Intel G3 Postville SSD lineup refresh?

[bunit]

Intel is said to be refreshing their whole SSD line in Q4 on the 24? or 28nm process.

Anybody have any details on possible price/performance?


Worth holding out for a G3 or would you guys just buy a G2 now if you were building a rig? The only thing I could think of is that I might need 160gb instead of 80gb but I"m willing to bet the G3 160gb drives would still be around $270+. I"m probably building my rig in July so, while I do want to wait, it gets to a point where I feel like I wouldn't even notice any real differences between the G3/G2 drives other than possible space..
80GB G2 now for $200 or hold out for G3?

Also, Sata 6gb/s? A big deal? Noticeable in real world, everyday use? Games?

Also this is slightly off topic but how much space does an 80gb drive really have?
Win7 HomePremium, Office, Media Players?, 3-5 Steam Games..(MW2, SC2, NBA2K10/11, etc)
Would that be alright? I don't do any heavy encoding or converting or any of that stuff.

 

[xaph]

I bought a intel X25-M 80GB a couple of weeks ago, Win 7, office, crysis, SC2 on it, and 42GB free. total space formatted is 74.5GB
I think Intels goal is to bring down costs, not up performance with the G3, I dont use any big applications that take up alot of space, and generally dont play more 3-4 games at a time, so 80GB is fine for me.
can only speculate about price, maybe 20% lower then current G2 prices?
right now the only drive I've seen that can break 3Gb sata is the crucial SSD.
depending on how long you plan to keep that setup I would probably aim for 6GB sata, the premium you pay for it, is not that much, maybe you want a new faster SSD in a couple of years

 

[Emulex]

intel plans to cram twice as much on the same chip - this will help with performance since they need to keep up with the jones' - regardless by using higher density chips -if yields are decent - you will get 320gb for 160gb, etc.

probably see $60-70 40gb ssd's for business too. that are even slower - but then again X25-V is fine for business - no noise - no vibrations killing (think shop floor).

Also the X25-E is coming soon. i've seen the roadmaps but that is all i can say - massive push for both MLC (?!?!) and SLC into server market coming. maybe there is some sort of hybrid or something but super-capacitors and MLC are definitely in the server roadmaps

 

[IntelUser2000]

Q2-34nm MLC based X25-E "Lyndonville. It'll feature capacitors for write cache, but its pretty small, nowhere near the size of the ones in the enterprise Sandforce SSDs. They are like what? 2mm x 4mm? It'll have few of those.

Q4 2010/Q1 2011-Taylorsville. I think they were planning for Postville-refresh on the same 34nm process with higher capacities and better performance, but Taylorsville came too close.

25nm
Up to 600GB

I think there will be a major update for performance in terms of sustained IOPs. Current Intel SSDs cannot maintain performance under demanding workloads. Intel knows this, and I'm betting they'll majorly improve it on Taylorsville.

The lineup suggests that X25-E's prices will turn up more like "Enthusiast" pricing(kinda affordable) from the current "Enterprise" pricing(not really affordable).

For the real enterprise there will be that dual SAS-600 SSD that will be joint with Hitachi. That will signal the end to most of the PCI Express-based solutions.

 

[bunit]

I see.
Well, I may just end up purchasing an 80gb drive now and may get a faster one in the future if I find myself really needing that much space. I think that's the best course of action - after all, the current computer I"m on is only using 150gb/200gb of space, granted its Windows XP but this is a family computer full of random junk that I'd delete if I could.
I see now that its probably a good idea to get a Sata 6gb/s mobo if I'm gonna want to buy a larger SSD in the future. This is a little off topic but the problem for me, personally, is that I'm on the LGA1156 platform which is a little bit limited unless you're willing to spend an 80$ premium on a few select Asus mobos that implement it with the help of an external chip.

 

[MagickMan]

Maybe look at Gigabyte?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128417

 

[killster1]

I bought a few 25-m and a 64gb kingston, I dont understand why people need lots of games on the ssd. i haven't even installed one game on the ssd yet but loading times are only few seconds witha 1tb black drive now so i dont mind. If its a laptop sure get teh 160gb but for oS dont worry about it

 

[Zap]

I bought a few 25-m and a 64gb kingston, I dont understand why people need lots of games on the ssd. i haven't even installed one game on the ssd yet but loading times are only few seconds witha 1tb black drive now so i dont mind. If its a laptop sure get teh 160gb but for oS dont worry about it

Well, depends on the game. An older game like Starcraft would hardly benefit from faster loading since it is almost instantaneous, but a game like WoW does benefit because there are plenty of load bars in the game, plus it loads stuff on the fly so an SSD can reduce some hitching when you're running around.

Basically anything that has a definite loading time will benefit. Just depends on if you are willing to pay for it.

 

[RussianSensation]

can only speculate about price, maybe 20% lower then current G2 prices?
right now the only drive I've seen that can break 3Gb sata is the crucial SSD.

Chances are the prices will fall a lot more than that (or you'll get a lot more capacity at the same price). When G1 was replaced by G2, prices were as follows:

G1 - 80GB - $345
G2 - 80GB - $225 (35% cheaper)

G1 - 160GB - $650 (midpoint)
G2 - 160GB - $440 (32% cheaper)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2806

Also, it's fair to say most SandForce SF-1200 drives are near breaking the SATA 2 barrier wit 285/275 MB/s speeds. It's not hard to imagine we'll need SATA 3 soon.

OP, Intel Gen 2 was out July 2009 or so with no price drops at all since launch really (MSRP pricing) until now. Therefore, buying a G2 now is probably not the smartest idea. However, compared to the ridiculous pricing of the SandForce drives (i.e, OCZ Vertex 2 $199 for 50GBs), the G2 is a bargain!

Intel is very good at random writes, but not so great at loading videogames actually: http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/18875/5

 

[xaph]

to the Intel X25-M's defense tho, I want to add that those X25-M G2 numbers in that review were gathered running the windows 7 default AHCI driver, and the X25-V was running the new Rapid storage technology driver 9.6.

as can be seen here first paragraph.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/18712/3

compare the numbers from that review with the numbers in the review you posted.

http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/18875/5

I've had performance issues with my X-25 80GB G2 in pcmark with the MS AHCI driver, I wouldn't be surprised if those issues show themselves in other tests too.

 

[Acanthus]

I don't care about SSDs until i can raid them with TRIM.

 

[flamenko]

I don't care about SSDs until i can raid them with TRIM.

Kind of a funny thought because:

1. Intel originally said their new drivers supported TRIM in the RAID volume
2. Intel printed a retraction stating that it never.
3. Intel has just put out a SSD New Users Guide which states again that it does and that it is dependent on the controller itself.
4. Intel has also said that there are no GC abilities on their drives.
5. The new drivers, when used in RAID are showing that either there, in fact, is some sort of GC going on or that TRIM is working.

This is evident in many tests throughout the net where people are showing that performance is being restored in a very short period after large deletions are being applied.

So we are still confused...

 

[sub.mesa]

Why can’t Microsoft’s ® Trim configured in a RAID array?
Intel ® 34nm SSDs with the latest firmware release
are able to receive the TRIM command, and will
execute TRIM when issued. If two or more Intel®
SSDs are configured in a RAID array and the TRIM
command is not received, this is a constraint of the
RAID controller rather than the drives or their
firmware.


Perfectly accurate, though they do not explicitely mention Intel is one of the controllers that does not support TRIM yet; the SSDs do. If the RAID controller (drivers) would passthrough TRIM command then TRIM on RAID would work.

TRIM on modern FreeBSD and Linux systems already works, even with SSDs in RAID0 or other RAID levels. But it does not work with all filesystems yet. The ZFS filesystem may not support it anytime quick, due to the copy-on-write design implementing TRIM would be kind of complicated.

 

[Acanthus]

Why can’t Microsoft’s ® Trim configured in a RAID array?
Intel ® 34nm SSDs with the latest firmware release
are able to receive the TRIM command, and will
execute TRIM when issued. If two or more Intel®
SSDs are configured in a RAID array and the TRIM
command is not received, this is a constraint of the
RAID controller rather than the drives or their
firmware.


Perfectly accurate, though they do not explicitely mention Intel is one of the controllers that does not support TRIM yet; the SSDs do. If the RAID controller (drivers) would passthrough TRIM command then TRIM on RAID would work.

TRIM on modern FreeBSD and Linux systems already works, even with SSDs in RAID0 or other RAID levels. But it does not work with all filesystems yet. The ZFS filesystem may not support it anytime quick, due to the copy-on-write design implementing TRIM would be kind of complicated.

That makes sense.

Judging from Intels track record with updating chipsets... Maybe they'll replace X58 for us by 2016 with a chipset that will properly support RAID + TRIM.

 

[bunit]

Wow those G2 numbers at loading games are pretty dang bad, but everything else is pretty good.
Anyways now I'm not sure if I should get a small SSD now or try and get my ideal 160gb size when it refreshes and just stick it out with a 1TB Spinpoint or a Caviar Black. Thing is, I'd like a fully functional rig before I head off to college, as upgrading my computer is gonna be low on my list of priorities there That's why I'd like to have everything by October, at the latest. Still though, it'd be nice to have my rig built by July so I could enjoy it during the summer. Then again, I'll be pretty busy this summer with other things so its not a big deal I guess.


I"m also gonna likely be pretty broke the time the refresh happens because right now I"m using graduation present money that will get spent one way or another before summer is over, so there could also be the issue of me not being able to afford a new drive unless I get a job 1st semester .

Ah well, decisions.
I'm just excited to see what Q4 is gonna bring us in terms of new tech. ATI SI, dual fermi?, better performing/cheaper SSDs hopefully.