Intel Solid State Drives Price Cuts, New Models Revealed

[malware]

In addition to the new LGA 775 processors, Intel is preparing price cuts for its solid state drives. Intel's super fast 2.5-inch 80GB multi-level cell (MLC) X25-M SSDs - and its 80GB 1.8-inch X18-M counterpart - will drop from $600 to $525 on November 30th. On the very same day Intel will also introduce its new single-level cell (SLC) high-performance 32GB X25-E SSD for $700. A month later on December 28th, the price of this drive will already be dropped to $575. In the first half of 2009, Intel will be migrating to higher density, releasing 160GB variants of the X25-M/X18-M MLC SSDs priced at $990, and 64GB versions of the high-performance X25-E SLC SSDs priced again at $990.

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[DaMulta]

SDD "FOR the DEATH OF HARD DRIVES!!!!"



It's taken to dang long already IMO!!!!!!

 

[Apocolypse007]

I still don't think that the price warrants a buy for most users. While the performance has been proven second to none, the price and low capacity of these drives compared to non SSD drives keeps them out of the hands of %90 of the users out there. For $525 you could get a new X58 motherboard and some DDR3 to go along with it.

 

[mdm-adph]

Aren't Samsung's and OCZ's SLC drives much, much cheaper than this?

 

[ShadowFold]

500$ for 80gb is WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too much.

 

[1c3d0g]

Aren't Samsung's and OCZ's SLC drives much, much cheaper than this?

Yes, but they also suffer from the dreaded "delayed random writes" problem, mostly due to the faulty/buggy JMicron controller. Intel's SSD's are lightyears ahead of Samsung's designs due to many years of experience in memory controller design and efficiency. In this case, you really do get what you pay for.

 

[Mussels]

Yes, but they also suffer from the dreaded "delayed random writes" problem, mostly due to the faulty/buggy JMicron controller. Intel's SSD's are lightyears ahead of Samsung's designs due to many years of experience in memory controller design and efficiency. In this case, you really do get what you pay for.

intels are much more expensive, but also much faster and much more reliable.

 

[Wagoo]

Yes, but they also suffer from the dreaded "delayed random writes" problem, mostly due to the faulty/buggy JMicron controller. Intel's SSD's are lightyears ahead of Samsung's designs due to many years of experience in memory controller design and efficiency. In this case, you really do get what you pay for.

This is not true at all -- only the cheaper MLC based SSDs suffer from this problem. The more expensive SLC drives don't use the JMicron controller. Though they're not exactly cheap, and up in a similar price arena to the Intel drives.

Having said that Intel do have the more advanced contoller architecture, with much higher iops performance during random writes. It seems to handle them very well even on their MLC drive, so I'm looking forward to seeing the performance of the X25-E.

I wonder if they implemented something like the EasyCo MFT software in the firmware? Using that you seem to get similar write performances with less intelligent SSDs.

 

[mdm-adph]

This is not true at all -- only the cheaper MLC based SSDs suffer from this problem. The more expensive SLC drives don't use the JMicron controller. Though they're not exactly cheap, and up in a similar price arena to the Intel drives.

Having said that Intel do have the more advanced contoller architecture, with much higher iops performance during random writes. It seems to handle them very well even on their MLC drive, so I'm looking forward to seeing the performance of the X25-E.

I wonder if they implemented something like the EasyCo MFT software in the firmware? Using that you seem to get similar write performances with less intelligent SSDs.

That's what I thought -- I know all MLC drives are crap, but the Samsung SLC drives are supposedly fast as hell.