Intel's 40GB Value SSD Selling at $129.99

[JohnnyLucky]

I hope prices will drop substantially. Of course when they do drop there will be something new in the works.

 

[nukemaster]

[citation][nom]acoote[/nom]Its all about the freakin random access speeds, and Random R/W IOPS, which are an order of magnitude better than platter drives! All this talk about "I can raid 2 X 500GB and get faster sequential reads and writes", is a bogus way to do a comparison.[/citation]
+9999
And I am saying this with 3 drive raid 0. Access times make a huge difference. Short stroking can help a magnetic drive, but its not going to get sub millisecond access times. That said, Fragmentation does not effect SSDs due to access times where as normal drives can choke if too badly fragmented.

When SSDs get big enough(250gigs or so for a good price)I will get one or 2 for windows and keep my magnetic drives for my file storage.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

I'm gonna wait for second and 3rd generation SSDs while they work out the cost per gigabyte and improve on the life expectancy or rated hours to failure issue.
Just like platter hard drives and CPUs, with time SSDs can only get better in performance, reliability, and most important for me - cost. I figure in about a year the cost per gigabyte will be affordable and I'll get on board the SSD wagon then.

 

[drwho1]

When this drives meet hard drives size/price ratio then I might think about it

 

[rcpratt]

The number of misinformed people here is just hilarious. First of all, stop comparing the $/GB of HDDs with SSDs. Yes, we all know SSDs are higher. You're getting much more performance/$ with SSDs, that's what they're made for.

Also, SSDs are not at all about sequential reads or writes. It's about random reads and writes, which is what your computer is doing 98% of the time. Razor512, those numbers you quoted mean absolutely nothing. Comparing RAIDed HDDs' sequential reads/writes to SSDs sequential reads/writes is also absolutely meaningless.

Some of you really need to spend a few hours reading Anand's SSD articles before you make any more stupid comments.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Here's the way I look at SSDs - what will I gain? Okay, when I play CoD4 online or single player I see the load bar scroll across the screen and it takes about 2 to 3 seconds. With an SSD I won't have to wait that extra 1 second. Woo hoo! I'll save my $129 and keep waiting.

 

[jonathan1683]

35 MB/s write speeds lol no thanks!

 

[fafner]

[citation][nom]ptroen[/nom] For that I would recommend a ram drive and pick up at least 8gb with at least 3-4gb as a ramdrive.[/citation]

Have you tried getting a 16GB usb flash drive and dedicate it to ReadyBoost? I have a feeling it will be comparable in performance to RAM drive or SSD but much cheaper (assuming you're running win 7 of course). Anyone interested in running some benchmarks?

 

[palladin9479]

Ok some commentators don't realize why SSD's are so expensive. Instead of platters spinning it use's fast transistors that keep their charge when powered down. These are complicated transistor and take up more space to store the same amount of data that a disk platter would.

The speed difference is that the drive can read the data immediately without having to wait for the drive head to physically position itself and read the data off a disk spinning at 10,000 RPM. Because the data is immediately available, the access times are in the nano seconds vs milliseconds for traditional platter drives. Its literally at least 10x quicker to access your data, and sometimes 100x quicker. No physical drive today is capable of a sustained transfer rate over 60~ MB/s, laws of physics prevents the drive spindle from going any faster. This is why we RAID a bunch of them together to get a higher transfer rate through parallel access. SSD's are again capable of a 10x increase in speed because they are not limited by a physical spinning disk with an arm reading a magnetic charge.

The down size is their limited space and prohibitive cost. They are more expensive to manufacture (vs magnetic spindles) and thus demand a higher premium.

You don't store your regular data on one of these, you store your Operating System, Swap file, and other boot / most load as fast as possible programs. This means your computer boots ultra fast and operates ultra fast. Additional data / programs can be stored on a second traditional disk / RAID array and accessed when needed.

 

[Guest]

It's no bargain.
$129 / 40GB = $3.25 per GB
It's like selling 2 ounces of Pepsi for 25cents and calling it a great value.

These less than 80GB SSD's are purely sucker bait.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

I can't wait for later this year when 100 GB SSDs are less than $99. Then I might buy. The people who are buying now will be saying "Man I should have waited!"

 

[banthracis]

You guys are looking at the wrong statistic. Random read/write is the most important factor to the responsiveness of a system, sustained read/write is only useful in moving large files, ie media, around, not something very useful on an SSD, or important to the speed of your computer.

4kb random write
X25-M G2 39.1 mb/s
Velociraptor 1.5 mb/s

4kb random read
X25-M G2 63.5 mb/s
Velociraptor 0.7 mb/s

THIS is the difference. We're talking 2 orders of magnitude faster in read. That's a Pentium II vs an i7 level of performance difference.

Also 2x velociraptors in raid 0 = $399 and 600gb of space.
A G2 80gb and a 1tb drive for media storage= $399 with 1.08 gb of space, but much better performance.

 

[HavoCnMe]

Can't wait until SSD value line-ups write in the upper 100's and read in the upper 200's. That will be a glorious time, but the DMV will still take for ever.

 

[RADIO_ACTIVE]

The word Value in the title just doesn't seem right...

;p

 

[saaiello]

id imagine in a year these prices will be down below $100 and id prob guess size will increase exponetially