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Larson Creek: Intel 311 Series, Price $ :o

I don't see the point of this. Instead of spending $120 on a 20GB SLC cache, why not spend the $120 on a Vertex 2 or Force SSD with double or treble the capacity and just put your entire OS and programs on there?
 
Well, as this is a drop-in speed boost to any z68 system, it actually makes a lot of sense. It's much easier to upgrade to this than it is to upgrade to an SSD, and as an added bonus, it takes no user intervention after it's installed. For most users, the effect will be very similar to having an SSD drive, but without any of the hassle. If you're building a new system, it's a hard sell. But it's a fantastic sell for an existing system or an OEM system, where casual buyers may not understand how to deal with two drives.
 
Completely uninteresting for consumers.. Sure instead of getting 3years out of it you may very well get 20 - but really, in 3years a 20gb (or 80, or even 160gb) SSD will be ancient and you'll get a new one for a fraction of the price. So not only do you get a new, fester SSD after a few years you have more space all along and still pay only a fraction of the price/gb.

Doubtful that that product will sell well, also note:
"Intel® X25-M SSD 80GB performance" - uh well, that's.. let's just hope that that's just a myth (or they mean SSD + HDD performance together, although then that statement can only be applicable in situations where the cache can be used sensibly). The benchmark below at least seems more in line with the 160gb x25m.
 
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Emulex said:
for a server? that is a bargain.
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Sure but that's hardly the market Intel seems to be targeting with that technology. And a server environment that needs SSDs will most probably not worry about a few bucks here and there saved I wager 😉
 
If it was $49 - 59 for bundling with Z68, it would be great. Buying it buy itself doesn't make any sense. $119 for a 20GB, yeah, even Steve Jobs would have a hard time selling that.
 
Voo said:
The benchmark below at least seems more in line with the 160gb x25m.
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That's the thing. Normally Intel controllers have bad write speeds with the smaller sizes. This one manages to get decent write speeds with very few chips. Heck, I just looked up published sequential writes for Intel drives:

X25-V 40GB 35MB/s
X25-M 80GB 70MB/s
X25-M 120GB 100MB/s
X25-M 160GB 100MB/s

320 40GB 45MB/s
320 80GB 90MB/s
320 120GB 130MB/s
320 160GB 165MB/s
320 300GB 205MB/s
320 600GB 220MB/s

311 20GB SLC ~115MB/s

So, older G2 can't match the write speeds no matter what. For G3/320 (LOL "G3" is in the part number in place of "G2") this 20GB has write speeds between the 80GB and 120GB. The normal selling prices of those drives are $190 and $240 (currently discounted to $185 and $220). Thus, the 311 gets better write performance for less money.
 
Zap said:
So, older G2 can't match the write speeds no matter what. For G3/320 (LOL "G3" is in the part number in place of "G2") this 20GB has write speeds between the 80GB and 120GB. The normal selling prices of those drives are $190 and $240 (currently discounted to $185 and $220). Thus, the 311 gets better write performance for less money.
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Yeah but only if you're solely interested in performance and not the - imho at least for consumers - much more interesting metrics price/gb/performance (now that's starting to get a bit confusing, but since division is left associative, the same should hold here 😉 )
 
Zap said:
That's the thing. Normally Intel controllers have bad write speeds with the smaller sizes. This one manages to get decent write speeds with very few chips. Heck, I just looked up published sequential writes for Intel drives:

X25-V 40GB 35MB/s
X25-M 80GB 70MB/s
X25-M 120GB 100MB/s
X25-M 160GB 100MB/s

320 40GB 45MB/s
320 80GB 90MB/s
320 120GB 130MB/s
320 160GB 165MB/s
320 300GB 205MB/s
320 600GB 220MB/s

311 20GB SLC ~115MB/s

So, older G2 can't match the write speeds no matter what. For G3/320 (LOL "G3" is in the part number in place of "G2") this 20GB has write speeds between the 80GB and 120GB. The normal selling prices of those drives are $190 and $240 (currently discounted to $185 and $220). Thus, the 311 gets better write performance for less money.
Click to expand...

120GB G2 writes compare favorably with this drive, at least in the bench provided in the link I posted.



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IMHO massive fail Intel. Two reasons :

-for me personally and probably other enterprise applications : no AES encryption and NAND redundancy because of the Intel G2 controller inside. They should have used the G3 one instead.

-for the average Joe : at that price I can buy a nice 80GB SSD and use that as a boot drive.

SO Intel needs to do 2 things here if this will sell :

-either put in the G3 controller or update the firmware to allow it to behave like the G3 Intel 320 series SSD
-bring that stupidly high price down !

Thank you.
 
gevorg said:
I was hoping by 2011, 20GB and 40GB SSD drives would be obsolete.
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These are meant to be a HDD cache.

Now, why is Intel using more expensive SLC with this? Why does Seagate use SLC with their hybrid Momentus XT? Maybe they do this due to the nature of being a cache, with possibly more writes than normal desktop drives will see?
 
Exactly, it is either the 20GB is super fast, sort of like 520 with 6Gbps, or it gets much cheaper. This thing realistically should cost under $100.
 
20GB Intel 311 SSD : $119
16GB DDR3: ~$120

Might as well build a RAM drive instead. Ridiculous that a 20GB drive costs more than what I paid for my 80GB X-25M.
 
996GT2 said:
20GB Intel 311 SSD : $119
16GB DDR3: ~$120

Might as well build a RAM drive instead. Ridiculous that a 20GB drive costs more than what I paid for my 80GB X-25M.
Click to expand...

You still need the ram driver controller which is pricy and it takes a lot more space
 
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