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M4 or 320

D

dryfly

Member
Excuse another "which should I get question" but here goes. I currently have a SATA II mb. Obviously the M4 would offer SATA III for future upgrade. However the 320 is now $10 less for 80GB capacity vs. 60 on the M4. A little more space, a little less money. I'm probably going to keep this SATA II board for some time.

I'm not a power user so I feel the 320 would be good for now as well as for future mb's.

My only question is reliability. The M4 seems to have better ratings than the 320. Looks like Intel has recently updated their firmware to eliminate past problems.

Which should I go for?

Crucial M4:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148441

Intel 320:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820167047
 
dryfly said:
The M4 seems to have better ratings than the 320.
Click to expand...
Those "stars" aren't real objective reviews.
Newegg's "reviews" are sometimes posted by people that don't even own the hardware.

Use those Newegg stars as a very last resort when buying components.

With that being said... Go for the Intel 320 series.
 
Intel has the best track record for reliability, so if that is more important than some extra performance go for the 320. Here is AnandTech's review of the 320: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4244/intel-ssd-320-review/3.

It still stacks up fairly well in some benchmarks, even competitive with bigger and more expensive drives - and not as well in others. Either way it's a huge upgrade from a standard hard drive.

The following snippet from the AnandTech review of the 320 was interesting:

Instead of striping parity data across all NAND devices in the drive, Intel creates a RAID-4 style system. Parity bits for each write are generated and stored in the remaining half of the spare area in the SSD 320's NAND array. There's more than a full NAND die (~20GB on the 300GB drive) worth of parity data on the 320 so it can actually deal with a failure of more than a single 64Gbit (8GB) die.
 
I really want the 320 as I feel it's a better price value and I can live with SATA II for some time yet. Only thing is I keep reading about the 8mb brick problem even after the latest firmware upgrade. I know any SSD (just like HDD) can have issues. Just seems like the M4 has had less problems. Hard to believe there would be that many 320's out there if they were that buggy??
 
Another vote for the 320, I've had mine for about two weeks now and love it.

I plan to move it to an older system when I upgrade my HTPC to Ivy Bridge next year, probably replace with an M4 or Samsung 830 at that point to take advantage of the Sata III connection.
 
I have 3 x 320's in various light duty work machines and none have gone wrong in anyway.

I don't think you will go wrong with either drive. The Intel will give you ~15GB more, which is a lot when talking about small drives. It will also give you a very polished toolbox application, but in reality you don't really need it.

If you are staying on SATA 3Gbps for the next couple of years then get the 320. It's bigger, and speed will be the same as the M4 as it'll be on SATA 3Gbps. In a few years when you upgrade, they'll be a whole slew of new SSD's to consider.
 
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For what it's worth, my M4 has been perfectly reliable in the half year that I have had it, and given the hefty price premium of the Intel (I'm willing to pay a premium for better reliability, but only if there is evidence to support that the Intel has better reliability than the M4), I would personally go with the M4 again if I had to make a second purchase.

With SSDs being so relatively new, the amount of in-the-field experience is limited, so maybe in a few years, we'll find out that the M4 is actually a dud in the long run. But then again, the same could apply to the 320 as well.
 
personally, I would lean towards the M4. I have a intel G2 and from all reading the 320 is just a tweeked G2. Not a bad thing as the G2 is great, just it's write speed is low vs others. I do not know the warrenty difference between the 320 and m4 but I would think the 320 is longer (if there is a difference).

But after using this 80GB for a while, I can really agree with one of the above posters about that size difference (80 vs 64) really really being important. just using my 80GB with common programs and windows itself leaves a little over 20GB for other things I swap in and out as I use them (ie: favorate game).
 
I own/have owned the following:

-Intel G2 (40, 80, 160)
-Intel G3 - 320 series 120 GB & 160GB
-Intel 510 - 80 GB
-Crucial C300-64 GB
-Crucial M4 - 64 GB
-Samsung 470 - 128GB

Plus I have bought/installed probably two dozen SSD's for customers...especially 4Q 2011 as prices have dropped.

My vote: Although M4 appears to be good...buy Intel 320 series if you were buying today.

1. The failure rate is lower...M4 is pretty new still.
2. Warranty - Intel has 5 year vs 3 year for everyone else
3. Don't get hung up over Sata 2 vs 3 issue. SSD is still way faster than HDD. I have tried the Intel 510 on Sata 2 vs Sata 3...the benchmarks are faster, but no real noticable improvement.
4. Firmware problem is fixed...I personally haven't experienced the problem
5. INTEL SSD TOOLBOX - the newest one from early November is cool. Still the best SSD software package out there. It offers diagnostics and firmware update from within Windows...which actually works. (Don't post and tell me how wrong that is to do, that I am supposed to boot from CD, etc- I have backups 😉

Hope that helps.
 
I have an x25m g2 80gb and a 320 series 160gb. Intel drives generally don't score as well on benchmarks but overall reliability (even with the crappy release firmware) is still the best in the industry. +1 for intel ssd.

Plus, the difference between 64gb and 80gb could really come in handy. It was big enough for me that I was able to run SRT + put my OS on the ssd data partition. I don't put anything at all on my C: drive (it only has 56gb left after the cache partition), but I've dropped down below 20gb several times just from installing TQ/TQIT and DAO + DLC. If I had a 64 gb drive in this scenario I'd be down to 3-4 gb free space and would likely start experiencing significant performance penaties, but with the 80gb drive I'm still gtg.
 
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COPOHawk said:
My vote: Although M4 appears to be good...buy Intel 320 series if you were buying today.

1. The failure rate is lower...M4 is pretty new still.
2. Warranty - Intel has 5 year vs 3 year for everyone else
3. Don't get hung up over Sata 2 vs 3 issue. SSD is still way faster than HDD. I have tried the Intel 510 on Sata 2 vs Sata 3...the benchmarks are faster, but no real noticable improvement.
4. Firmware problem is fixed...I personally haven't experienced the problem
5. INTEL SSD TOOLBOX - the newest one from early November is cool. Still the best SSD software package out there. It offers diagnostics and firmware update from within Windows...which actually works. (Don't post and tell me how wrong that is to do, that I am supposed to boot from CD, etc- I have backups 😉

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

I agree with all the reasons you listed. I've got an G2 120 that's been chugging along without issues for a year now.

I just grabbed a Crucial M4 64gb for the upcoming revamp of my second pc. I put it my laptop that has a S3 port, and jeez, the reads on this thing are pretty noticeable over my G2.

I wouldn't use anything other than an Intel SSD in my main desktop or laptop, though.
 
I'd probably get the 320, especially with the rebates and promotions that are going on. Looks like the 80GB 320 is currently $90 after rebate with a $10 gift card, effectively making it basically $80. Pretty good deal for that SSD.
 
frostedflakes said:
I'd probably get the 320, especially with the rebates and promotions that are going on. Looks like the 80GB 320 is currently $90 after rebate with a $10 gift card, effectively making it basically $80. Pretty good deal for that SSD.
Click to expand...

The rebate for my G2 120gb was turned down, for whatever reason, otherwise I would have thought about the 320 over the M4.

Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, leave a quarter on the bed stand. :|
 
That sucks. I would have thought Intel was good about rebates, but maybe not. Admittedly I don't have any personal experience with Intel rebates.
 
frostedflakes said:
That sucks. I would have thought Intel was good about rebates, but maybe not. Admittedly I don't have any personal experience with Intel rebates.
Click to expand...

It was through Newegg. They are the ones that denied the rebate. At any rate it was $30 so not worth any loss of sleep.

Beyond that, my Amazon Prime sub has been taking a chunk of $ out of Newegg's ass.

Amazon isn't the new Newegg, but it is working hard at it.
 
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