Intel X25-M G3 SSD in the Wild, Gets Benched

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My 80GB SSD G2 intel is starting to run much much slower than when I first bought it 6 months ago. Still seeing the SSD benefit, however, I don't get the snappy boot time that I have seen 6 months ago with it. Even the SSD toolbox TRIM function is taking over 5 to 10 seconds to complete. I have read someplace that the SSD writes will ineviteably kill the drive. I should have taken notice earlier, for now I have written just over 1TB of IO writes onto it (from Video conversions), and I think it is about to die. I am using mechanical HDD for the heavy duty IO writes once again.
 
[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]it's slow, compared to the new SSD from crucial[/citation]

First of all this is possibly a counterfeit, and secondly, even though their are faster options out there, this doesn't classify as "slow" by any means, especially when compared to my samsung spinpoint f3. What I'm really looking forward too is the pricing on these. 300+ GB SSD at reasonable price, thats what I consider sexy.
 
Hmmm... so 160 Gb is 360$ and 600 Gb 1200$... How does it compares to other SSD prizes in China?
It would be easier to estimate the prize in europe and USA based on that information.

Edit:

Hmmm... I did some digging and the 160Gb g2 was 2400 yen and 160Gb g3 was 2600 yen in TAoBAO page, so the new is something about 8% more expensive than the older version at this moment. So no prize drop at this moment. But ofcourse G3 is a "hot" product at this moment, so some increase in the prize was expected. Hopefully other companies can force Intel to reduce prizes in the future...

http://translate.google.fi/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://item.taobao.com/item.htm%3Fid%3D7975362218%26ref%3D%26ali_trackid%3D2:mm_10011550_2325296_9002527,0:120673594_3_1433637580&ei=CwPPTP37BsbNswb0kaykCQ&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDIQ7gEwBA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dtaobao%2BX25-M%2BG3%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:fi😱fficial%26prmd%3Dfd
 
X-25M is a very reliable and fast drive. I dont care what specs say, we run this in the real world on medium sized development platforms that require a substantial amount of random reads AND writes to the disk during every compile. We're finding that the older G2 Intel X-25Ms drives perform very very well.
 
[citation][nom]banthracis[/nom]Controller specs =/= SSD specs. Read the article again. That's like saying a vehicle has a 1000hp engine so it'll obviously go 200mph. Yea? How many tanks go that fast?Sandforce drives are also notorious for performing underspec, especially outside benchmarks it's optimized for. The average sequential write for incompressible data (which in a OS like win 7 is the majority of the data), the current sandforce drives like the Vertex 2 function very poorly after use, EVEN after TRIM, there's a huge performance loss. In fact, they drop so much, they end up worse than the Intel X25-M's, despite having "much higher" specs. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/s [...] ew-120gb/3[/citation]
Yes, controller < > SSD specs, but example you have chosen (Vertex 2) is not using Sandforce 2000 controller he mentioned. Vertex 2 is older stuff which was considered to finally keep up with Intel G2 I believe, new Sandforce 2000 drives are yet to come.
 
In no case do I imply that the Vertex 2 is using a SF2000. Especially since the specs he linked haven't even been achieved by sf yet, they're theoretical numbers about what they hope to reach.

From the article
all of the numbers you’re about to see are SandForce’s estimates and projections for how the SF-2000 series will perform.
Click to expand...

Regardless, I use it to point out that SF drives often benchmark much lower than rated, which they do. From the linked bench's.

The Vertex 2E spec at 270mb/s sequential write gets 83 mb/s in reality.

Also, those are controller specs, not SSD specs - remember that.
Those specs are, what the controller can handle - Flash NOT included. Also doesn't include interface limitations, and current SATA 6.0 controllers suffer from issues, especially on Intel chipset's, which lack official support still.

So yes, controller spec =\= SSD spec.

 
I am starting to think that Seagate is making the right bet on tech....

TECH PRO CON
---------------------------------------------------------
SSD READ/WRITE SPEED
DATA PERSISTENCE
STORAGE SIZE
---------------------------------------------------------
HDD DATA PERSISTENCE
STORAGE SIZE
READ/WRITE SPEED
---------------------------------------------------------
HYBRID READ/WRITE SPEED
DATA PERSISTENCE
STORAGE SIZE
 
[citation][nom]wintermint[/nom]Anyone else hoping for AMD to expand into SSD?[/citation]

AMD used to be in a joint venture with Fujitsu to make Flash memory, but they spun it off in 2003. I highly doubt they'd get back into the business after getting out.
 
Personally benchmarks show the Vertex 2 and x25-m to be neck and neck. Vertex 2 on PAPER SPECS is superior to Intel in every area yet they are not in the end of the day. Just goes to show you how crooked those numbers are if you ask me. They should by law be forced to show actual performance of the drive not the gimmicky numbers.

This is why I buy Intel...I payed for a 250mb read / 70mb write and I got 248mb read and 70mb write. Exactly as advertised so I was happy to get what I payed for.

You will never see that on the Vertex 1/2 drives unless you use a benchmark program which is a lame way to test the drives if you ask me.
 
if the flash memory chips in your ssd suck then your ssd is gonna under perform no matter how good your controller is. why focus so much on controller spec when flash memory is the most expensive and important part in the ssd?

you get better quality/reliability with intel drives just because they make their own flash memory and controller. ocz drives are nice and all but at the end of the day when im paying that much money for a ssd, i want one from a company that actually manufactures all the parts and not from someone who just assembles the drives.
 
intels don't brick sandforce ssd's do. after using 30 intel ssd. 30 for 30 still work. 6 sandforce units resulted in 3 bricks. so what if they are faster they brick. Put a pair of intel 80m's in a raid0 and they are very tough to beat.
 
The intel drives are higher reliability than the SandForces -- 0/100 have failed for me most with 60GB/day writes for over a year. Just look at the reviews for these products on NewEgg and see how many more failures there are for the non-Intel products.

As for 'noblerabbit' -- 1TB of writes is nothing, the write endurance is in the 500TB range. There are SMART tools that will tell you how many writes you have left.
 
Tom's is there a confirmed date for G3?? I heard Feb, but there has not been an update in a long time. Please help confirm the date
 
Its not about sustained read and write speeds. If you check Intels drives on boot times and random access they are at the top and will be for some time. Look at real world OS usage of the drive, also check boot times for the Intel vs the supposedly faster OCZ drives. You will find that the Intel's G2 drives consistently perform better in real world applications the great majority of the time. Also Intel has the best wear leveling in the industry at this point. Many of the other brands will die much faster because of inefficiency in the logic and wasting a lot of writes. Too me the reliability is the number 1 factor when buying an OS drive. Speed takes second, My older X2 6000 AMD system boots in 20 seconds flat with the 80GB Intel SSD. Also make sure to run Intel's Optimizer on a scheduled basis to keep the drive fit. If you check reviews on NewEgg and other sites you will see alot more problems with the other vendors. All of them are improving with time and the manufactures experience. Normally Im too cheap to buy Intel, given the that we are in the early adopter stage and everyone's track record till now its Intel only for me on this product.
 
On the post above, forgot to Mention the system is running Win 7 Pro 32 bit with 2GB ram, its a modest build with an Athlon X2 6000 processor, by no means fast by today's standards. I should say was modest as now it loads apps faster than many quad cores, of course for processor intensive jobs such as encoding processor speed still matters but SSD's really give you a huge performance boost for everyday applications usage and OS. The drive did cost almost as much as much budget build but than I didnt have to rebuild a new system to get the performance either, the life and functionality has been greatly extended. I would think for laptops SSD's are the only way to go to keep you from loosing data due to shock. I have seen alot of new laptops with HDD's go bad because of vibrations causing damage to the drive. Productivity also goes way up and you can multi-task out the ying yang. Recommendations for multi screen setups anyone!
 
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