Intel X25-M G2 Solid State Drives

80GB X25-M seems a good deal at a bit over $200 - will that mean mid £100s for UK pricing?

Need to get an SSD for OS and apps soonish :D

Am I also right in thinking that these drives once formatted do not lose out on space like HDDs do ?
I know either way that even gen 1 SSDs are a few times faster than a fast HDD so perhaps a Samsung is on the cards?
 
You won't be extracting to the same drive though will you?

Eg:

I download to OS drive (desktop) then extract to media drive directly. It's more efficient than extracting to the desktop then copying to the media drive if that makes sense. That was you take advantage of the fast read speed of SSD then utilise max bandwidth of write speed of SATAII.
 
mrk said:
Am I also right in thinking that these drives once formatted do not lose out on space like HDDs do ?
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I'll expect the Intel X25-M G2 (Second Generation) Solid State Drives will report a few GBs less than their advertised capacity as it did with the first generation drives. So for the 80GB model, you will have around 74GB of formatted space.

The solid state drives from OCZ will report very close to their advertised capacity.

OCZ said:
*Consumers may see a discrepancy between reported capacity and actual capacity; the storage industry standard is to display capacity in decimal. However, the operating system usually calculates capacity in binary format, causing traditional HDD and SSD to show a lower capacity in Windows. In the case of SSDs, some of the capacity is reserved for formatting and redundancy for wear leveling. These reserved areas on an SSD may occupy up to 5% of the drive’s storage capacity. On the Vertex Series the naming convention reflects this and the 30 is equivalent to 32GB, the 60 is equivalent to the 64GB and so on.
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OCZ Vertex
 
Conrad11 said:
Will probably get one of these for my MacBook...
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Yep, sat here on a Lenovo T500. Love the machine, but the thought of a fast, silent SSD is making my wallet burn! :)

Still, I might wait until the other manufacturers have also got their 34nm drives out and compare prices before I jump.

Also want to wait for Win7 to be released fully and get more feedback on people installing it on it on an SSD on my particular type of lappie before I jump. Their are one or two stories of SSDs not working properly on some lappies, so I'd rather see someone else has tested it first.

Nomadd
 
MR.B said:
Err i think you meant "to even start looking attractive to me"

These are high end SSD's. And Intel have no real competition, as these drives are faster than competing priced SSD's. They will sell well.
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Not just to me, but to everyone. Rest assured, there will be people out there with money to burn. But I and the majority of people wanting to replace our current HDD's with SSD's can't afford this supposedly "cheap" prices.

And as for Intel having no real competition, take your blinkers off m8. there are plenty of companies offering SSD drives at comparable speeds and IOPs and I don't expect Intel to dominate the SSD market like they have done with CPU's. And if you don't expect these competitors to lower their prices (which are overinflated in the first place)....

Granted its nice to see new tech, but the new prices or improvements aren't exciting me just yet.
 
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Thanks for the reviews guys. Great stuff so it's cheaper, faster and it's going to have the TRIM command... I do like the way Intel have emphasised random read and write performance. So these new drives will appear to be responsive than other SSDs for normal, interactive desktop usage. The wear-levelling algorithms are an added bonus.

I need one for my laptop -like yesterday!! :cool:

Bob
 
clocka said:
if only the write speed was 130mb/s instead of 80mb/s :(
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They're small desktop o/s drives not dumping/storage drives, besides if you increase the sequential writes you most likely alter the current firmware strategy which favours the smaller random reads/writes and what makes these new drives quite superior to the Vertex and others at the same price.

Not to mention you get another 20gb in space.
 
I have just bought a sammy 64GB gen 1 drive off of Duke for £70. That will do for a couple of years! Can't justify anymore money on one now with the price dropping and drives gettting better so quickly.

The little sammy drive should be really snappy for windows. I can't wait to recieve it!
 
LeJimster said:
Not just to me, but to everyone. Rest assured, there will be people out there with money to burn. But I and the majority of people wanting to replace our current HDD's with SSD's can't afford this supposedly "cheap" prices.

And as for Intel having no real competition, take your blinkers off m8. there are plenty of companies offering SSD drives at comparable speeds and IOPs and I don't expect Intel to dominate the SSD market like they have done with CPU's. And if you don't expect these competitors to lower their prices (which are overinflated in the first place)....

Granted its nice to see new tech, but the new prices or improvements aren't exciting me just yet.
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Not comparable IOPs for the price.
 
tdream said:
Not comparable IOPs for the price.
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Exactly the Intel SSD's have always been better than the cheaper alternatives in terms of raw desktop performance but only now are they feasible for the majority of SSD adopters, and with another little boost in 4kb random writes with the new drives.

None of the other MLC drives come close in 4kb random writes and the 4kb reads are 20% faster still also.
 
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MikeHunt79 said:
^ 32GB would be good, I think there is a market for smaller SSDs tho


XP
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The cost of the controller starts having a larger and larger effect on overall price.
When I was running a clean WinXP install it was 5-7GB (can't remember exact figures but in that region). Page file might've made a GB, hibernation if enabled might've made another GB but presumably less as 512mb RAM installed. I'm hard pushed to see how you use so little space.. and bear in mind the Windows directory by itself is not that useful being SSDd. The advantages come from having Program Files as well as Windows being on. Anyway, if you really want, you can buy a netbook SSD.. hardly as fast, but it'll be relatively small and cheap.
 
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