The launch of Haswell-E ushered in a triumvirate of new technology – a new CPU line, a new motherboard chipset and DDR4 memory. Today we focus on the new consumer motherboard chipset, X99, with motherboards from all four major manufacturers: the…
The rise of USB 3.0 as a high speed interface for PCs and the increasing affordability of flash memory has led to some very interesting products. USB flash drives are a dime a dozen, but there is scope for manufacturers to differentiate themselves. Corsair’s Flash Voyager GTX series brings SSD controllers to the flash drive market. Coupling it with a SATA – USB 3.0 bridge allows them to set benchmark records for their product line. More importantly, it brings some unique features. The rest of the review will present the DAS (direct-attached storage) benchmark numbers from our evaluation of the 256GB version, along with a few observations.
The unit was benchmarked in our DAS testbed (running Windows 8.1 Pro x64) after formatting it in NTFS. Prior to formatting, we ran HD Tune Pro’s artificial benchmarks on the drive. Note that the sequential read / writes do not make a lot of sense for SSDs or flash drives, as they are more for determining how bandwidth varies as we go further away from the spindle in hard drives.
From the gallery above, we have around 336 MBps reads and around 178 MBps writes for random accesses. For large (8 MB) accesses, this improves to 395 MBps reads and 231 MBps writes.
HD Tune Pro’s information page shows that the flash drive supports all the S.M.A.R.T features as well as a multitude of other SATA features. Importantly, TRIM is supported. Using CyberShadow’s TrimCheck utility, we confirmed that TRIM does indeed work on the Flash Voyager GTX.
Moving on to real-life benchmarks, we first have the robocopy benchmarks with various queue depths (as made visible to end users through robocopy’s multi-threaded option)
| Corsair Flash Voyager GTX USB 3.0 256 GB robocopy Benchmarks (MBps) | ||||||||
| Write to DAS | Read from DAS | |||||||
| 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | |
| Photos | 122.72 | 116.11 | 118.37 | 119.59 | 279.94 | 313.99 | 303.84 | 295.13 |
| Videos | 122.40 | 118.19 | 118.90 | 118.81 | 298.63 | 292.18 | 289.24 | 288.14 |
| BR | 117.35 | 118.09 | 114.84 | 117.06 | 297.71 | 291.59 | 289.20 | 285.51 |
The robocopy benchmarks represent the typical use-case for high-speed flash drives. However, we also processed PC Mark 8’s storage bench. Out of the various available workloads, we chose a few multimedia processing traces.
| Corsair Flash Voyager GTX USB 3.0 256 GB PCMark8 Storage Benchmarks (MBps) | ||
| Write Bandwidth | Read Bandwidth | |
| Adobe Photoshop (Light) | 140.46 | 105.57 |
| Adobe Photoshop (Heavy) | 153.69 | 107.60 |
| Adobe After Effects | 123.47 | 120.05 |
| Adobe Illustrator | 138.09 | 114.13 |
The Flash Voyager GTX is also recognized by Corsair’s SSD Toolbox. One of the interesting facts revealed by the toolbox is the firmware version, S9FM01.7. A cursory search of the version number on the Internet reveals that the controller in the flash drive is the Phison S9. Readers might remember the previous generation Phison S8 controller being used in the Corsair Force Series LS SSD. It is heartening to see that the SSD controller along with the flash chips and the SATA – USB 3.0 bridge can be packed in such a small form factor.
The SSD Toolbox also allows for upgrading the firmware and configuring the overprovisioning (i.e, X GB out of 256 GB can be set aside, invisible to the OS, for use by the SSD controller to prolong the life of the flash).
Coming to the business end of the review, the Corsair Flash Voyager GTX USB 3.0 flash drive continues Corsair’s tradition of improving the performance of their USB 3.0 flash drive every year. As icing on the cake, we have a real SSD controller in the form of the Phison S9 inside.
The performance of the drive leaves us with no doubt that it would be a great Windows-to-Go drive. Unfortunately, Corsair has not decided to pursue the certification process. As far as non-enterprise consumers go, this is perfectly acceptable – the performance for Windows-to-Go is there without the extra cost associated with obtaining the certification that eventually gets passed on to them.
Minor points of concern include Corsair’s refusal to divulge the flash memory configuration / SATA – USB 3.0 bridge model being used (as these could potentially change in future production runs) and the inability to configure overprovisioning for non-NTFS file systems.
Pretty much the only downside is the premium that one needs to pay for the form factor. The 256GB version currently retails for $220 on Amazon, which is at least $70 more than what one would pay for a 2.5″ SSD and a bus-powered USB 3.0 enclosure. There are definitely use-cases where the form factor (and absence of hanging cables) plays an important role. In those roles, the Corsair Flash Voyager GTX is one of the top performers.
The rise of USB 3.0 as a high speed interface for PCs and the increasing affordability of flash memory has led to some very interesting products. USB flash drives are a dime a dozen, but there is scope for manufacturers to differentiate themselves. Corsair’s Flash Voyager GTX series brings SSD controllers to the flash drive market. Coupling it with a SATA – USB 3.0 bridge allows them to set benchmark records for their product line. More importantly, it brings some unique features. The rest of the review will present the DAS (direct-attached storage) benchmark numbers from our evaluation of the 256GB version, along with a few observations.
The unit was benchmarked in our DAS testbed (running Windows 8.1 Pro x64) after formatting it in NTFS. Prior to formatting, we ran HD Tune Pro’s artificial benchmarks on the drive. Note that the sequential read / writes do not make a lot of sense for SSDs or flash drives, as they are more for determining how bandwidth varies as we go further away from the spindle in hard drives.
From the gallery above, we have around 336 MBps reads and around 178 MBps writes for random accesses. For large (8 MB) accesses, this improves to 395 MBps reads and 231 MBps writes.
HD Tune Pro’s information page shows that the flash drive supports all the S.M.A.R.T features as well as a multitude of other SATA features. Importantly, TRIM is supported. Using CyberShadow’s TrimCheck utility, we confirmed that TRIM does indeed work on the Flash Voyager GTX.
Moving on to real-life benchmarks, we first have the robocopy benchmarks with various queue depths (as made visible to end users through robocopy’s multi-threaded option)
| Corsair Flash Voyager GTX USB 3.0 256 GB robocopy Benchmarks (MBps) | ||||||||
| Write to DAS | Read from DAS | |||||||
| 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | |
| Photos | 122.72 | 116.11 | 118.37 | 119.59 | 279.94 | 313.99 | 303.84 | 295.13 |
| Videos | 122.40 | 118.19 | 118.90 | 118.81 | 298.63 | 292.18 | 289.24 | 288.14 |
| BR | 117.35 | 118.09 | 114.84 | 117.06 | 297.71 | 291.59 | 289.20 | 285.51 |
The robocopy benchmarks represent the typical use-case for high-speed flash drives. However, we also processed PC Mark 8’s storage bench. Out of the various available workloads, we chose a few multimedia processing traces.
| Corsair Flash Voyager GTX USB 3.0 256 GB PCMark8 Storage Benchmarks (MBps) | ||
| Write Bandwidth | Read Bandwidth | |
| Adobe Photoshop (Light) | 140.46 | 105.57 |
| Adobe Photoshop (Heavy) | 153.69 | 107.60 |
| Adobe After Effects | 123.47 | 120.05 |
| Adobe Illustrator | 138.09 | 114.13 |
The Flash Voyager GTX is also recognized by Corsair’s SSD Toolbox. One of the interesting facts revealed by the toolbox is the firmware version, S9FM01.7. A cursory search of the version number on the Internet reveals that the controller in the flash drive is the Phison S9. Readers might remember the previous generation Phison S8 controller being used in the Corsair Force Series LS SSD. It is heartening to see that the SSD controller along with the flash chips and the SATA – USB 3.0 bridge can be packed in such a small form factor.
The SSD Toolbox also allows for upgrading the firmware and configuring the overprovisioning (i.e, X GB out of 256 GB can be set aside, invisible to the OS, for use by the SSD controller to prolong the life of the flash).
Coming to the business end of the review, the Corsair Flash Voyager GTX USB 3.0 flash drive continues Corsair’s tradition of improving the performance of their USB 3.0 flash drive every year. As icing on the cake, we have a real SSD controller in the form of the Phison S9 inside.
The performance of the drive leaves us with no doubt that it would be a great Windows-to-Go drive. Unfortunately, Corsair has not decided to pursue the certification process. As far as non-enterprise consumers go, this is perfectly acceptable – the performance for Windows-to-Go is there without the extra cost associated with obtaining the certification that eventually gets passed on to them.
Minor points of concern include Corsair’s refusal to divulge the flash memory configuration / SATA – USB 3.0 bridge model being used (as these could potentially change in future production runs) and the inability to configure overprovisioning for non-NTFS file systems.
Pretty much the only downside is the premium that one needs to pay for the form factor. The 256GB version currently retails for $220 on Amazon, which is at least $70 more than what one would pay for a 2.5″ SSD and a bus-powered USB 3.0 enclosure. There are definitely use-cases where the form factor (and absence of hanging cables) plays an important role. In those roles, the Corsair Flash Voyager GTX is one of the top performers.
It’s been a long time in coming, but PayPal announced in a blog post today that they have partnered with BitPay, Coinbase, and GoCoin to allow merchants to accept Bitcoin. This comes just a few weeks after the announcement that businesses working with Braintree would be able to accept Bitcoin, and this is a more direct use of Bitcoin. The support will come via integration in the PayPal Payments Hub, and there is one significant catch: for now this is only supported for merchants in North America. Still, it’s at least one small step towards further acceptance of virtual currencies. There are other qualifications to using Bitcoin with PayPal as well.
The blog notes, “To be clear, today’s news does not mean that PayPal has added Bitcoin as a currency in our digital wallet or that Bitcoin payments will be processed on our secure payments platform. PayPal has always embraced innovation, but always in ways that make payments safer and more reliable for our customers. Our approach to Bitcoin is no different. That’s why we’re proceeding gradually, supporting Bitcoin in some ways today and holding off on other ways until we see how things develop.”
Interestingly, this comes at a time when the mining phase of Bitcoins and other virtual currencies has largely moved beyond GPUs and onto dedicated SHA256 and Scrypt ASICs. That’s good news for gamers and graphics gurus like our own Ryan Smith, as it means we hopefully won’t see quite as many GPUs that should be playing games sacrificed in pursuit of cryptocurrency mining. (And yes, I know there are many alt-coins that use other Proof of Work algorithms that haven’t been ported to ASICs, but few if any are actually profitable to mine with GPUs at this point.) Scott Ellison of PayPal also notes that PayPal has worked with many merchants selling cryptocurrency mining hardware, but they do not work with pre-orders/pre-sales (i.e. early funding of hardware that has not yet shipped).
Today’s announcement and the earlier Braintree announcement mark a clear change in tone from PayPal regarding Bitcoin, as the history of PayPal and Bitcoin has been a bit rocky up until now. Going back a few years, in the early days of Bitcoin PayPal actively took steps to prevent people from using their service to purchase Bitcoins. Others have reported bans from PayPal and closed accounts for dealing in Bitcoins. Obviously the inability to roll back purchases made via Bitcoin is a risk, and companies like Coinbase and BitPay now have services in place to mitigate some of the risks. Regardless, with sites like Newegg.com, TigerDirect.com, Overstock.com, and others all beginning to accept Bitcoin as a viable method of payment, it looks like PayPal has decided to join the club.
While there are still plenty of naysayers when it comes to Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies in general, this is great news for Bitcoin proponents as integration with PayPal opens the doors for thousands of small shops to begin working with Bitcoin.
It’s been a long time in coming, but PayPal announced in a blog post today that they have partnered with BitPay, Coinbase, and GoCoin to allow merchants to accept Bitcoin. This comes just a few weeks after the announcement that businesses working with Braintree would be able to accept Bitcoin, and this is a more direct use of Bitcoin. The support will come via integration in the PayPal Payments Hub, and there is one significant catch: for now this is only supported for merchants in North America. Still, it’s at least one small step towards further acceptance of virtual currencies. There are other qualifications to using Bitcoin with PayPal as well.
The blog notes, “To be clear, today’s news does not mean that PayPal has added Bitcoin as a currency in our digital wallet or that Bitcoin payments will be processed on our secure payments platform. PayPal has always embraced innovation, but always in ways that make payments safer and more reliable for our customers. Our approach to Bitcoin is no different. That’s why we’re proceeding gradually, supporting Bitcoin in some ways today and holding off on other ways until we see how things develop.”
Interestingly, this comes at a time when the mining phase of Bitcoins and other virtual currencies has largely moved beyond GPUs and onto dedicated SHA256 and Scrypt ASICs. That’s good news for gamers and graphics gurus like our own Ryan Smith, as it means we hopefully won’t see quite as many GPUs that should be playing games sacrificed in pursuit of cryptocurrency mining. (And yes, I know there are many alt-coins that use other Proof of Work algorithms that haven’t been ported to ASICs, but few if any are actually profitable to mine with GPUs at this point.) Scott Ellison of PayPal also notes that PayPal has worked with many merchants selling cryptocurrency mining hardware, but they do not work with pre-orders/pre-sales (i.e. early funding of hardware that has not yet shipped).
Today’s announcement and the earlier Braintree announcement mark a clear change in tone from PayPal regarding Bitcoin, as the history of PayPal and Bitcoin has been a bit rocky up until now. Going back a few years, in the early days of Bitcoin PayPal actively took steps to prevent people from using their service to purchase Bitcoins. Others have reported bans from PayPal and closed accounts for dealing in Bitcoins. Obviously the inability to roll back purchases made via Bitcoin is a risk, and companies like Coinbase and BitPay now have services in place to mitigate some of the risks. Regardless, with sites like Newegg.com, TigerDirect.com, Overstock.com, and others all beginning to accept Bitcoin as a viable method of payment, it looks like PayPal has decided to join the club.
While there are still plenty of naysayers when it comes to Bitcoins and cryptocurrencies in general, this is great news for Bitcoin proponents as integration with PayPal opens the doors for thousands of small shops to begin working with Bitcoin.
