Legit Reviews

Super Talent UltraDrive ME 64GB MLC SSD Benchmarks

The UltraDrive ME series of Solid State Drives are the fifth-generation of MLC SSDs to be released by Super Talent. These drives have read speeds up to 260MB/Sec and write speeds up to 200MB/Sec thanks to the fact that they use the Indilinx barefoot controller and 64MB of cache. Read on to see how this drive does against nine other 2.5" storage devices.

The UltraDrive ME series of Solid State Drives are the fifth-generation of SSDs to be released by Super Talent. These drives are said to offer leading-edge performance for high-end notebook computers and desktops with read speeds up to 260MB/Sec and write speeds up to 200MB/Sec. With drive speeds like that you know the UltraDrive ME series has a great controller and indeed it does as the UltraDrive ME series uses the Indilinx 'Barefoot' internal controller that has been paired with an 64MB Elpida IC for internal cache. This setup is very similar to the OCZ Vertex SSD Series, so if you don't know about SSDs with the Barefoot controller that would be a great place to start reading.

Article Title: Super Talent UltraDrive ME 64GB MLC SSD Benchmarks
Article URL: http://legitreviews.com/article/974/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $195.99 plus shipping

I want a SSD but the price is keeping me away. For that price you can get 2 1TB drives and still have the money to go buy a nice dinner.

What I do find disturbing (even though I probably shouldn't) is the warranty on these drives. The manufactures are claiming 1.5 million hours of operation which equals 62,500 years of continuous use but the warranty is only 2 years. Seagate offers 5 year warranties on their mechanical drives. Is this just a case of a newer tech that they aren't really sure how they will hold up?

Another question, why do the larger drives seem to perform better than smaller drives (i.e. 256GB vs 64GB)? Is it the amount of onboard cache or something else entirely?

Major_A wrote: Another question, why do the larger drives seem to perform better than smaller drives (i.e. 256GB vs 64GB)? Is it the amount of onboard cache or something else entirely?

I have been told that it is due to the density of the NAND chips used on the larger drives.

Major_A wrote:IAnother question, why do the larger drives seem to perform better than smaller drives (i.e. 256GB vs 64GB)? Is it the amount of onboard cache or something else entirely?

Like FZ1 said it's due to the density of the NAND flash being used for the drive. The UltraDrive ME/Vertex have four channels for data transfer, but the difference is both the density of the NAND and the channels. 32GB and 64GB SSD's with the Barefoot controller do not support interleaving because there are not enough chips (1 bank only). With 128GB you get 4 channels plus interleaving, which improves performance. 256GB models have two PCB's and thus the performance is lower than the rest which are single PCB storage drives.

The UltraDrive ME/Vertex use Samsung MLC NAND ICs and I have been told by sources wanting to remain anonymous that changing brands of the NAND results in up 10-15% performance differences... Samsung is the fastest and the reason they are being used. I wonder if performance SSDs will ever used binned MLC NAND chips down the road...

Nice review. This looks to be a great drive to get your feet wet with based on the performance and price.

I have a question that is more site related than anything else. Instead of just having a link on the last page of a review to the forum for discussion of the review, do you think you could put a link on every page of a review that will allow you to go straight to the forums?

Apoptosis wrote:

Major_A wrote:IAnother question, why do the larger drives seem to perform better than smaller drives (i.e. 256GB vs 64GB)? Is it the amount of onboard cache or something else entirely?

Like FZ1 said it's due to the density of the NAND flash being used for the drive. The UltraDrive ME/Vertex have four channels for data transfer, but the difference is both the density of the NAND and the channels. 32GB and 64GB SSD's with the Barefoot controller do not support interleaving because there are not enough chips (1 bank only). With 128GB you get 4 channels plus interleaving, which improves performance. 256GB models have two PCB's and thus the performance is lower than the rest which are single PCB storage drives.

The UltraDrive ME/Vertex use Samsung MLC NAND ICs and I have been told by sources wanting to remain anonymous that changing brands of the NAND results in up 10-15% performance differences... Samsung is the fastest and the reason they are being used. I wonder if performance SSDs will ever used binned MLC NAND chips down the road...

Thanks for explaining that. Seems like two boards with the right controller would actually make it faster. I guess that's the idea with the OCZ Z-Drive and the integrated RAID controller.

Having installed 3-4 SuperTalent SSDs in customers computers already, I'm glad you guys like them as much as I do!
Great simple upgrade for anyone wanting a sizeable increase in general computing performance, and even better an upgrade for gamers. If I had the coin I'd drop it on two of these but I think just about everyone can empathize on tight budgets! Great review!

the price of that Super Talent UltraDrive ME seems very well to bad its the price for the 64gb version (still 50 cheaper then the vertex as thats what the ME drive is any way)

maybe in an year we get flash down to an price where 256gb is less then £/$ 200 for one