TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

As a follow-up to our previous SSD coverage, today we will be looking at four popular mainstream SSD offerings which include the A-Data S592 128GB, Corsair P Series 128GB, OCZ Agility 120GB and the OCZ Vertex Turbo 120GB.

Although all these products are MLC flash-based and target the consumer enthusiast market, they do vary in price, on-board controllers, memory chips, and cache sizes, which should make for some very interesting results.

With dozens of manufacturers now offering some kind of solid state drive, you should know there are only a handful of them you should concern yourself with. MLC drives based on either the Samsung S3C29RBB01-YK40, Indilinx Barefoot or Intel's own controller are all you should be looking at today. While the Intel controller remains the superior performer when it comes to small data writes, the Samsung and Indilinx controllers are worthy alternatives.

Picking between an SSD based on the Samsung and Indilinx controllers is no easy task. Overall we have observed that drives using the Indilinx controller are slightly faster, but with performance almost too close to be called, it usually comes down to price. Given that the OCZ Summit (Samsung) is more expensive than the Vertex (Indilinx) we would likely pick the latter.

But throwing more drives into the mix, it will be interesting to see how the Corsair P Series (Samsung) stands up against the new OCZ Vertex Turbo SSD. We also have included a cut-down OCZ entry-level drive named Agility, which can be had for just $300 with a 120GB capacity. A-Data also sent in their new S592 series 128GB SSD, based on the Indilinx controller.