The SSD Update: Vertex Gets Faster, New Indilinx Drives and Intel/MacBook Problems Resolved
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 30, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Final Words
My recommendation still stands: the Intel X25-M is by far the cream of the crop of the desktop SSD world. The Indilinx based drives have the potential to be good, lower cost alternatives to the Intel drive but you still have to approach them with caution. While the OCZ Vertex drive worked fine in my tests and on my testbed, this is a brand new drive with a controller from a company without a proven track record.
In the coming weeks I will be looking at the latest updates to Samsung’s MLC controller. While I haven’t been terribly impressed with the performance of Samsung drives thus far, they are at least reliable and compatible.
While I’ve heard that the JMicron based drives are no longer selling very well, it looks like at least a few manufacturers are going to be using the JMF602B controllers to deliver 512GB SSDs in the coming months. Buyer beware.
I will say this: outside of Intel, Indilinx appears to know what is important when it comes to SSD performance. With more companies releasing drives based on the Barefoot controller, we should hopefully see any compatibility problems get sorted out faster.
There is some even better news that has surfaced since last week. If the 1275 revision ends up being problem-free, it does deliver more than 3x the random-write performance of the Vertex I first previewed and a more than noticeable 10% boost in application performance. That’s not enough to dethrone Intel, but it is more than enough to make the Vertex even more desirable.
The gotcha still applies: this is the first version of an Indilinx controller we’ve seen in the desktop market. Compatibility and longevity have yet to be proven; so far my experience has been positive but that’s merely one datapoint. We have a long way to go my friends.
I’ll keep you posted.
...and Thanks
I spent a few hours last weekend responding to every single email I received about The SSD Anthology. I've got some recent ones that came in while I was at GDC that I still need to get to. For the first year or so of AnandTech I responded to every single email; it didn’t take too long for me to start getting a few hundred a day and for me to have to curb that a bit in order to actually get work done.
The outpouring of support and appreciation in response to my latest article was too good for me not to respond to every single person. To those of you who wrote me, commented, or just took the time to read the article - thank you.
Your words and support are what inspire me to, even today almost 12 years since I started AnandTech, continue to work on things like The SSD Anthology or The RV770 Story. Thank you.
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AtenRa - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Intel X25-M 80GB $4.29OCZ Vertex 120GB $3.49
OCZ Vertex is 120GB not 80GB ;)
strikeback03 - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Also not sure where those prices came from, as cheapest PriceGrabber finds the X25-M 80GB is $359, for $4.49/GB. The Vertex 120GB seems to be the best deal at the moment, at $2.91/GB before rebate, $2.66/GB after.nubie - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Nice, these Vertex drives are looking even hotter :)That Super Talent drive is $108 on Newegg after a mail-in-rebate of $20, if you try to keep your main drive/partition under 30GB it might be the perfect way to speed up your machine.
Keeping media off of the main drive it should be simple to stay under 30GB, even putting games on a different (platter) drive you should see a much faster computing experience.
deputc26 - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Anand your SSD coverage has been second to none. I trust your reviews more than anyone elses on the web but it sure would be nice to see real-world power consumption figures for SSDs as this is an important factor in notebooks._Nate
gwolfman - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Great followup to the amazing SSD Anthology article. You win in my book.turrican2097 - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
I wonder if those JMicrons were low-cost for very specific scenarios, firmware and the like. And then it was the SSD manufacturer that cheaped out.I wouldn't blame JMicron without investigating
strikeback03 - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
They probably are OK for some scenarios, but you can still blame the companies for using them in a manner they are not really fit for. If some company started selling 15"+ laptops for several hundred dollars using Atom processors, you wouldn't blame Intel for making the Atom, but the company for misusing it.Mumrik - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Page 3: "The Intel drive can still crunch through over 3.5x the number of IOs per second as the Vertex, but it also costs nearly 2x per GB"Not true at all according to page 2 where price/GB is 4.29 for Intel and 3.49 for OCZ. That means that the Intel drive costs 23% more than the OCZ - nowhere near 2x.
sideral - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Anand,Unfortunately I had not read about the issue when I read you fantastic article on the Vertex, which made me buy a couple of X-25Ms for my machine.
I contacted Intel through support right now after reading they might have a fix for the issue the drive has under Bootcamp on one of the new Macs with nVidia chipsets. They aren't answering (yet), do you have some color on the fix though ?
inolvidable - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
I'm following ssd's progression throught your articles. I think they're the next big evolution in computer performance so I have much interest on them