New Intel 34nm X25-M SSD Firmware Brings Impressive Performance Gains

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I'm not usually a stickler about this, but was this article translated or something? On the first page it seemed like there were a lot of grammatical issues, far more than the occasional type-o that is to be expected.
 
This looks very good. It's great to see that they fixed the problem that was causing SSD slowdown over time. I think I'll have to put one of these in my new build.

 
A new firmware for the Intel X25-M G1 is nice and all, but the SSD still fails price per performance per space against Crucial's M225 and Corsair's P128/P256. All you get with the X25-M G1 is great I/O performance. Write speeds are still pretty low compared to going up to 200MB's W/s.

Intel X25-m = 160GB, $659.00, 250 MB/s Read, 70 MB/s Write
Crucial M225 = 256GB, $675.00, 250 MB/s Read, 200 MB/s Write
Corsair P256 = 256GB, $719.00 (free shipping), 220 MB/s Read, 200 MB/s Write

Prices are from Newegg's retail prices. You can get them cheaper other places and OEM.
 
The random read/writes are through the roof. The other SSD's are faaar behind. You might not reach the high throughput as the corsairs you mentioned but then it depends on what you intend the drive to do.

I have a raid for big file transfers with conventional drives, those will handle throughput, and will have SSD for smaller file operation, OS, games, etc. The X25-M G2 seems nice for that!
 
Is there a typo in the Read Throughput Graph? It looks like with TRIM read throughput drops after use? The labeling is not consistent with the graph below it so hopefully trim does not adversely affect read speeds...
 
Is it just me, or are these specs not-so-special for SSDs? A 70mm RunCore [MLC mind you, in an EeePC] will clock 250MB/s read and 180MB/s write.

Please explain how these are so awesome? Just the usual hype and price gouging by Intel, when the alternatives are simply better.
 
jezza, i totally agree. I also believe that each ssd are better then others for certain environments, such as SVoyager put.

I'm not a fanboy of any of these companies, but i think intel needs to react to the competition, besides the few task where the intel ssd hase an advantage they can be easily set aside for a similar priced drive with more performance in general.

"Intel X25-m = 160GB, $659.00, 250 MB/s Read, 70 MB/s Write
Crucial M225 = 256GB, $675.00, 250 MB/s Read, 200 MB/s Write
Corsair P256 = 256GB, $719.00 (free shipping), 220 MB/s Read, 200 MB/s Write"

For the intel fans they can always buy two 160gb drives and raid them for a whopping 140MB/s write at a cost of just over $1300. The extra pcie raid controller they might need, might push that 1300 into 1500 territory.
 
ER i'm going to go out on a limb here and say "its because of IOPS". Why are people getting hung up on sequential reads and writes? Heck if you want that just go buy a Sata II drive. No spindle can touch the IOPS of any decent SLC or MLC.
 
I would like to buy the 80Gb version but they are still a bit to expensive, I would rather buy a ATI 5850 and 1TB western Digital for a little more.
 
Thanks for the article, have been waiting to see how TRIM performes.

If you want to learn a lot more about SSD drives in perticular about TRIM, and the slow down of SSD drives:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3631&p=1

Also just want to add that I have a Kingston SSDNow V+ 64Gb. Read/Write is awesome at 220/140, but this doesnt mean much as I use it as a system drive and rarely copy large file to or from it. However my Windows 7 flys along using it. Most load times and many other operations feel instantaneous.
I would be upset if my drive became slow due to this 'fragmentation like' issue. My drive will probably not support trim but there are other ways around the problem. Take image of system drive, Format, re-apply image. The drive is on 64Gb so this would only take about an hour or two. Hopefully I do not have to do this more than every 6 months, which is usually how long before I rebuild my OS anyway. There are apparently 'wiper' tools that work around this problem, but I am yet to try as I have not experienced this slow down issue yet.
Intel is apparently the best performing SSDs, but I am very happy with my Kingston which cost around half the price.
SSDs are tech babies, I wouldnt recommend them to basic PC users yet. Definatly not for database servers, not usefull in a large file server. Maybe a basic web server would benefit. But IMHO any tech/geek will love one as a system drive.
 
[citation][nom]jimmysmitty[/nom]Wow. Now SSDs have firmware? Cool I guess.Means they can easily do enhamncements and tweaks like with mobo BIOS drives.[/citation]
Of course they do. How do you think the device identifies itself to the BIOS, let alone knows how to work? 😉
 
Everytime I look at these drives I think, awesome! but wow, those prices are insane, especially outside the US like some of us... i`m with Fonzy on this 1!
 
[citation][nom]jezza333[/nom]Is it just me, or are these specs not-so-special for SSDs? A 70mm RunCore [MLC mind you, in an EeePC] will clock 250MB/s read and 180MB/s write.Please explain how these are so awesome? Just the usual hype and price gouging by Intel, when the alternatives are simply better.[/citation]
Check out the random writes of an X25-M compared to just about any other SSD on the market. The X25-M flattens pretty much everything else out there, and sequential writes rarely matter as much as random writes for general "snappiness" and a speedy feeling hard drive.
 
how can we tell which x25s are capable of using the new firmware? or put another way, where is a good place to buy an x25-m supporting or using the new firmware
 
Yea the firmware link is dead. I tried navigating the menus, since the link might have changed, but nope its 'no longer available'. Can anyone make sense of this??
 
There are reports that the firmware update bricks drives using the Windows 7 OS.
 
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