X25-M vs M225

Mercutio

Mercutio

Mercutio

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Apart from the size (which I guess IS worth considering) is the performance difference of these vast enough to cause concern?

As I read it:
X25-m
read: 250
write: 70

M225
read: 200
write: 170

The intel of course has the better controller too and can handle more disk operations per second. I'm just rather annoyed that the few places that have it in have lumped about £40 extra on the price of the 80GB disk (and i'm afraid I include OcUK in that).

With that in mind i'm looking at an M225 for around £160 (Oc haven't been able to price gouge quite so much as these are more readilly in stock elsewhere).

Would the difference in performance be THAT noticable in day to day operation?
 
The two are so close in performance in practice as to be virtually indistinguishable. Firmware support is also very similar, with both having had problems and both slowing dealing with them. Your best bet is to simply decide whether your highest priority is to spend a little less or get a little more space, as you're really not going to notice the difference in normal use.
 
Hmmmm looking at it then I guess I might just go with the best price per MB.

The intel sits at around £2.375 per MB, the crucial around £2.50.

Gah, if the price of these was dropped by even a tenner i'd feel less abused buying one :(
 
Just be glad you didn't buy a few weeks ago when almost nowhere had SSD drives in stock. I paid £10 more than the current OcUK price! :(
 
i have the intel and im very pleased with it, not got a clue if i need to do anything with it in regards to firmware or tools, i just plugged in and installed, win7 rating of 7.8 and runs like a dream
 
Intel released a new firmware that enables trim in windows 7 and vista, for trim to work you have to not upgrade the ACHI driver or it won't work, the standard microsoft is the only one that supports it atm. I went for the X25 80gb model simply for the extra space, you talking a extra 16 gig which comes very useful.

The TRIM command allows an operating system to tell a solid-state drive (or "SSD") which data blocks are no longer in use, such as those left by deleted files. An OS operation such as delete generally only means the data blocks involved are flagged as not in use. TRIM allows the OS to pass this information on down to the SSD controller, which otherwise would not know it could trash those blocks.
The purpose of the instruction is to maintain the speed of the SSD throughout its lifespan, avoiding the slowdown that early models encountered once all of the cells had been written to once.
 
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I've both Intel G1 and M225s and to all intents and purposes you can't tell the difference in normal use.

Look at the capacity you need and get the one that fits the bill (and your budget).

If you're not put off by running drives in RAID0 though, I'd look at the Kingston V 40gb for about £70-£75, which uses the Intel G2 controller. Get two of these and you'll have a faster drive than a single Intel G2, 80gb capacity and cheaper than both the Intel and M225. OCUK don't stock them - though I've made a suggestion they do, and I think a lot of places that do have sold out now...
 
Jabbs said:
Intel released a new firmware that enables trim in windows 7 and vista, for trim to work you have to not upgrade the ACHI driver or it won't work, the standard microsoft is the only one that supports it atm. I went for the X25 80gb model simply for the extra space, you talking a extra 16 gig which comes very useful.

The TRIM command allows an operating system to tell a solid-state drive (or "SSD") which data blocks are no longer in use, such as those left by deleted files. An OS operation such as delete generally only means the data blocks involved are flagged as not in use. TRIM allows the OS to pass this information on down to the SSD controller, which otherwise would not know it could trash those blocks.
The purpose of the instruction is to maintain the speed of the SSD throughout its lifespan, avoiding the slowdown that early models encountered once all of the cells had been written to once.
Click to expand...

cheers for the info, i got mine this week, will it have that firmware on?
 
ChileanLlama said:
If you're not put off by running drives in RAID0 though, I'd look at the Kingston V 40gb for about £70-£75, which uses the Intel G2 controller. Get two of these and you'll have a faster drive than a single Intel G2, 80gb capacity and cheaper than both the Intel and M225. OCUK don't stock them - though I've made a suggestion they do, and I think a lot of places that do have sold out now...
Click to expand...

Yeh i seen in the current pc format mag (i think) review the above and gave it a great rating, with rave comments on getting 2 and raid.

Think thats what i would do.
 
Has anyone compared performance between the default Microsoft storage driver and the updated versions from the chipset manufacture? (e.g. Intel Matrix Storage Manager)
 
I posted a comparison over on the SSD Benchmark thread, though I'm not sure how much of the difference was down to the Intel Matrix Storage Manager and how much to the Enable Volume Write-Back Cache option as I didn't do another benchmark in between.
 
CBJ said:
I had a hunt around earlier, purely out of curiosity, and couldn't find a single place that had them. Maybe I'm missing somewhere obvious, or maybe word has got around about them.
Click to expand...

Yep, I've bought 5 so far, but fancy another 2 for a 4xRAID0 :)

Where I got mine from are showing they'll have stock on 22/12.
 
I thought with raid+ssd you couldn't use automatic TRIM tho? Or is this not the case with the MS ACHI drivers (and later i'd guess the intel ones).

Raid-0 doesn't really bother me, everything important is on the raid5, just wanted something nippy to run the system from so 2/(3 :D) of those might well be the ticket.

Edit:
In fact 3 of those (170ish read/40ish write) would make 100ish gig formatted with probably around 500 read/100ish write which tbh isn't bad at all (would give a nice performance balance with the raid as it reads at about the same speed).
 
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With RAID there's no TRIM support, maybe we'll see some drivers that support it in the future...I just image the drive, break the RAID, clean the drives, restore RAID and reinstate the image. Doesn't take more than an hour. I've not had to do this yet due to degradation though. So if you can live with that process, I'm guessing somewhere between every 3-12 months dependent on use...

I think the Kingston's will scale up better than that if you had 3. Here's my 2 in RAID0

kingston_raid.JPG
 
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