Intel X-25M SSD real life results

So, i took ownership of my Intel X-25M 80GB Generation 2 SSD drive yesterday. I installed it into a computer at my office where I could benchmark between 2 identically configured systems and just switch back and forth between the 7,200RPM hard drive and the new Intel SSD.

Test System
Dell GX755. Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 @ 2.53ghz, with 2GB of RAM, running Windows 7 64-bit
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, 7200 RPM, 160GB hard drive for baseline.


Boot Time (from power on to logon screen)
Seagate Sata: 29 seconds
Intel SSD: 17 seconds

Time to launch MS Word
Seagate sata: 4.85 seconds
Intel SSD: 1.14 seconds

Time to install OpenOffice 3.1.1
Seagate sata: 1:48
Intel SSD: 51 seconds

Time to Install Avira Free Personal Antivirus
Seagate sata: 1:19
Intel sata: 37 seconds

Time to scan entire system for Viruses with Avira
Seagate sata: 10:04
Intel SSD: 5:47

Time from power on, through logon, to launch Word, Excel, Powerpoint, then close the apps, then shutdown machine until physical poweroff
Seagate sata : 1:28
Intel SSD: 38 seconds

Boot time for Windows XP SP3 running on Sun VirtualBox 3.0.6
Seagate sata: 27 seconds
Intel SSD: 14 seconds

My Intel X-25M is quite incredible - it really is like I have a brand new computer (it's a four year old Dell XPS400).

These findings are no surprise to me - everything is a whole level faster. OK, I've changed the processor to a Pentium D and installed 4GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM before now, but neither of those upgrades has shown as much improvement as the SSD has caused.

I am confident that this upgrade will see me through at least to the next iteration of Windows and it is highly recommended to everyone, serious gamers or just people who want to prolong the useability of their current PC.

nice results, pp!

an ssd is certainly at the top of my current upgrade list.

*starts counting his pennies*

Seeing these results&figures on hardware so close to what I have is making me feel this would be the best way for a upgrade. Even so, nothing would deter me from getting a 5870 (or nVidia? get your act together guys and put a DX11 card on the wild so we have competitive prices) and core i7 (can I plz haz core i7 850 or 840 at 2,67 and 2,53 to chose from? the damn price is killing me&I want hyperthreading as I'll encode a lot of After Effects projects and stuff like this making full use of 8 logical cores). Sigh. AMD get your act together too so we haz Intel prices go down a little for the damn 4 core CPUs with hyperthreading.
Thank you for posting these figures they are very revealing of what a SSD can really do, even in a low-endish system.

I too have an intel SSD but I think Mine is a first generation (Intel SSDSA2MH080G1GC). My stats are not as fast as yours pparks1 but they are much faster then the two 7600 RPM Western digitals I have. I'm hoping there will be a firm ware for this SSD that I have in the future.

I have the Intel SSD-E 32Gb. It is something amazing for sure, I only wish it was bigger. I am waiting on a 160Gb Extreme Gen3. Now that baby will be sweet!