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Intel 80GB Solid-State Drives Get Official (and High) Price Tag, Are Blazing Fast
Posted by John Mahoney at 2:19 AM on September 9, 2008
Intel's slightly delayed leap into the SSD game is now official, with the company announcing a US$595 pricetag for an 80GB SSD, which comes in 1.8-inch (X18-M) or 2.5-inch (X25-M) sizes for the same price, with 160GB versions coming later this year. While that's a considerably higher price-per-gigabyte ratio than what can be found on more generic SSDs, Intel will hopefully bring the performance standards so badly needed in the SSD world, where actual real-world performance can vary greatly from what's stated (take everyone upset about the MacBook Air's SSD, for instance). Intel's SATA drive is rated for 250MB/s reads and 70MB/s writes, with 85-microsecond latency. Full details follow.
UPDATE: ">Hot Hardware has gotten their hands on one and given it a full top-to-bottom run-through for more specs and shots. Thanks, YasinKhawam
Intel Introduces Solid-State Drives for Notebook and Desktop Computers
New Intel(R) High-Performance SATA Solid-State Drive Offers Users Responsive, Rugged, Reliable and Low-Power Storage Solution to Replace Hard Disk Drive
SANTA CLARA, Calif. —(Business Wire)— Sep. 8, 2008 Intel Corporation announced today it has begun shipping Intel(R) X18-M and X25-M Mainstream SATA Solid-State Drives (SSDs) based on multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash technology for laptop and desktop computers. The new high-performing data storage devices give computer buyers a new level of system responsiveness in a lightweight, rugged, low-power package that can replace traditional hard disk drives.Validated for Intel-based computers, the X18-M is a 1.8-inch drive and the X25-M a 2.5-inch drive, offering several advantages over hard drives including faster overall system response, boot and resume times. With no moving parts, SSDs run cooler and quieter and are a more reliable option than hard drives. In addition, SSDs remove input/output (I/O) performance bottlenecks associated with hard disk drives that help maximize the efficiency of Intel processors, such as the company's Core(TM) family of products. For example, lab tests show that the Intel X18-M and X25M increase storage system performance nine times over traditional hard disk drive performance.
"Validated by our rigorous testing and OEM customer feedback, we believe that we have developed an SSD that delivers on the promises of SSD computing," said Randy Wilhelm, Intel vice president and general manager of the NAND Products Group. "By combining our experience in flash memory design with our processor and computing expertise, we have added advances such as our parallel 10-channel architecture, proprietary controller, firmware and memory management algorithms that address write amplification and wear leveling issues to redefine SSD performance and reliability for computing platforms."
The Intel X18-M and X25-M Mainstream SATA SSDs are available in 80 gigabyte (GB) capacities, with 160GB versions sampling in the fourth quarter of this year. The 80GB drive achieves up to 250MB per second read speeds, up to 70MB per second write speeds and 85-microsecond read latency for fast performance. The 80GB version is priced at $595 for quantities up to 1,000. These SSDs are available now and end-customer products containing the Intel(R) High-Performance SATA SSDs are expected to begin shipping in the next few weeks.
The company is also expected to introduce a line of single-level cell (SLC) SSDs for the server, storage and enterprise environments within the next 90 days. Called the Intel(R) X25-E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive, these products are designed to maximize the Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), which equates to higher performance and lower enterprise costs. Since SSDs lower energy consumption, maintenance, cooling and space costs, an SSD-based data centre will reduce overall infrastructure costs while increasing performance-per-square-foot by as much as 50x.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
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dOk
Posted 2:53 AM 9/9/08
I used to be an early adopter... but now I wait.
dOk
Vastad
Posted 2:43 AM 9/9/08
I've got the OCZ 64GB SSD for my rig's boot disc. I'd recommend to everyone to give SSDs at least another 2 generations or so and stick with dropping your money on a Raptor for the moment. You'll get double the memory for half the price for similar or even superior performance.
First, Vista 64 with SP1 and all updates till now is about 40GB on my rig. This leaves me only 15GB only for any further updates. Yes, do the math, I'm missing 4GB somewhere, I think formatting data. It isn't as much space as you think.
Second, I don't really feel like my system goes from cold boot to desktop any faster than usual. Between 80 and 120 seconds. It varies that wildly.
Third, SSD r/w speed is highly dependent on the size of the data to be read or written. I think its to do with the nature of memory structures and how an SSD organises bits. I ran HD tune on it and the graph was like a crazy square wave, either maximum speed or dead slow. During use, this translates to either very smooth application loading or inexplicably slow loads. Current example is saving and loading game progress in Neverwinter Nights 2. Usually its pretty zippy, but on occasion it just appears to do nothing during the save or load sequence for 30 seconds or so. It does make one worry.
So anybody who has an impulse buy problem coupled with a love for cutting edge tech, please take heed.
Vastad
daftrok
Posted 2:42 AM 9/9/08
OCZ offers similar specs for a much lower price tag.
daftrok
nomayo
Posted 3:06 AM 9/9/08
I've never understood the obsession with fast boot times. I rarely restart my system, but even if I did it twice a day, that's nearly $1 per reboot over the course of a year to save a few seconds each day.
If you're in a financial position where you notice the difference of a few seconds, but not the loss of $600, it's probably a good deal for you. For the majority of us, it's just not worth it yet.
I can't complain though, because the early adopters are the ones who pay the R&D for the rest of us so that we can join the game already in progress at a 75% discount a few years down the road.
nomayo
RayLast
Posted 3:00 AM 9/9/08
@Vastad: Do you have 4GB of RAM and hibernation activated?
As for the SSDs and their speed, it still isn't worth that price.
RayLast
Log1c
Posted 2:55 AM 9/9/08
@daftrok: The performance isn't all there yet, and there are lots of problems with the RAID controllers.
Log1c
reddingofish
Posted 3:23 AM 9/9/08
It may not be worth the price but it is worth the bragging rights.
reddingofish
lordargent
Posted 3:46 AM 9/9/08
For $600 you can buy a handful of 160 GB drives and a raid 5 controller card.
/can you mirror across > 2 drives?
lordargent
Log1c
Posted 4:11 AM 9/9/08
@auroragb: Ah ha! I knew 85ms sounded really high, then I missed the micro part in the release. Good catch.
Log1c
auroragb
Posted 4:10 AM 9/9/08
The summary should say 85us (microseconds) instead of 85ms (milliseconds).
When I read the blurb, I thought that the access times sucked at 85ms when most have 5ms now. but the article reported 85us, which is AWESOME
auroragb
John Mahoney
Posted 4:41 AM 9/9/08
@auroragb: @Log1c: Thanks guys. Fixed.
John Mahoney
YasinKhawam
Posted 4:21 AM 9/9/08
Full benchmarks here. This SSD smokes: http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Intel-X25M-80GB-SATA-Solid-State-Drive-I ntel-Ups-The-Ante/
YasinKhawam
regnez
Posted 5:13 AM 9/9/08
More review links.
Perusing through the Hot Hardware review, these drives appear to be stupid fast, even compared to other SSDs.
regnez
H0liday
Posted 3:35 AM 9/9/08
The latency statement from your summary show's 85 millisecond's and the detail's for the drive shows 85 microsecond's, somewhat of a big difference(85µs vs 85ms).
Big deal for those looking for small random reads/writes to those who are looking for large consecutive reads/writes.
H0liday
Joseph
Posted 5:32 AM 9/9/08
@daftrok: OCZ has horrible reviews as well. I looked on newegg.com and the only users that are satisfied with them are Mac users. Due to the high Vista Disk Read/Write-the drives end up freezing up.
Joseph
isnyder
Posted 2:35 AM 9/9/08
You mean microsecond latency, not millisecond seek times. ms != us
isnyder
SubhagaNeleus
Posted 2:25 AM 9/9/08
That's microseconds with a mu, not milliseconds with a ms. The drive latency is 1000 times faster than what you put in the summary.
SubhagaNeleus
Vastad
Posted 7:51 AM 9/9/08
@RayLast: Yes I have 4GB of RAM. No hibernation as I am using it on a desktop, not a laptop. Do you think its reserved page file space, system restore and related data?
@Joseph: Thanks for mentioning the newegg customer reviews. I'll be looking into turning off pagefile and auto defrag.
Vastad
Vastad
Posted 8:18 AM 9/9/08
@RayLast:
@Joseph:
Thanks to both your posts, I learned that the missing 4GB is due to reserved page file space and learned how to tweak it. I've now moved it to a separate hard disk (so I'll end up saving on the 1 million rewrites these SSDs are rated for), fixed it to half my RAM total and apparently earned a bit of a performance boost for the trouble.
Vastad
diabolusunknownTheSecond
Posted 11:29 AM 9/9/08
@Vastad: I would still keep the page file on the drive since it will make paging faster.
Just dont keep anything at all critical on your SSD. Make it entirely your OS drive. And keep OS backups on traditional drives.
Besides, even if you had the page file stored on it, it would reduce the life from 20 years to 10 years under normal use. Do you have any idea how shitty those drives are going to be in 10 years, or even 5 years. You would have replaced it twice by then.
diabolusunknownTheSecond