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Specs leaked for upcoming Intel 710 and 720 Series SSD

Competition is fierce in the solid-state-drive market, but many buyers are still focused on Intel's SSDs, thanks to the chip giant's name and its drives' good overall performance. Already in 2011, the company has released the SSD 510 and the SSD 320 Series to refresh its mainstream offerings.
Written by Sean Portnoy, Contributor

Competition is fierce in the solid-state-drive market, but many buyers are still focused on Intel's SSDs, thanks to the chip giant's name and its drives' good overall performance. Already in 2011, the company has released the SSD 510 and the SSD 320 Series to refresh its mainstream offerings.

But fanboys are waiting for the new SSD 700 family for replacements to the X25-E SSDs. Now more details have leaked via a German Website about two new lines, the SSD 710 and 720, due in the next few months. Code-named Lyndonville, the 710 will be available in 100GB, 200GB, and 300GB capacities, and use MLC NAND flash storage. Read (270Mbps) and write (210Mbps) speeds are nothing exceptional, but as these are geared for the enterprise, the AES-128 encryption and the MTBF of 2 million hours may be more important. The 710 Series is supposedly launching in this quarter, so we should know pricing fairly soon.

The 720 Series, or Ramsdale, is a whole different animal -- and should have enthusiasts salivating. It will be the first Intel SSD line to use PCI Express (at least a PCIe x8 slot) as the interface instead of SATA, and that change, along with 512MB of cache, will lead to some pretty impressive performance numbers. How about 2200MBps read and 1800MBps write speeds? (No, those aren't typos.) The 720 drives will come in 200GB and 400GB flavors, use more reliable 34nm SLC NAND flash, and include AES-256 encryption.

Expect the 720 Series later this year, at a price you may not want to know. But if you can afford one, it will tussle with OCZ's PCI Express SSDs for your super-storage dollars.

[Via AnandTech]

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