The Intel SSD 330 Review (60GB, 120GB, 180GB)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 1, 2012 12:01 AM ESTPCMark 7
PCMark 7's secondary storage benchmark does little to show us differences between modern, high-performance SSDs as everything here scores within 5% of one another - but that's the point. For most mainstream client uses you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between two good 6Gbps SSDs. Worry more about cost and reliability than outright performance if you're considering an SSD for a normal machine. Anything you see here will be much faster than a mechanical drive.
Performance Over Time & TRIM
SandForce's controllers have always behaved poorly if you pushed them into their worst case scenario. Should you fill a SF-2281 based drive completely with incompressible data then continue to write to the drive with more incompressible data (overwriting some of what you've already written) to fill up the spare area you'll back the controller into a corner that it can't get out of, even with TRIM. It's not a terribly realistic situation since anyone using an SF-2281 SSD as a boot drive will at least have Windows (or some other easily compressible OS) installed, and it's fairly likely that you'll have other things stored on your SSD in addition to large movies/photos. Regardless, it's a corner case that we do have to pay attention to.
As we found out in our 520 review, Intel's firmware isn't immune to this corner case. I filled a 120GB SSD 330 with incompressible data. I then ran a 60 minute 4KB random write torture test (QD32), once again, with incompressible data. Normally I'd use HDTach to chart performance over time however HDTach measures performance with highly compressible data so we wouldn't get a good representation of performance here. Instead I ran AS-SSD to get a good idea for incompressible sequential performance in this worst case state. Afterwards, I TRIMed the drives and ran AS-SSD again to see if TRIM could recover the drive's performance.
| Intel SSD 330 - Resiliency - AS SSD Sequential Write Speed - 6Gbps | |||||
| Clean | After Torture | After TRIM | |||
| Intel SSD 330 120GB | 148.9 MB/s | 96.3 MB/s | 94.4 MB/s | ||
This is really the biggest problem with SandForce drives. If you're primarily storing large amounts of incompressible data, sequential write speeds suffer even further over the long haul.
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Kristian Vättö - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link
Check back tomorrow ;-)antef - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
Buy buy buy! Even less than what Anand's chart show. What a deal.bim27142 - Wednesday, August 1, 2012 - link
I am really torn between Samsung 830 128GB and Intel 330 180GB...I am just a typical user and a casual gamer... I've read good reviews about Samsung's performance at since it's not Sandforce based...
Capacity-wise, I really find the Intel 180GB just right enough for me... So I am really torn which one is better for my case... :(
mailrachit - Monday, August 13, 2012 - link
As 'a typical user and casual gamer' myself I was asking the same question Samsung 830 128 GB or Intel 330 180 GB just two months ago when I was making a new ivy bridge desktop rig.I went with Intel 330 180 GB and I must say that I am quite happy with my decision.
The performance is stellar. I trust Intel for reliability and God knows I need the extra space (180 GB - 128 GB).
Look for deals and you can get the Intel one for real cheap (I got it for $110).
angelsmaster - Tuesday, September 4, 2012 - link
hi, i just also bought the 330 series but now, its 240 gb.. did you update the firmware,, cause i cant seem to find one for th 240gb. i know its the same as 180gb model. but i can't seem to make the link work. btw. iam using macbook pro 15" 2011. thank...SewerSoldier - Thursday, August 2, 2012 - link
Hi,I'm currently looking at buying a 120/128GB system/application SSD for use beside a 1TB HDD for media.
I'm deciding between Samsung 830 Series and Intel 330. However in my country the samsung costs 130€ and the intel 112€.
My question is if I'm right in assuming that Intel 330 is the better choice since the better performance of the samsung with incompressible data isn't really important for a system/application drive?
softdrinkviking - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
disappointed that intel hasn't come back with a new controller of their own. I own and love a 34nm intel drive, and I love how reliable it has been.it seems like intel can really put out good stuff when they put enough R&D into it, but I am not sure about their track record when working with other companies on tech. (like sandforce)
Per Hansson - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
Well honestly there have been reports of the "8MB bug" happening even with the latest firmware on the Intel 320 drive so I would not be so sure about that...http://communities.intel.com/thread/24339
http://communities.intel.com/message/162330
http://communities.intel.com/message/161880
softdrinkviking - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
Oh yeah, I forgot about that whole fiasco. Still, there is something I don't like about relying on data compression technology to speed up a drive. The potential for catastrophic data loss seems to be higher if you are dealing with multiple levels of logic abstraction. For similar reasons, I never used those drive doubler technologies that were popular before traditional HDDs became so big.Thinking about it from a data recovery point of view, how would this effect the difficulty and cost of recovering data from a drive?
I know the whole recovery process would be totally different from a HDD, but it still could be a consideration.
booomups - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
i really wonder about this, since it seems strange if intel says on some drives it does and in others it doesn make sense. in the review it says its enabled for the 180gb version, and not for the 120gb version. how certain is that even in newer drives revisions?and... intel doesnt mention e aes encryption for the 330 drives, but it is a big point for the 520 drives.
any details on that, ita the same chip after all.