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  • cliffa3 - Wednesday, August 19, 2009 - link

    Three articles on it within three days, no comment on here about intel stopping shipments, and no full performance review in nearly a month...what's going on? I finally browsed ars today and saw that Intel restarted shipments on the 12th. You hear anything from Intel on what Q4 holds?..just new models with more capacity or possible price cuts?
  • araczynski - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - link

    ...to finally see a 1TB SSD, that's my entry point, now the only thing left is to wait until that 0 drops from the price and the disc version hard drives will go the way of the floppy.

    2 years?
  • KOOLTIME - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    OCZ doesnt make 128gb size as per newegg they only sell
    120GB sizes not 128GB as your article lists pricing for ??
    or is this some new model we havent seen yet due out soon >>??
  • rnjeezy - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    there any direct, cheapo controllers that can be used to surpass sata speed limits?
  • philosofool - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    I have to say that 80GB is much closer to my target SSD size than 64GB. My current dream machine keeps system and program files on a SSD and has a conventional drive for my user data. 80GB feels a lot more comfortable than 64 for such a purpose. Vista chews about 14GB off the top, so it's basically the difference between 50 and 66GB, which is a lot.

    Anyway: go competition! Maybe by the time I have the money for a dream machine, I will be able to afford a 128GB SSD!
  • iwodo - Monday, July 27, 2009 - link

    It depends. I know many people like me, have trouble even filling up 30GB space.
    I have been using XP, Vista / Windows 7 on my 30GB partition and i had never ran out of space. Ofcoz once i start downloading things it fills up in seconds. But that is what External Drive and NAS are for.

    I expect if i install more Apps i will need 10GB more. That is still 20GB left even for a 64GB drive.

    That is why i always felt i rather have a much faster, but smaller SSD then a big SSD.
  • vol7ron - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    I feel the opposite.

    80GB is larger, but the 64GBs are cheaper. When you have that size you're going to set up in a RAID. So you're looking at 160GB vs 128GB. For me 128GB is more than enough space for a gaming and all-around setup and then you have the cost benefit.

    For some reason 160GB seems like more space than is needed (I had been making due with the 2-3 74GB Raptors). Though, if you're given space, you'll find a way to use it. --- Side Rant:

    That's something I don't like about efficient programming these days. Assembly/Binary programming used to be much more efficient compared to the high level languages today; now we see that we could benefit from those low level languages in our mobile devices, but we still don't capitalize on ultra-efficient "harder to program" code.
  • UNHchabo - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    "Assembly/Binary programming used to be much more efficient compared to the high level languages today; now we see that we could benefit from those low level languages in our mobile devices, but we still don't capitalize on ultra-efficient 'harder to program' code."

    Back in the day, assembly programming was more efficient than high-level languages because the compilers weren't very good. Nowadays, compilers optimize code well enough that writing assembly just isn't worth it in most cases; you're unlikely to optimize better than the compiler will.

    C is considered a "low level language" nowadays, with the common high-level languages being Java, the .NET languages, and Python.
  • Stas - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    My FF 3.5 looks weird as well, and not only AnAndTech. Opera 10b2 is displaying everything fine.
  • Stas - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    Colossus 120 seems like the way to go for a desktop. $10 buys you at least 30% performance increase in tasks that matter the most (once I'm past 150mb/sec mark, i could care less about linear speeds). Can't wait for the prices to get to MSRP.
  • iwodo - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    In my previous post i made the costing below.

    The 64Gb 8Gx8 MLC cost average 12.5. Controller at 90nm tech cost around $15. Packaging and DRAM etc, the 80GB SSD should cost $160 to make.

    That is ofcoz, Intel is already making money on both flash and controller.

    I believe that current NAND price is still based on 50NM - 40NM price. So 34nm should cost less. Hopefully in a years time it will cost 50% less.

    In 2010, SSD should finally take off.

    Personally i would choose 80GB Intel over everything else. I would pay a little more for better performance.

    I suspect main reason why Intel is so much better at Random is because Intel uses 10 Channel SSD. While Indilinx is only using 2/4 ?? Channel. I would love to know news on next generation of Indilinx Controller.

  • jimhsu - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    50% YOY drops in the future may not come so easily:

    http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/20090709PR201_fi...">http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/20090709PR201_fi...

  • Drazick - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    What About The Second Generation Of Indilinx?

    When can we expect it?
  • vol7ron - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    So the colossals are just hidden raid-0s? And how do they perform? :) Is there any economies of scale to this?

    And how will these colossals perform in RAIDed systems?


    --- I still think it's important to note that these prices are in lot numbers and not the resale value ---

    Though, unlike your other post, I thought I read on the Intel announcement that it's the price for *up to* 1000 units (as if you could buy just one =] )


    Thanks,
    vol7ron
  • mesiah - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    Based on the news that's out now you can expect to see random read/write performance scale just as if you had a true raid setup. Unfortunately as far as sequential reads go, just about all SSDs on the market are pushing the current sata technology to its limit. Because of that you will see no sequential read gains and very little improvement of sequential write performance. But one thing to consider is the fact that if you are buying a drive for a desktop system and are considering an indilinx drive, $10 buys you roughly 30% increased random reads. I'm gearing up to build a new system in the coming months and I can tell you now, its going to have 2 128gb colossus drives in raid 0. Although technology wise I like Intel a little better, Anand has painted OCZ as a real champion of the people in the SSD market, and I want to support that in the best way possible. With cold hard cash :D
  • vol7ron - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    I think people are pushing sequential read/write too much for the home-user; workstations I could understand a little more. For me, at least, I don't copy GBs of data that often. Once a copy hits a limit, I don't much care how long it takes because I'm going to find something else to do.

    For instance, if a transfer still takes 1 min, then there's no additional benefit if it would have saved me 3-4mins. And I won't be running any production databases on my home computer, so again, what good is sequential read/write performance?

    On the other hand random write performance seems to be very important since you're running multi-threaded applications and forking a lot of processes. I would say as the # of cores and threads increase on a system, the random-r/w performance becomes that much more important.

    I've been looking at building a new system for the past year. Normally, I would just pay out a lot of money, but I still have to think, hold off. There are 3 huge technologies that are still new: Intel Core i7/i5s, DDR-III, SSDs. I believe by April of 2010 (tax time), these will be mature enough for the home-consumer. And it might be worth holding off on the SSDs until they come with the SATA 6Gb/s interface.

  • jesseh - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    With the Intel news now out there, would love to see info and reviews for all the other drives that recently launched, that seem to be equal to or a bit better than the original Vertex from what I can tell.

    OCZ Vertex *Turbo* - OCZSSD2-1VTXT30G
    Corsair Extreme Series - CMFSSD-32D1
    Crucial M225 64GB - CT64M225 ... only $170 for 64GB @ http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODUL...">http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODUL...
  • mckirkus - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    Why is it that OCZ is killing off the 30GB Vertex drives?

    They're one of the highest rated drives on Newegg and if you're building a HTPC with a separate drive for storage or if upgrading an old laptop running XP they were absolutely perfect.

    We need more cheap, low capacity SLC drives. I've fixed enough friend owned computers to know that most people rarely use more than 30GB. Most of those same people do complain about slow computers though.
  • faxon - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    this is a good thing for everyone. the fry's i work at already struggles to keep the patriot torqx drives based on the indilinx controller in stock in the 64gb and 128gb variants, and with prices lower our main office will probably consider purchasing more to keep in stock, since they will be an even easier sell than before
  • Eeqmcsq - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    But it's kind of scary to see one company dominate like this. Intel has the lead in high end CPUs, low power CPUs, and now SSDs. Next on their list, total world domination!
  • Akrovah - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    Actually, I believe that the next item on their list is the GPU, with the Larabee suposedly comming next year. :)
  • Ryun - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    No price drops on the 30GB models, though the 64Gb Agility at $160 is a pretty sweet deal.

    Off-topic: Anyone else having weird page layout issues here using Firefox 3.5? In IE8 it looks fine.
  • deputc26 - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    Yes I have weird page layouts in ff 3.5 on youtube and facebook, I'm using ietab to auto-correct them.
  • Goty - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    Is there any word on the performance of the Colossus drives? It would be interesting to see how the 128GB version fares against the new X25-Ms.
  • winterspan - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    I just saw a Colossus review. The regular dual-controller Colossus drives, compared to a Vertex 128GB, have the same seq read performance, about 30% better seq. write performance, and double the random write performance. If you increase that to the massive 4-controller Colossus4x, all you get is another 50-75% increase in random write.

    Unfortunately, it seems like either the Silicon image RAID controller or SATA/300 interface is becoming saturated.

    For performance, one SATA link won't cut it. Until these go PCI-express (or SATA/600), I would for sure get two separate Vertex drives instead and RAID them. Even on a run-of-the-mill Intel southbridge RAID, you'll get far better performance than the Colossus --- disappointing really.





  • superunknown98 - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    I think I would Spend the extra money on the Intel 80GB. It's only $35 dollars more, performs much better, and these days an os or game are quite large. The extra space would be used.
  • fyleow - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    Too bad about the pricing.

    The 60 GB is still more expensive than the Intel on a $/GB basis. The 128 GB is a good value but I don't need that much capacity for an OS/App drive.

    Guess I'll be getting an Intel SSD then.
  • holywarrior007 - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    Dear Anand

    Would you please say something about the new Lexar SSDs? Are these good enough for notebook?

    Best,
    Naveen
  • winterspan - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    Lexar does not make SSDs according to their website.
  • ssdfreak - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    Whatever happened to the Sandisk SSD's that were rumored????
  • Roland00 - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link

    Micron Technologies, the owner of its subsidiaries Lexar and Crucial, have been making SSDs for a couple years now.

    http://www.lexar.com/ssd/index.html">http://www.lexar.com/ssd/index.html

    Lexar was one of the first companies to make a SSD for the expresscard slot.
  • taltamir - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    the link shows lexar express slot cards (not SSD, not bootable, etc)
    and crucial SSD. the crucial SSD use the samsung controller accord to a quick google search and thus perform the same as an OCZ summit
  • holywarrior007 - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    I don't know what are your reading capabilities as the link above clearly shows the ssds. Moreover, I am also pasting another link for your clarification.

    http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/perma...">http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site...;newsId=...

  • overzealot - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    I don't know what your reading ability is like, considering you linked to a press release titled "Lexar Media Announces Next Generation Crucial Solid-State Drive Products".
  • holywarrior007 - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    So aren't these lexar ssds? Do you think they shouldn't be called lexar ssds?
  • Margalus - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link

    no, they aren't Lexar, they are Crucial. And they are not called Lexar ssds. They are called Crucial. Both companies my be owned by the same company, but they are not the same. You don't call Crucial memory products Lexar do you?

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