>So the question really is: who has this magic GC that makes it so trim isn't beneficial?

Currently I'd say sandforce based drives are the most stable performance wise full or empty. They might not hit the peaks that other controllers do, but they certainly don't drop off a cliff during writes when full. That tied to the fact that its doing all it does with no extra dram cache makes them a little safer in case of power failure. Now who knows, maybe there's some horrible bug in their algorithm that will crop up later, but so far I'd hold them up as a prime example of doing it better.

If their SF-2000 based controllers can hit the numbers they're saying, which it looks like they could, then even if there is a slight drop in performance when full who cares its still damn fast.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4100/ocz-vertex-pro-3-demo-worlds-first-sandforce-sf2000