Intel X25-M 120GB SSD Released with Lower Holiday Price

[Dave76]

Eager to truly make a mark on the NAND Flash storage market, Intel has just a short time ago revealed that its SSDs would be sold at a special holiday price and that its series of such devices has also grown with the addition of one new member.

The new SSD that the Santa Clara, California-based company has delivered is and X25-M drive with a capacity of 120 GB.

It is built out of 34nm MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory chips and boasts, as one would expect, the 2.5-inch form factor.

Needless to say, Intel's own SSD controller is employed while the means of connecting to the rest of the PC is the SATA 3.0 Gbps interface.

Thanks to this combination of technologies, the newcomer can read data at 250 MB/s and write it at 70 MB/s.

The drive has a price of $249 so, in Intel's own words, it “offers the best dollar-per-GB value in the Intel X25-M SSD line.”

Its maker even decided to cut down the prices of its 80 GB and 160 GB solid state drives. The former now goes for $199 while the latter has a suggested retail price of $415.

“Every Christmas, consumers are looking for the latest tech gadget; this year, with prices dropping, the solid-state drive is becoming more mainstream and can make the single greatest improvement to PC performance,” said Troy Winslow, director of product marketing for the Intel NAND Solutions Group.

“With an SSD, tech shoppers can give the gift of a technology makeover that will help speed up, or breathe new life, into a current PC by just swapping out the hard drive for an SSD,” Winslow added.

It should probably be noted that Intel also has a 40 GB “boot drive” on sale, for a suggested resell price of $99.

Source



On sale now.

 

[swarfega]

Id be interested to know its speed compared with the OCZ vertex 2E Ive just bought which is 285mb/s.

 

[Dave76]

It's the same as the current G2's, X25-M160GB read 250 MB/s and write 70 100 MB/s. Newegg says the write is 100MB/s but they have been wrong before.

Edit:
Turns out they were right, 100MB/s write speed from Intel, same as the 160GB.

So no change there, reported rumors have the G3's only a little faster.
They won't catch OCZ at this rate, maybe they're going after lower price (obviously not yet).

Have been reading some dissention on the OCZ forum about actual performance and slightly optimistic published numbers.

Random read and write numbers are much more important than sequential, also Input/Output rates and access times are very important.

I'm not saying Intels are better, reviewers like AnandTech rate SF OCZ higher than Intel on most of their tests.

The interesting thing will be the pricing of the G3s.
OCZ has aggressive pricing and the others are starting to follow, which is a good thing.

 

[pparks1]

Id be interested to know its speed compared with the OCZ vertex 2E Ive just bought which is 285mb/s.

Focusing solely on raw sequential throughput just doesn't tell the whole story. That's the problem. Gotta take the drive as a whole, tested in a variety of scenarios to determine which is really the faster drive.

 

[Dave76]

Looks like the X25 M 120GB has the same specs as the 160GB.

Which makes it a bit more attractive.

It's also less $/GB than the Intel 80 and 160GB versions.

Intel® X25-M and X18-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drives Overview

 

[DarkDavil]

"Low" is a relative price, as a High-school student who works at bestbuy and mows lawns.. sorry - too high

 

[FliGi7]

Benchmarks SSD Charts 2010

 

[ken9122]

Darn, I just got the 160Gig and paid close to $395.00.

Ken

 

[whs]

Id be interested to know its speed compared with the OCZ vertex 2E Ive just bought which is 285mb/s.

Focusing solely on raw sequential throughput just doesn't tell the whole story. That's the problem. Gotta take the drive as a whole, tested in a variety of scenarios to determine which is really the faster drive.

Absolutely agree. For smaller drives dedicated to the OS, access time is the name of the game. Fast read/write speeds are nice to have but play only a minor role for the OS performance.
Now that changes as the drives get bigger (e.g. 250GBs) which are used to shove a lot of data around. There the read/write speeds will get a greater importance - and so does Trim support.

 

[Dave76]

+1 pparks1 and whs.


Thanks for the link FliGi7, I somehow managed to miss that very informative benchmark site.
Not to mention that it's very flattering for my little X25 V as far as the benchmarks I consider to be most important.


ken9122, I'll bet you're not alone on this.
I think this SSD will be very popular due to the size and specs.

 

[Tepid]

That is still too expensive. I will wait.

$2.10 per Gig is a lot when you can get 2 of these instead,..,

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Mirror them and still be doing good.

Yes, it is an extra $91... but far more worth it my opinion.

 

[whs]

That is still too expensive. I will wait.

$2.10 per Gig is a lot when you can get 2 of these instead,..,

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Mirror them and still be doing good.

Yes, it is an extra $91... but far more worth it my opinion.

That is in the eye of the beholder. If you need a lot of space, a couple of TBs are the right solution. If you want a fast OS, a SSD is the answer. Like whether you want a Pick-up or a Porsche - they are both cars.

 

[Dave76]

Watch for sales, Newegg Back Friday had the X25-M 120GB SSD for $199.99 and $164.99 after MIR.

The Gen3 25nm nand SSDs are do to be released within the next 2-3 months.
These should drop the prices even further, after the initial excitement wears off.
Rumors are that you will be able to get the same size SSD for half the price, realistically you can hope to see at least 30% decrease in price.

It's the very low access time that makes SSDs so fast, even RAID arrays can't come close.

 

[toughbook]

I am needing a bigger SSD now. I stopped using my Intel 80GB G2 because of size, using a Corsair F-Series now. I am going to hold out for the G3 models and see what they are all about. These SSD's are killing me!

 

[whs]

These SSD's are killing me!

They are killing my budget - especially this one which I am staring at for my new laptop: Newegg.com - OCZ IBIS OCZ3HSD1IBS1-160G 3.5" 160GB HSDL (High Speed Data Link) MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) But my finance minister will stop me, too bad.

 

[mickey megabyte]

i'm poor and i live in the uk.

i've been looking at this drive, or maybe this or this...

any comments please?

i know they are small, but i'm thinking of just using it for my os and smaller programs - big bloaty software can go on the hdd.

 

[whs]

i'm poor and i live in the uk.

i've been looking at this drive, or maybe this or this...

any comments please?

i know they are small, but i'm thinking of just using it for my os and smaller programs - big bloaty software can go on the hdd.

These are all excellent drives.

I own a 60GB Vertex (the second one) and am very pleased with it.

On the Intel X25V someone reported the other day. He had installed it and was raving about it.

The C300 has excellent reviews. I have actually never heard of anybody uing it, but it seems to be a fine piece.

 

[mickey megabyte]

thanks

*goes off to count his pennies*

 

[brianzion]

Eager to truly make a mark on the NAND Flash storage market, Intel has just a short time ago revealed that its SSDs would be sold at a special holiday price and that its series of such devices has also grown with the addition of one new member.

The new SSD that the Santa Clara, California-based company has delivered is and X25-M drive with a capacity of 120 GB.

It is built out of 34nm MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory chips and boasts, as one would expect, the 2.5-inch form factor.

Needless to say, Intel's own SSD controller is employed while the means of connecting to the rest of the PC is the SATA 3.0 Gbps interface.

Thanks to this combination of technologies, the newcomer can read data at 250 MB/s and write it at 70 MB/s.

The drive has a price of $249 so, in Intel's own words, it “offers the best dollar-per-GB value in the Intel X25-M SSD line.”

Its maker even decided to cut down the prices of its 80 GB and 160 GB solid state drives. The former now goes for $199 while the latter has a suggested retail price of $415.

“Every Christmas, consumers are looking for the latest tech gadget; this year, with prices dropping, the solid-state drive is becoming more mainstream and can make the single greatest improvement to PC performance,” said Troy Winslow, director of product marketing for the Intel NAND Solutions Group.

“With an SSD, tech shoppers can give the gift of a technology makeover that will help speed up, or breathe new life, into a current PC by just swapping out the hard drive for an SSD,” Winslow added.

It should probably be noted that Intel also has a 40 GB “boot drive” on sale, for a suggested resell price of $99.

Source



On sale now.

here is intels bit on the*boot drive*

High-Performance storage for netbooks, boot drives for desktops and embedded applications using 34nm NAND flash memory.
Why wait for a traditional hard disk drive (HDD) to spin up? Now introducing 40 GB Intel® X25-V High-Performance Value Solid-State Drive. Intel® Value Solid-State Drives (Intel® SSDs) represent an advancement in storage technology that is specially engineered to deliver robust performance for cost effective solutions. Intel® X25-V SSD was created to take on the most demanding applications your netbook or notebook PC has to offer, at a significant value for solid-state computing. It also provides a high-performance reliable boot drive for desktop and embedded applications.

Leadership design with superior quality
Decades of memory experience and lithography leadership brings Intel's leading technology to even more consumer segments. Intel X25-V SSD takes pride in superior quality NAND on Industry leading 34nm technology, advanced manufacturing process and sophisticated firmware. Experience the difference of an Intel Value SSD with outstanding performance compared to common HDDs featuring the latest generation native SATA interface with a superior architecture employing five parallel NAND flash channels equipped with multi-level cell NAND flash memory. With powerful Native Command Queuing (NCQ) to enable up to 32 concurrent operations, Intel Value SATA SSDs deliver higher input/output per second and throughput performance that drastically outperform traditional hard disk drives.

Intel® SSD Toolbox with Intel® SSD Optimizer
Download the Intel® SSD Toolbox with Intel® SSD Optimizer for a set of applications to easily manage the health and optimize the performance of your Intel SSD. The Intel SSD Toolbox includes a powerful set of management, information and diagnostic tools, and is designed to work best with 34nm Intel SSDs. The Intel SSD Optimizer utilizes the new ATA Data Set Management Command (Trim Attribute) to help maintain your SSDs performance at "fresh-out-of-the-box" levels, and is specifically designed to run with Microsoft Windows 7.* The Intel SSD Optimizer also works with Microsoft Windows Vista* and XP* operating systems as well.

from source:ar:

Intel® X25-V Value SATA Solid-State Drive - Overview

 

[nokken]

I really like my Intel X-25M 80GB Gen2.
Space is my only real complaint.

Cold Boot to Windows 7 Desktop in no time flat.