Sandforce SF-1500 firmware? When and upgradable from SF-1200 chipset?

[GundamF91]

I heard that the upgrade from Sandforce SF-1200 family to 1500 is just a firmware upgrade, no hardware change is required. Is that true? If so, then I'm hoping the existing Sandforce SSD, such as Vertex II, would be able to take advance of the 1500 spec.

 

[Old Hippie]

I heard that the upgrade from Sandforce SF-1200 family to 1500 is just a firmware upgrade, no hardware change is required. Is that true? If so, then I'm hoping the existing Sandforce SSD, such as Vertex II, would be able to take advance of the 1500 spec.

Link to said rumor?

 

[God Mode]

I thought that the sf1500 drives required at least the super capacitor circuit added to prevent data corruption during sudden power loss or fluctuation.

 

[Emulex]

nah they just engage the 50K iop mode without the supercapacitor and sell it to you. it's not like your data really matters.

 

[Campy]

Vertex 2 has this already, agility doesn't

 

[flamenko]

Linked

 

[mindwreck]

I thought they were different chips too... just the 1200 performed so much like the 1500 that they made new firmware to slow them down.

 

[flamenko]

They are exactly the same physically. Only the f/w is different with a few dips turned on for the supercapacitor.

 

[Mark R]

nah they just engage the 50K iop mode without the supercapacitor and sell it to you. it's not like your data really matters.

Quite. Data integrity doesn't matter to consumer level SSD users - at least that's what the manufacturers think.

Look at how many of the drive manufacturers disable the RAISE functionality. (You can tell by the amount of 'spare' flash space - RAISE eats 12.5% flash capacity, which is why first generation sandforce SSDs 'hid' 25% of the capacity. With consumer level drives now offering boosted capacity, of up to 90% of the onboard flash memory, data integrity thanks to RAISE has been given the boot).