The first reviews of Intel's new SSDs are in

Stonedofmoo · 8 Sep 2008 at 17:12

The reviews are out today. 250Mb read! :cool:

Theres a few reviews about. Try these:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Intel-x25-m-SSD,review-31316.html
http://www.techradar.com/products/computing/components/storage/intel-x25-m-463486/review
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=616
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/storage/intel-x25-m.aspx

A quote from Tomshardware

The question is a good one: how the heck did Intel manage to create a MLC flash SSD that is faster than a high-end SLC product? And why do the drives store 80 GB or 160 GB, while silicon-based chips typically have capacities of 32, 64 and 128 GB? The answer is multi-channel flash. Intel uses its own SATA/300 controller and addresses ten different MLC flash channels at once, using a 16 MB cache memory. It also employs native command queuing (NCQ) to be able to distribute read and write operations across the available channels efficiently.

For all those who feels NCQ is pointless for SSD's...

AbsenceJam · 8 Sep 2008 at 17:34

Looks great but it's going to be £400~.

martian_aphid · 8 Sep 2008 at 17:39

promising steps forward, but still too expensive for me :S

nikebee · 8 Sep 2008 at 17:55

FOUR... HUNDRED... QUID

ChrisD. · 8 Sep 2008 at 17:55

Well my budget was £300 for a new OS/Apps drive/setup; I'm sure I can come up with another £100 before these are released.

MartinBen · 8 Sep 2008 at 18:13

Any news if/when OCUK are going to get any in and a price?

I've just got an OCZ SSD V2 but it is duff :mad:

so gonna RMA it and look for a different one so these Intel's look very tasty

Stonedofmoo · 8 Sep 2008 at 18:56

To the guys who are posting it's £400.... I know!
My thoughts on SSD's are well documented on this forum so theres nothing else to add other than I agree with you.

But at least with these drives you are finally getting a noticable increase in performance unlike the current generation in the shops

mpj88 · 8 Sep 2008 at 19:14

how long do you think before they come down in price significantly or will there be a cheaper tech come out for them?

nikebee · 8 Sep 2008 at 19:28

I just thought I'd add that I do own an SSD (OCZ Core 64GB V1) so I'm not anti SSD at all, but £400 is way over the top for me.

Jokester · 8 Sep 2008 at 19:29

MLC is also the stuff with the lesser write numbers?

Talrinys · 8 Sep 2008 at 19:51

Jokester said:
MLC is also the stuff with the lesser write numbers?

Yeah but even those are getting a lot better and with increasing space there are more chips to write across

And in terms of that NCQ thing, it is useless for SSDs in the way we know it, so you cannot use that as an argument. NCQ is just a term describing the strategic queing of reads, it's totally useless in the current sense of the word because the current technology does this to optimize for platters, this is Intels own SSD version of it. Don't take things out of context.

XeNoN89 · 8 Sep 2008 at 20:13

nice, i have decided not to go SSD untill my build after the next though, by then it should be a lot cheaper and will have larger sizes and better performance

jimmy29 · 8 Sep 2008 at 20:19

That's some impressive performance, makes the OCZ drives suddenly look very ordinary.

martian_aphid · 8 Sep 2008 at 20:45

I think the amount of competition atm will surely drive prices down. It seems like everyone and their uncle wants to be making SSDs!

Subterranean · 8 Sep 2008 at 21:07

SSDs are looking better and better. Give it a year or two and I'm sure I'll own one.

Talrinys · 8 Sep 2008 at 21:17

Subterranean said:
SSDs are looking better and better. Give it a year or two and I'm sure I'll own one.

Same here

Would be awesome to have a RAID setup in a year's time, but there is a serious need for 6Gb SATA to come out soon.

rick827 · 8 Sep 2008 at 21:52

£400 for 'just' 200mb/s? Its a bit much at that price. Step in the right direction though!

Monkeynut · 8 Sep 2008 at 22:01

Getting better all the time though, I wouldn't be surprised if these are very affordable next year.

badbob · 8 Sep 2008 at 22:05

Be great if OS have a option for SSD install that way you select another drive that's used for the constant writing (temp, my docs, net working, pagefile)

XeNoN89 · 8 Sep 2008 at 22:11

When are these intel SSD's due for release?