Back in September, Intel publicly demoed a method for owners of the company"s solid state drives to overclock the controller speed and their NAND Flash chips. Now Intel has scuttled those dreams of overlocking an SSD in favor of a new product that the company claims pushes the factory-set performance to the limit.
The newly revealed 730 Series of SSD drives has a factory set controller speed that"s 50 percent faster than Intel"s previous high-end solid state drive, from 400MHz to 600MHz. Intel also put in a 20 percent boost in the NAND Flash bus speed, from 83MHz to 100MHz.
So why did Intel decide not to offer owners of SSDs a way to overclock their drives on their own? Computerworld reports that, according to Intel reps, the company simply could not offer such a product with a full one year warranty.
Pre-orders for the stand alone 730 drives are already being taken at several online retailers with the 240GB version selling for as low as $250 and the 480GB model priced as low as $480. Shipments will begin on March 18th. In addition, a number of PC makers like Origin PC, Cyberpower, Digital Storm and Maingear will offer the new SSDs as options for their rigs.
Source: Computerworld | Image via Intel