Intel X25-M G3 coming March 28th?

[badass]

Speculation:
To be called the Intel SSD 310 Series
Will use 25nm IMFT flash
Internally called postville refresh.
Looks pricier than an OCZ Vertex 2 per GB.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/...ed-march-28th/
Review translated
http://translate.google.com/translat...m%2F14414.html

[badass]

Anandtech have a review up now!
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4244/intel-ssd-320-review
The G3 uses 8k page sizes.
I wonder if they will benefit from 8k cluster sizes on windows systems?
Just remember that the system volume must have a 4k cluster size!
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2272294
Still, it's only a 100MB volume that's used during boot and not for much else.

When Hexus does the review, can I ask that some basic random read/write testing is done using NTFS volumes with 8k cluster sizes with reads and writes going from 4k and upwards in size?
I suspect 8k random writes will be faster on an 8k formatted volume.

[watercooled]

I read that article earlier, it seems SSDs are now moving into what I consider an acceptable price range. Only thing is I've been mostly out of the loop since the days of the 1st gen drives, don't suppose you know of a place to start to pick up the details of what to look for, etc?

[aidanjt]

It's pretty much the same now as it is then, plus TRIM is now on every device, OCZ's (possibly the Sandforce controller in general) TRIM implementation is a great big pile of suck, so it's rubbish at mass/large deletions. Voice of experience. *sigh*

[watercooled]

I though Sandforce drives came highly recommended now, the 60GB Corsair for instance?

[aidanjt]

They perform very well on reads and writes, especially with compressible data like a butt load of text files. But they fail hard on delete operations unfortunately.

[MadduckUK]

well i cant buy /another/ G2, so this will have to deliver.

[badass]

They perform very well on reads and writes, especially with compressible data like a butt load of text files. But they fail hard on delete operations unfortunately.

And if you dump large, incompressible files such as videos on them. They can get in a low performance state that they can never come out of withour a secure erase.
Plus now the advertised capacities on the OCZ drives are a complete lie.
However I'd rather get one of these G3 intel drives once they have been out for a while as they can take a lot more writing than the G2 drives and are more reliable than sandforce based drives.
However even knowing about these problems, I'd still consider a sandforce drive as a boot/applications drive. I'd not consider one less than 120GB though. The 60GB ones are just too small to fit Windows 7 plus much else on.

[watercooled]

Hmm, so Intel driver are where it's at then really. What about the Kingston Value drives with a Toshiba controller, or Indilix controller drives? Or I suppose what I should be asking is what is a good 'value' SSD, bearing in mind I don't mind waiting for the 25nm Intel drives.
Also do I have it right about TRIM - it's automatic on OSes that support it, but you can do a manual pass with MFR tools on other OSes?

Oh and sorry about hijacking your thread BTW, but it is relevant.

[Terbinator]

Hmm, so Intel driver are where it's at then really. What about the Kingston Value drives with a Toshiba controller, or Indilix controller drives? Or I suppose what I should be asking is what is a good 'value' SSD, bearing in mind I don't mind waiting for the 25nm Intel drives.
Also do I have it right about TRIM - it's automatic on OSes that support it, but you can do a manual pass with MFR tools on other OSes?

Oh and sorry about hijacking your thread BTW, but it is relevant.

Are you sure that's not a secure erase you're thinking of as unless its supported by the OS you can't TRIM manual or automatically AFAIK.

[kalniel]

edit: review was already posted above, removed.

Looks like these should be budget drives from the reviews - last year's controller but added to 25nm chips.

[watercooled]

No I was just reading a few Anandtech reviews and they mention 'TRIM passes' here for example: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3756/2...ake-on-intel/5

[aidanjt]

TRIM support has to be added to the filesystem in question, so Window 7's NTFS on the Windows side, and since Linux 2.6.33, swap, Ext4 and BtrFS on the Linux side.

TRIM works by receiving a TRIM command from the filesystem, that it's no longer using a particular range of blocks, which allows the SSD firmware to go and reset the flash cells associated with those blocks, so when it comes to overwriting them, they're ready to write, instead of having to go through a slow erase cycle first.

[badass]

Hmm, so Intel driver are where it's at then really. What about the Kingston Value drives with a Toshiba controller, or Indilix controller drives? Or I suppose what I should be asking is what is a good 'value' SSD, bearing in mind I don't mind waiting for the 25nm Intel drives.
Also do I have it right about TRIM - it's automatic on OSes that support it, but you can do a manual pass with MFR tools on other OSes?

Oh and sorry about hijacking your thread BTW, but it is relevant.

1. Kingston Value drives: I don't know enought about them to say. IIRC they suffer from fairly high write amplification in order to maintain reasonable performance.
2. Indilinx drives. They suffer from high write amplification. Cheap though.
3. Sandforce drives. Very, very low write amplification but the problems mentioned before.
4. Intel G2 drives. High ish write amplification. In my experience in day to day use, really quick. I've not used another SSD in anger however.
5. Intel G3 drives. Like the G2 drives but a bit quicker and much, much lower write amplification.

It also appears that the failure rate of intel drives is the lowest in the industry by a huge margin. A sandforce drive is at least 4 times as likely to fail and other SSD's are similar.

Write amplification is a process where in order to write a small amount of data, the drive must read, erase and rewrite a much larger amount of data. The higher the write amplification, the slower small writes are and the quicker the drive wears out. There's a more technical and accurate explanation on the anandtech site

Write amplification is more or less irrelevant on large sequential writes.

[watercooled]

TYVM.
G3 Intel may well be where I enter the SSD game then!

Been reading a fair few SSD reviews/articles on my day off, trying to pick up on the details.

[badass]

On sale at BT shop now http://www.shop.bt.com/products/inte...m_content=RR00

£174.99 Inc VAT.

I'm waiting till SCAN have them in stock and they've been out for a couple of weeks to make sure there isn't some show stopper problem.