The Intel SSD 320 Review: 25nm G3 is Finally Here
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 28, 2011 11:08 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Storage
- SSDs
- Intel
- Intel SSD 320
Overall System Performance using PCMark Vantage
Next up is PCMark Vantage, another system-wide performance suite. For those of you who aren’t familiar with PCMark Vantage, it ends up being the most real-world-like hard drive test I can come up with. It runs things like application launches, file searches, web browsing, contacts searching, video playback, photo editing and other completely mundane but real-world tasks. I’ve described the benchmark in great detail before but if you’d like to read up on what it does in particular, take a look at Futuremark’s whitepaper on the benchmark; it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to be a member of a comprehensive storage benchmark suite. Any performance impacts here would most likely be reflected in the real world.
The 320 falls in the middle of the pack - around the performance of a SF-1200 drive like the Force F120 but no where near what you'll get from a 6Gbps Vertex 3.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
194 Comments
View All Comments
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - link
More OCZ spin doctoring. I was talking about using the drive heavily in a average consumer manner. For example, running CDM a couple times. The notorious Sandforce flaw causes the write speed of the SSD to slow down. No where is that flaw documented, so it is really worse than just a design flaw, it is a bug. If it were a known design flaw, there should be something in the spec sheet stating under what conditions the write speed of the drive will slow down. But there is nothing in the official specifications about that notorious Sandforce bug.sean.crees - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - link
And no other companies have undocumented issues?How about my first gen Intel SSD's that now run at 1/10th their rated speeds? Where was it documented that this would happen to me?
So by your reasoning we should toss all Intel SSD's out of the window now right?
jwilliams4200 - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - link
Intel G1 SSDs do not run at one-tenth their rated speed. There was a slowdown bug, perhaps a factor of two, but Intel long since fixed that with a firmware update.kmmatney - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - link
Having several each of Intel and OCZ Agility SSDs, I can tell you that Intel's garbage collection is better, especially in first generation SSDs. I also have an Intel 80GB G1, and is is a little slower than new, but it hasn't slown down nearly as much as some of the OCZ drives I have do. Theya re all still much faster than spindle hard drives. I really do wish that Intel would at least enable manual TRIM of the G1 drives with the SSD Toolbox - but at least the grabage collection is very good.Frallan - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
Im a happy Intel G2 user today but my 160 GB is running out bc of bl**dy Steam and their weekend/holiday offers. I have waited for the nexty generation of the Inteldrives bc of my experience with the G2 but with this they are 30% to expensive or 50% to slow.
Intel has failed in either pricing since this drive is a valuedrive or in execution since this is a slow drive. A year ago I would have stood in line allready but now it seems as if Ill have to go with the SandForce.
Just my 0.02 USD
/F
fackamato - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
Same here. I also have the G2 160GB (good price on eBay almost a year ago). But the next one will not be this G3 drive, most likely something Sandforce.marraco - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
Both the Intel 320 300GB and Intel 510 250GB are easily destroyed on price and/or capacity and/or performance by RAID 0 of Intel 320 40GB, 80GB, or Intel 510 120GB (in RAID 0 of 2, 3, or 4 units).I would only recommend Intel 320 80GB or Intel 510 120GB in different RAID 0 setups, but they were not tested.
Given the scalability of SSD units, the price/performance ratio is one of the more important aspects of SSD reviews. I wish Anandtech were giving more attention to the best price/performance in RAID 0.
NCM - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
Remember what the zero in Raid 0 denotes...NCM - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - link
...It's the amount of data you'll have left if any one member of the array fails.marraco - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - link
I don't care, since I don't store data on SSD, and I have cheap terabytes of data to automatically store periodic images.