0 Corsair Force GS 240 GB Review & Comparison

The Corsair Force GS which was announced a month ago is surely the king of SSDs with the speed it offers compared to the other SSDs when we look at the technical data. If we were to compare numbers, Corsair Force GS is the fastest SSD in the market, leaving its rivals like OCX Vertex, SanDisk Extreme, and Intel SSD 520 behind.

The drive comes in 180 GB, 240 GB, 360 GB, and 480 GB models, for 175$, 220$, 300$, 430$ respectively, which is a fairly decent price for a SSD of its caliber. For this review, we will be looking at the 240 GB Corsair Force GS, and 240 GB models of other hard drives to compare. (prices may vary)

Let's take a quick look at the drive's technical statistics compared to the other hard drives. (For 240 GB)

The drive uses the LSI SandForce SF-2281 controller, which is the same as the Sandisk Extreme and the Intel SSD 520. In the other corner, the Vertex 4 stands with the Indilinx Everest 2 controller, the only different controller between these drives.

The Force GS offers a Max Sequential Read Performance of 555MB/s, Write Performance of 525MB/s and a Max Random Write performance of 90.000 IOPS. (240GB - 220$)

For OCZ Vertex 4, the values are 535MB/s, 475MB, 95.000 IOPS. (256GB - 220$)

For Sandisk Extreme, 550MB/s, 510MB/s, 83.000 IOPS. (240GB - 187$)

For Intel SSD 520, 550MB/s, 520MB/s, 80.000 IOPS. (240GB - 255$)

As we can see, the Corsair outperforms both of the hard drives in terms of writing and reading speeds when we compare the numbers.

Though, sadly, things don't look the same way when we look at the benchmarks. (Taken from Hexus)

On Sequential Read, we see the Corsair Force GS is not performing well, and is beaten by all hard drives which we have compared earlier except the Vertex 4.

 In the category of Sequential Write, we see the Corsair nearly living up to its promise by passing both Vertex 4 and Intel 520, though getting beaten by Sandisk Extreme by a small value even though the statistics show that Corsair should've been superior.

On Random Writing (IOPS), even though the Corsair offers more than the 520 and the Extreme, all three hard drives combined with the Vertex 4 standing on 95.000 IOPS passing right through the Corsair.

We see a similar scenario in Random Reading, again the Corsair isn't living up to the statistics we have seen when it first came out.

All in all, it would be wrong to say that the Corsair Force GS is a bad SSD , but it's definitely not the king of SSDs, even with the high values it shows compared to the other SSDs in terms of statistics. Personally, I've been disappointed when I saw the benchmarks since I was quite hopeful about Corsair Force GS, and I was even thinking of buying one. Looks like it's not the best time for that right now. (it's the newest among the drives we compared)

In this situation, I will have to recommend the Sandisk Extreme if anyone's interested in buying a SSD, performing quite well in all benchmarks, coming in with an extra 15 GB and the lowest price of them all. Sorry Corsair, but my vote goes to Sandisk this time. The Intel 520 is also a quite strong alternative for those who want to buy a SSD, but it's fairly overpriced for the so little benefit it gives. If you are someone who wants to push the limits of the system to the max, then Intel 520 is more suitable for you than the Sandisk Extreme. A regular user (including gamers) should prefer the Extreme. 

Even though it's not related to the Corsair in a specific way, I want to mention that as a matter of fact, we also see the SandForce performing better than the Everest 2 when it comes to Sequential R/W, and vice versa for Random R/W. That means, for big file transfers, the SandForce will outperform the Everest 2 while the Everest 2 will be outshining the SandForce when it comes to clusters of small files. The SandForce also seems to be more popular among SSDs, but it's hard to say which one is better than the other which such close comparisons. Looks like SandForce 2281 vs Everest 2 will be the new nVidia vs Radeon!

0 What Is Bottleneck / How to Avoid?

Before we start talking about bottleneck in computer, let's start with what the term "bottleneck" means.

A bottleneck is when the performance of a system is blocked / limited by a single component of the system.

To relate this to computers, a bottleneck is when one of your parts (CPU, GPU, RAM, Hard drive) are holding the rest of the computer back since they aren't performing good enough to keep up with the other parts of your computer.

In daily life conditions, hard drives are the components which mostly cause bottlenecks. For example when you are copying a file, no matter how fast your CPU is and no matter how much RAM you have, you are limited with your hard drive's writing speed, thus limiting your copying speed to that. The same logic applies to any piece of software you are starting up at the time.

This being the case for years, nowadays there is a solution to prevent hard drive bottleneck. The SSD's seem to be a complete solution to hard drive bottleneck since they offer -really- high speeds compared to typical hard drives. That being said, you shouldn't use your old 7200 RPM HDD with a brand new system you just gathered, since you would bottleneck your system pretty hard with that old hard drive.

Of course, as everything, the SSDs come with downsides as well. First things first, they offer really small storage space, and to add another thing up to that, they are quite expensive even though they offer small storage. Still, I believe it's a logical to move to buy a SSD if you are gathering a new computer up. Using your old hard drives wouldn't be the best option for a brand new computer.

In gaming conditions, your problem won't ever be hard drive bottleneck. (After the game is 'loaded', hard drive goes out of the way, so only slow loading could be a hard drive bottleneck, and nothing else.) Instead, it will either be GPU or CPU bottleneck. Either your CPU will bring your GPU down, or your GPU will bring your CPU down, and you'll end up with low frame rates in both cases.

There's a way to understand if the problem is your CPU or GPU (RAM is rarely the case unless you have -really- low memory). You can start checking the frame rates from low resolution and keep going higher one by one. The CPU load doesn't change by resolution but the GPU load changes since the GPU has to render more and more pixels every time you raise the resolution.

So, if your frame rates are dropping as you increase resolution, the problem is with your GPU.

If your frame rates are constantly low and it doesn't change even when you lower the resolution to give your GPU more space, then the problem is with your CPU.

You can always overclock your CPU or GPU if you don't want to change the parts in your system, and try to make them work optimally with eachother. If that doesn't solve your problems, then I'm afraid you'll have to change your CPU or GPU depending on the problem you are experiencing.