Crucial m4 And Intel SSD 320: The Other SSD Competitors

[yek]

the read performance drop under full drive seems weird. I wonder how you precondition the drive to a full state? did you use 4k random data@Iometer to make the drive full?

 

[hixbot]

When will Toms compare Raid 0 garbage collection and Raid 0 degraded performance of various consumer SSDs?

TRIM doesn't work in RAID so evaluating RAID 0 degraded performance is important in SSD reviews.

 

[foscooter]

I did some looking into these new Intel 320 Series SSD, and found something out, that was not mentioned within this article:

Sustained Sequential Reads AND Writes scale according to drive size! Detailed information is from the Intel website here.

The 40GB size only rates at 200MB/s reads, and 45MB/s writes!

80B and over rate at 270MB/s reads. However, writes still scale all the way up the ladder, from 45MB/s for the 40GB unit, up to 220MB/s for the 600GB model.

Same thing for (what really matters): Random 4K reads and writes.

I understand this, but I WAS jazzed about getting 2-40GB units, with 270/220 ratings, and RAID 0 them, like my X25-V’s are now.

Oh well. As I posted on another thread here, I didn’t like the SandForce controller running the OCZ Vertex 2, due to it’s “drive throttling.” This “slows” the drive down whenever it notices a lot of writes to the drive, until it’s garbage collection can kick in, or something like that. The lag was very noticeable. I read the Vertex 3 aren’t so severe.
Anyway, I haven’t found anyone selling these Intel 320 Series SSD yet. Newegg only has 1 model listed, out-of-stock, not on MicroCenter’s site yet, and on Amazon, they are stating ships within 1-2 months. Look like I wait. By then, maybe the Z68 chipset motherboards will be out.

 

[rui-no-onna]

Are you sure that your over-provisioning info is accurate? By virtue of the Windows capacity and the amount of NAND installed, I expect the Crucial m4 256GB to have 7% over-provisioning and the Intel 510 250GB to have 9%.

 

[Mhawk13]

I'll be waiting for the game loading benchmarks...

 

[Guest]

At the end of the discussion, for a MacBook Pro 2011 (SATA3) should I buy the Intel 510, the Crucial C300, M4 or the Vertex 3? All 250 Gb version. The use isn't anything special!
Thanks

 

[Guest]

X-25M 80GB boots Win 7 Pro in approximately 20 seconds with an AMD X2 6000. I think reviews should post practical results like Office load times, OS boot times, etc.. The Intel G2 line is also one of the most reliable SSD's on the market, don't count out some of these less expensive SSD units for home builds. Im always more concerned with reliability then speed and this unit is still a great performer at a reasonable price. Personally I think the 25nm drives are not going to last as long even with everything being done in the logic. At this point we need some architecture change or chip stacking to increase capacity. It not practical to continue to die shrink and reduce number of writes to the point that these drives wont last. Intel tested these units extensively to write 20GB of data a day and estimated for that usage level you would get over 5 years of life before the drives start to wear down. Thats more than I expect from most traditional platter drives and once you experience the performance you just wont be able to go back. Just make sure to schedule the Intel Optimizer to do perform the TRIM function to keep the unit running at peak performance. SSD's should by far be more reliable in laptop configurations, I see alot of failures of drives due to shock. My 2 Cents, hope it helps!

 

[th_greg]

Hi. I'd like to see a comparison of 120GB-160GB drives (which I think is a good size for a laptop, and probably the battleground for the mainstream) in laptops. Some results here on tomshardware seem different to the ones on anandtech (who's bias seems to be OCZ, rather than Intel). I'm also concerned about reliability, and have been reading about lots of OCZ failures, and even Intel's not lasting much more than a year... so it would be extremely useful to have ssd drives tested to destruction, so we get independent verification of manufacturers claims?

 

[speculatrix]

http://www.intel.se/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/technology-briefs/ssd-320-series-data-security-features-brief.pdf