Intel 320 (300GB) or Intel 510 (250GB) on SATA 3Gbps?

[palladium]

Hi all,

After witnessing my friend's SSD system I am tempted to jump into the SSD wagon myself. I have done some research and narrowed down to the above two SSDs (I would have taken the Vertex 3 240 GB if not for the reliability issues). The main issue here is that I have an old X58 MB without SATA 6Gbps. The 320 will set me back NZ$820 while the 510 costs NZ$880, and the 510 appears to have some advantage over the 320 even in SATA 3Gbps mode.

Should I save the US$45 and get the 320, or get the 510 now and take full advantage of it when I upgrade my system later, or get a PCIe SATA 6Gbps card to go with the 510? Other suggestions are welcome too.

Thanks in advance.

 

[biostud]

may I ask what you need a 300gb SSD for?

 

[palladium]

I intend to install a few games on it, so the smaller drives won't cut it (I currently use about 120 GB of my C: drive without any games installed). Also the smaller drives appear to be slower...?

 

[Coup27]

For the workload you have suggested I think a 320 would suit you better. It has better random performance and a seq top end of ~270MB/sec would be more than enough. The 510 would be better if you were regularly moving large files around but most people don't do this.

Any reason why the M4 was chopped out? I think the random performance is around the same as the 320, its 6Gbps, has higher seq figures and is cheaper.

 

[biostud]

120gb on your C: drive without games is a lot, do you also store photos's, mp3's etc on your C: drive?

With windows + software I'm only 50Gb on my C: drive

If you move some stuff around + uses this (link below) program for your steam games you could probably do with a 160gb drive and save a lot of money. (Unless you run some software that really takes up a lot of space)

from 160gb and up the 320 series doens't get that much faster

http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

 

[palladium]

Thanks for the replies guys.

@Coup: I ruled out m4 because apparently Crucial's garbage collection system is fail, and Vista has no TRIM support. See here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4253/the-crucial-m4-micron-c400-ssd-review/12

@biostud: Thanks for the link. I'll try and work around the space limitations, but its gonna be hard with a 40GB Windows XP and a 10GB Linux virtualbox virtual hard disk sitting in C: (and I would really like them to sit in the SSD ).

Thanks again for the replies.

 

[biostud]

Ahhh, running virtual machines then I can understand your need for extra space.

 

[VI3L]

I think anand is paid by OCZ or something lol, he acts like they are the only good SSD vendors. Yet the OCZ ssds have the highest failure rate.

I have the Mushkin chronos Deluxe and I love it, but I have true sata 3 so i get the full benefit.

I think if you can afford it go for the 510 because if you do ever upgrade it will be a nice increase in speed for only 45 more.

 

[mrjoltcola]

From those, definitely the 320. The 510 isn't the best performer, due to its lower random performance, and that is really the part you feel the most.

Consider 6Gb/s as an investment, for when you do upgrade your M/B, just not the Intel 510.

Also take a look at Samsung and Kingston, they have nearly the same reliability as Intel and Anand has given them pretty good reviews (so I disagree with VI3L, I've seen him give very good reviews to other brands). Kingston's new Hyper-X Sandforce based SSD is an awesome performer, though we won't know reliability numbers for a while.

As far as space, well, what I do is put my VMs on a separate Velociraptor. VMs can accelerate drive wear, so keep that in mind. Of course if VMware is the bulk of your work, then I understand why you may use the SSD, but I've found as long as my OS, software and tools are on the SSD, putting other things on the v-raptors and my downloads & media on a slower green drive works well.

 

[Concillian]

@Coup: I ruled out m4 because apparently Crucial's garbage collection system is fail, and Vista has no TRIM support. See here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4253/the-crucial-m4-micron-c400-ssd-review/12

Anand GREATLY exaggerates the garbage collection issues.

Do you ever COMPLETELY FILL your drive?
Is your machine ALWAYS loaded and never idle?

If you said no to both, garbage collection algorithms simply do not matter to your usage.

It only really matters for a very small subset of people who would consider an SSD. He does those parts of the articles because there are a small percentage who it matters for and older SSDs did have some rather serious issues with garbage collection in that once you hit a certain condition, write performance would NEVER recover until you secure erased. All the modern SSDs are at least passable, and will recover without TRIM during machine idle time.

For 3Gbit SATA, get the cheapest that matches your capacity. This is usually a toss up between the Intel 320 / Crucial M4 and a Sandforce drive. Some will avoid Sandforce due to the quality issues... whatever floats your boat. The bottom line is the differences between the various SSDs at 3Gbit speed is not really noticeable.