Introduction

We knew going into last week that the first SandForce controlled drive for the consumer market would be in our hands before the weekend. Things got a little sketchy when the drive we were counting on arriving ended up being shipped from Taiwan with a three day service instead of the next day option that a situation like this deserves. How could such a thing happen when no one has performance numbers of the SandForce SF-1200 online and retail products are on the way to e-tail locations as I type? Just when all hope had faded, a lonely delivery driver came knocking to the door like Superman coming to the rescue of Lois Lane. Superman this time was wearing a brown uniform and was empowered by Corsair, not the sun.

We have all known that Corsair was planning a flagship product around the SandForce SF-1200 for a few weeks now. The press release has already been issued and the buzz already started. What we haven't known is how the consumer controller was going to perform or if it was even comparable to the enterprise SF-1500 products we have already seen. At the time of writing no one has really commented on the performance of the new upper to high end consumer drive that when merged with existing product lines will force the Indilinx Barefoot products into budget to mainstream SSD category. The SF-1200 was designed to displace the Barefoot from its price category and at a time when Indilinx made it possible to produce lower cost drives.

We can talk more about price comparisons after we see some performance numbers, that way we can better gauge the situation and available options for consumers. Let's take a look at the specifications and see what the Corsair Force Series is all about.