Intel X25-V

[Tim Rogers]

I'm considering buying an Intel X25-V 40GB SSD from Scan and I was wondering whether any of you guys have any experience of it or views about it. There are very few reviews of it around as it is a reasonably new product!

Thanks,

Tim

[Ulti]

I'm a bit lazy so I'll post what I've written in my own thread:

Update: They managed to dispatch the order yesterday at 10am and I received it in the post this morning delivered by RM.

I was being stupid and didn't install the AHCI drivers before installing everything but luckily there's a little trick to enable it. Performance then shot right up and I can seriously feel how fast the drive is. Right now I've installed all the main things I use onto the SSD.

My previous hard drive was a single Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB
New boot drive is a single Intel X25-V 40GB

Windows Experience Index for HDD increased from 5.9 to 7.5. I haven't installed any SSD related tweaking programs as I'm happy with the performance, just turned on AHCI in the BIOS and installed the drivers.



Funny how it states my CPU is the weakest "link" in my pc, I really don't agree haha.

HDTune performance has increased quite a bit too:

Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB:



Intel X25-V 40GB:



Boot time certainly is faster too. Whilst searching on how to enable AHCI after installing W7, I found out that my board will boot slightly faster if I use certain SATA ports so I've changed the setup.

SATA Mode on IDE and WD Black 640GB as boot drive ~1min 0sec from pressing On to Firefox being up.

SATA Mode on IDE and Intel X25-V 40GB as boot drive ~45sec from pressing On button to Firefox being up.

SATA Mode on ACHI and Intel X25-V 40GB as boot drive ~40sec from pressing On button to Firefox being up.

Takes 17 seconds to reach the BIOS screen with the "Press <DEL> to enter setup" etc.
Takes 25 seconds to reach the black screen where the W7 logo begins loading up.

WD Black 640GB was timed today so it wasn't a clean install, same goes for the Intel X25-V.

I barely even see the blue "Welcome" screen now and the desktop is usable straight away too.

Overall I'm very happy about the SSD. You can see that I've used aproximately 56% of the SSD after installing W7 and my main programs.

[Tim Rogers]

Thank you, that's really interesting!
Would you be able to explain the AHCI stuff at the top? I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with the concept!

Thanks,

Tim

[Ulti]

I have no idea how AHCI actually works, all I know is that pretty much all motherboards that support SATA will allow you to select IDE/AHCI or RAID mode. (RAID is only available with motherboards that support "RAID-ing" though)

I'm guessing that AHCI allows more bandwidth or something because with a SSD it increases performance by a small though significant amount.

[Tim Rogers]

Okay, thanks for your help.

[spoon_]

@Ulti

Wanna post your write speeds please?

[Ulti]

Any good benchmark to do so?

It's not really an important factor though, especially for this SSD as it's only a 40GB one so most people will only dump the OS and a few essential programs on there.

Also forgot to say that installing programs onto the SSD is ultra fast.

[Terbinator]

Was looking at picking one of these up today, can't decide whether or not to just spend the extra and get a Kingston though

[Ulti]

Get which Kingston? If you're talking about the 64GB first gen Kingston ones then I'd go with the Intel any day from what I've heard.

[marshalex]

Was looking at picking one of these up today, can't decide whether or not to just spend the extra and get a Kingston though

same here, though i have also spotted some decent prices on the crucial m225's (£135 delivered after quidco direct from Crucial) and am wondering if this is better than the kingstons?

[Terbinator]

Get which Kingston? If you're talking about the 64GB first gen Kingston ones then I'd go with the Intel any day from what I've heard.

The newer ones are Toshiba and support TRIM, after looking at the benchmarks the extra space seems worth it over the performance drop compared to the M-25.

[McPhee]

Same boat here. It doesn't help when most reviews seem incapable of comparing like for like. There seems to be a huge difference in performance between capacities on the same model, so why I'd want to see a comparison between a 64GB Crucial drive and a 160GB Intel one I will never know. I'm yet to find a decent review with the 64GB Crucial, 40GB Intel and 64GB Kingston V+. TBH though I think SSDs are still that little bit too expensive, £70-£80 for 40GB, £100-£120 for 64GB and £150 for 80GB would be more like it. Can't decide whether to bother or not.

[Terbinator]

The Kingston is circa £120 isn't it ?

[Tim Rogers]

I've been told that this is better than the Intel, is that correct?:

OCZ 30GB Vertex Series SATA-II

[smargh]

I've got a 40GB X25-V inside a small Acer Aspire - it's in IDE mode, I think, with XP. Does the job fine, but I don't really use the PC much at all - it's mainly a bedside radio and Isposure benchmark PC. I can do a benchmark if anyone really wants/needs one - just tell me which app to use.