The SSD Improv: Intel & Indilinx get TRIM, Kingston Brings Intel Down to $115
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 17, 2009 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Random Read/Write Speed
This test writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random writes that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). I perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time:
Random write speed looks to be a bit better with the new firmware. The 80GB G2 being a little faster than the 160GB version for some reason. With enough free space, the Kingston SSDNow V performs similarly to a non-TRIM enabled X25-M G2.
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chizow - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
Ya they had them for about 4 hours in an AM Shell Shocker for $240, which is their MSRP. They also had them for that price for about 8 hours at launch and since then its been gouged as high as $400 for a G2. All the other retailers that are selling for around the $240 MSRP are drop-shipping directly from Intel so they typically don't have stock in-hand and are estimating anywhere from 2-8 weeks for delivery....crimson117 - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Amazon has decent prices on these, but shipping time ranges from 2 weeks to 8 weeks.80GB G2 for $244: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Mainstream-Solid-Retai...">http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Mainstream-...-Retail-...
160GB G2 for $467: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-160GB-Mainstream-Retai...">http://www.amazon.com/Intel-160GB-Mains...-Retail-...
Xentropy - Sunday, November 1, 2009 - link
5 days later now, and Amazon's up to $599 for the 160GB, though they are in stock instead of shipping in several weeks.Exar3342 - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
I bought a G2 80GB yesturday via Amazon from a 3rd party company; was $244.00 (OEM) version. Good times.strikeback03 - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
With your recommendation to keep at least 20% of a drive as free space, should it be within a partition, or just leave some unpartitioned space on the drive?Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Either way works, just don't put data on it :)Take care,
Anand
Doormat - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Anand: great review.The 40GB 5-channel version has read speeds of 170MB/s. Does this mean that if the 10-channel G2 weren't inhibited by SATA 3Gb/s, it would probably get 340MB/s? Or is there diminishing returns on adding more channels.
Also, any price cuts on the horizon or just stagnating until drives start shipping with SATA 6Gb/s support.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
It's possible. All of the high end SSDs are bound by the interface for sequential read speed. I'm not sure how fast the controller could go if it weren't bound by the interface, but over 300MB/s sounds quite likely.Flash prices haven't really gone down lately from what I'm hearing. I don't know of any price cuts on the horizon unfortunately. Next year.
Take care,
Anand
semo - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
i don't think you will see any price cuts since intel can't make enough G2s.I tend to agree with others regarding SATA 3. If intel is not rushing to enable SATA 3 on their ICH anytime soon, why would they be coming out with SATA 3 devices?
ekerazha - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Anand,it's strange to see your
"Is Intel still my overall recommendation? Of course. The random write performance is simply too good to give up and it's only in very specific cases that the 80MB/s sequential write speed hurts you."
of the last review, is now a
"The write speed improvement that the Intel firmware brings to 160GB drives is nice but ultimately highlights a bigger issue: Intel's write speed is unacceptable in today's market."