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Anticipated timeline and prices for new Intel SSDs

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spooky69

Junior Member
At the very end of last year Anand was saying that he expected Intel to release new stuff mid-year (2010) and put a price-point of $200 for 160Gb - is that still expected or have prices gone up that significantly? Is it worth waiting for the new stuff from a performance and/or price point of view?

It seems that the only significant disadvantage of the X25-M is the write speed - if I have understood correctly. Does this mean that if you are writing to another drive and just using the SSD for OS and programs then there is no reason to not just get the X25-M?
 
You are not going to see the price of a 160Gb ssd anywhere near $200 anytime soon.

With respect to the apparent slow write speed of the Intel, pop on The SSD Review and look at the benches bottom right. They are suites so the Intels and all ssds are raited overall testing.

The write speed of which you speak is the large sequential random which is very rarely use unless you are moving multiGb size files and, even then, it takes some time to reach maximum speed as advertised. Your best drive is the X25-m for your need.
 
Thanks for the response.

So was Anand hopelessly optimistic, expecting the price to plummet with increased production or have prices gone up since he stated this? Just curious as I am new to looking at these products.

What I have not been able to figure out yet is what benchmarks are of actual relevance to everyday use. If we are close to something new and improved coming out then I don't mind a short wait, otherwise I will be ready to go with the X25-M as it seems to be proven for the Macbook Pro.
 
At the very end of last year Anand was saying that he expected Intel to release new stuff mid-year (2010) and put a price-point of $200 for 160Gb
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He did?

Pretty optomistic, I'd say. 😀

There may be a new Intel drive by the end of the year but if you're interested in an SSD there's nothing drastic gonna change for awhile.
 
As far as pricing goes, I think we're going to stay a bit stagnant. Performance will probably go up with the NAND memory die shrinks, but I imagine price for a certain capacity will stay nearly the same if not increase due to both supply side and demand side stressors.

I hope that the Crucial C300 controller ends up being a good stable one, cause I'm a bit invested in its success or failure now.
 
Most likely write performance WILL go up. There is indication (see some PCPer reviews) that seq. writes are basically capped on all the Intel drives.

Additionally read performance seems to crash when the drive is doing a large seq write (i.e. unzipping a large archive while using the OS). I don't know how the other SSDs currently handle that usage scenario. Anyone care to test?

Some quick IOMeter runs to back up my assertion:

Settings: 4K read (100% read, 100% random), 4MB write (100% write, 0% random), 4K write (100% write, 100% random)
Outstanding I/O per worker: 2



Notice how if the writes are random, the reads don't choke to death. Sequential writes cause choking of read activity. The best way to describe it is that it's like first gen JMicron, but for sequential writes (which thankfully are quite rare, video editing excepted).

Yes, my seq writes are a bit low ... should go free up some space.
 
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Hacp said:
Wait, why are people saying performance are going to go up? This isn't cpu guys.
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Performance is going up because, for the most part, your system is bottlenecked by the hard drive/ssd and not by the CPU. The change alone from a hard drive to a ssd makes this very obvious.

The faster the thorough put of the ssd, the better the performance.
 
spooky69 said:
Thanks for the response.

So was Anand hopelessly optimistic, expecting the price to plummet with increased production or have prices gone up since he stated this? Just curious as I am new to looking at these products.

What I have not been able to figure out yet is what benchmarks are of actual relevance to everyday use. If we are close to something new and improved coming out then I don't mind a short wait, otherwise I will be ready to go with the X25-M as it seems to be proven for the Macbook Pro.
Click to expand...

I think he said something along the lines of manufacturing costs being cut in half when Intel moves to 25nm (theoretically). That doesn't include the overhead involved in switching over to a 25nm process.

Furthermore, Intel (and everyone else) doesn't base product/price off of manufacturing costs, it bases it off of what the competition is offering and what the market can bear. Even if it cost them $100 to make an 80GB drive, if the market is $2.5/GB, they're still going to charge $200 for an 80GB drive. Good for profits and keeps the FTC off their back.
 
I concur with $2/GB statement, maybe even lower. They are moving X25-E to MLC, which not only indicates significant improvements on the controller, its also a sign that X25-E is going enthusiast, with true enterprise SSD coming out later.

$200 for 160GB might be a stretch, but $250 might not be. Imagine how much 600GB would cost when 160GB costs THAT much. 😛
 
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