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Intel 313 SSDs bring improved caching to ultrabooks, desktops, life in general
Just like Intel's older 311 batch of small cache SSDs, the new 313 series is designed to sit alongside a traditional spinning HDD in order provide a tasty blend of speed and capacity. These newer drives are still SATA II, so there's no 6Gbps action here, but they use superior 25nm SLC flash, offer faster speeds for the same price (starting at $120 for 20GB) and are explicitly approved for use in the coming wave of Ultrabooks -- so don't be surprised if that's where you meet 'em next.
Intel's Larsen Creek SSDs leak out, courtesy of ASRock's Z68 motherboard
Manufacturers just aren't willing to wait for the eighth of May -- they want to announce their spiffy new Intel Z68 Express motherboards now, dang it, whatever the consequences. Well, we can't really complain, especially when said motherboards reveal brand-new Intel products in trade. The above image was pulled direct from a PDF flyer for the ASRock Z68 Extreme4 motherboard, which depicts an intriguing benchmark -- if you pair one of Intel's 20GB Larsen Creek solid state drives with a standard 1TB magnetic hard drive, Intel's SSD caching technology can allegedly give you much speedier performance. Of course, there's no such thing as a 20GB Larsen Creek drive, right? This is the part where we'd tell you that Intel may finally be democratizing solid state storage and making it an affordable upgrade to all -- except we know full well that Z68 is the company's premium Sandy Bridge-supporting chipset, so don't get your hopes up too far. [Thanks, Anton]
