on the same system, what means comparing benchmarks of same drives with different FW (5.06 factory default ones) or comparable drives (controller+chips) with more actual FW from SF in same environment (safety defaults/no OC).

 

I use ATTO when i would like to know if returning-RMA had a chance... nothing else. It's useless for determing real-world performance, because when analysing performance of FW you hardly want to know how's the UNcompressed transfers behave.... of course ATTO does NOT show difference in real-world performance, it just shows physically maximum.

 

So, whatever the numbers are compared to your different system or the specs; it makes the FWs performance-result (any thirdparty measurement tool - i.e. HDTach, ASSSD CrystalDIskMark) comparable on this perticular system, because in fact the only thing that has changed between the benchmark-runs is FW (or Brand and FW) and i just compare the direct alteration/impact in performance. Got it?

 

Thats just for performance behaviour due to FW, whatever the specs tell, and you can test stability the same way.

 

According to stability experiencing bluescreens/freezes regularly, while in same environment (safety defaults/No OC) running same drive with different firmware (5.06 factory default ones) or comparable drive (controller/chips) with more actual FW from SF do not experience bluescreen/freeze ever.

 

Sry that i feel penalized for not buying a new drive, this way. I just want the same FWs beeing made available. This page carries downloads for every single drive/model, so to tell, they can only release it when it fits all drive is wrong.

 

"So when you want a faster/more stable firmware, you have to buy a new drive..." SUCKS!

 

They truly can release 5.06 for just the seperated drives that got it by factory default, but they dont.

 

Is that so hard to understand? Or are you just generally bashing criticism???

 

Whatever since yesterday this forum officially announced new Firmware 5.05A but doesnt allow anyone to download.

 

So there's a new carton of milk, while no-one tells us the new ingredients..... this corporation is really arkward. Hope it doesnt brick so many drives out there. :D

 

The so called "carton of milk" is a large set of algorythms that tells the controller how to use the chips, so majorly FW is affecting performance and stability. It should be the way, that the brand-resellers ALWAYS keep working on releasing new firmware to improve stability and performance for update, and ensure the safety of that process, at least as long the particalar model is still on the market and not EOL. This is all i want!

What is improved in newest firmware 5.05a?Should we update our drives anyway aka it is safe for drive?No problems with this update?

the rule of thumb has always been "If it ain"t broke, don"t fix it."

If companies are able to release FW versions within days of its release from SandForce, means they are not doing there own validations to verify the FW is solid and safe to release. I would rather wait for Corsair to run all its tests and validate it before releasing to make sure there are no possible issues with it, than trust a company who does not fully validate it themselves. This is one reason why I stick with Corsair! Plus if there are no current issues with the FW your using why even update it? =)

Wow, that overprovisioning and optimize feature are pretty nice. Certainly some kind of good work, well done ;)