New Intel 520 Series LAUNCHED!! BUY NOW!

Darkman said:
After having 3 different OCZ drives fail on me in 6 months I think paying a small premium for proper validation, testing and a longer warranty doesn't sound too bad at all.

I too am waiting for reviews on the new Samsung before I hit buy.
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I shall have these up later today, all i can say is that the intels per size are faster per size than the samsungs..*just* But thats why you pay the premium :)
 
M4, 520, 830 are the options I'm considering.

M4 is tried and tested now and has a good reputation for price/performance.
520 is validated by Intel who have taken their time to get SF-2281 working it seems and has a 5 year warranty.
830 is Samsung who have always built reliable (if not particularly fast) SSDs, 2 of which (SLC ones) I bought a long long time ago (from Gibbo) and have had in RAID 0 ever since as my system drive. They've never missed a beat.

The way I see it nowadays you need a benchmark to notice any difference in speed between the different models (within the same price bracket) so I'll go for the more reliable one if possible as losing data is a pain, whether it's backed up or not.
 
Just a quick note to say I got my 520 120gb up & running in no time. I ran a fresh install of Windows 7.
Also, ran an ATTO benchmark and I'm getting nearly 270 MB/s, which not far off the 280 as per Intel spec sheet for SATA 2.
So far very pleased, the Intel tool box sets everything up for you and performs a health check on the SSD etc, its very easy to use. Glad I bought the Intel.
 
Glad to see Intel are now using "compute-quality" NAND, but what were they using before? Medical quality? Automotive quality? Catering quality? :confused:

Nice looking drives though, but overpriced. Apart from the warranty, are they any different from a Force GT/HyperX/Vertex 3? Hopefully prices will drop a bit, and they'll make my shortlist (currently : Crucial M4, Samsung 830, Corsair Perf. Pro).

I notice both the Intel 320 and 520 use 25nm NAND ("compute-quality" of course) and have 5 year warranties. But the 510 uses the older 34nm NAND yet has a 3 year warranty. :confused:
Controller/firmware aside, surely the 34nm is more reliable, having double the number of program/erase cycles? Although this factor seems to have been forgotten in the race for ultra-fast transfer speeds.


So here's my ideal SSD :
34nm sync/32nm toggle NAND (preferably "compute-quality")
Marvell 9174 controller
Custom Intel firmware
600mb/s read/write (compressible and incompressible, random and sequential)
Wide choice of colours, including camouflage and leopardskin
Lifetime (OK, 5 year) warranty
£1/gb total cost inc. bracket, leads, transfer software, screwdriver and free game(s)

Anything like this due for release soon? Otherwise I'll have to settle for the M4 while I'm waiting. :rolleyes:
 
DennisMenace said:
Glad to see Intel are now using "compute-quality" NAND, but what were they using before? Medical quality? Automotive quality? Catering quality? :confused:

Nice looking drives though, but overpriced. Apart from the warranty, are they any different from a Force GT/HyperX/Vertex 3? Hopefully prices will drop a bit, and they'll make my shortlist (currently : Crucial M4, Samsung 830, Corsair Perf. Pro).

I notice both the Intel 320 and 520 use 25nm NAND ("compute-quality" of course) and have 5 year warranties. But the 510 uses the older 34nm NAND yet has a 3 year warranty. :confused:
Controller/firmware aside, surely the 34nm is more reliable, having double the number of program/erase cycles? Although this factor seems to have been forgotten in the race for ultra-fast transfer speeds.


So here's my ideal SSD :
34nm sync/32nm toggle NAND (preferably "compute-quality")
Marvell 9174 controller
Custom Intel firmware
600mb/s read/write (compressible and incompressible, random and sequential)
Wide choice of colours, including camouflage and leopardskin
Lifetime (OK, 5 year) warranty
£1/gb total cost inc. bracket, leads, transfer software, screwdriver and free game(s)

Anything like this due for release soon? Otherwise I'll have to settle for the M4 while I'm waiting. :rolleyes:
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Sandforce doesn't write to NAND as much as Marvell for instance so it'll
Last longer without the need for 34nm NAND with 5000 cycles over 3000.

If you read the "SSD mega test" sticky in storage you'll see it's 20-25% faster than that of a force gt etc so all your above questions are answered with a simple 2 second search of the forums.

As for your request of drive above. It'll never happen. 570mb/s is as fast as SATA6gb/s will realistically produce. In other words, sata "4" may bring such speeds but you won't get 34nm or even likely 25nm NAND at that point.
 
Fear of not wanting to bore poeple, but after getting this Intel, Battlefield is a different game.
Loads quickly, no making cups of tea while you wait for a level to load. Biggest difference for me is gameplay, feels more solid, and runs smoothly unlike the stuttering before. Looking back, this game was built to run on a SSD.
I'm going to upgrade my 2006 motherboard and Kentsfield Q6700 for Ivy Bridge soon, but this upgrade has exceeded expectations.
 
Andrew Moore said:
If you read the "SSD mega test" sticky in storage you'll see it's 20-25% faster than that of a force gt etc so all your above questions are answered with a simple 2 second search of the forums.
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Actually, I have read that thread - I commented on the day you posted it, post #27 - but don't consider one benchmark to be the whole picture (assuming your 20-25% refers to the AS SSD overall score, 601 vs 494/498). But if I did, I'd see that the 520 only has 69% of the Performance Pro's score, and 77% of the M4's, making it even more overrated/overpriced. As a comparison, these are the PCMark Vantage HDD Suite scores for some 240GB drives :

Intel 520...............72659
Vertex 3 MaxIOPS...70639
Vertex 3................70624
Kingston HyperX.....70362
Performance Pro.....70285

There is only 3.4% "real-life" performance difference between these 5 drives, which hardly justifies the higher priced Intel - but 2 years extra warranty could well do. (Is a MaxIOPS really only 0.02% better than a standard Vertex 3?)

I'm certainly not suggesting PCMark is a better benchmark than AS SSD (one is a "real-life" amalgam of 8 typical apps/tests, the other is purely "synthetic"), but that several benchmarks should be cross-referenced to get a better picture - and the more reviews I read, the less difference I see between all the new Sandforce drives (and my opinion remains unchanged, even after a simple 2 second search of the forums).



Far more importantly, I still have unanswered questions, namely :

1) What is "compute-quality" NAND?

2) When will OcUK be stocking a leopardskin SSD?
 
DennisMenace said:
Far more importantly, I still have unanswered questions, namely :

1) What is "compute-quality" NAND?

2) When will OcUK be stocking a leopardskin SSD?
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It's NAND that matches the criteria requirement for the application used.

As for the leopard skin.. We have had leopard skin HDD enclosures, time will tell if they bring an SSD to the table but as has been seen, some manufacturers really will make anything :)
 
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