Intel 320 SSD (X25-M G3 Postville Refresh) Released!

Pullled the trigger

Ugh. I broke down and paid the early adopter tax on the 300GB 320 from Beach Audio on Amazon - $598.82 About $70 more than the msrp.

I got an e-mail from Amazon that my 160GB 320 should arrive April 13-22.

I've been doing some thinking. Depending on whether the new Sandforce drives have the same SATA-III issues we've seen reported before, I might just get an Intel 320 and be done with it. So far, even those users who got a SATA-III drive to work in the new MBPs haven't reported blazing speeds. They're all in stock here in Switzerland except the 600 GB, by the way.

brentsg said:

I got an e-mail from Amazon that my 160GB 320 should arrive April 13-22.

Click to expand...

Was it listed as "In Stock" when you ordered? My delivery is estimated for April 4-7. If it wasn't in stock then I never would have paid the extra money over the msrp.

I have a 2009 MBP and don't intend to buy a new Sata III computer any time soon so I am quite content with the 320.

JGO said:

Was it listed as "In Stock" when you ordered? My delivery is estimated for April 4-7. If it wasn't in stock then I never would have paid the extra money over the msrp.

I have a 2009 MBP and don't intend to buy a new Sata III computer any time soon so I am quite content with the 320.

Click to expand...

No, I thought I caught it early but it was out of stock.

brentsg said:

No, I thought I caught it early but it was out of stock.

Click to expand...

Normally I buy through Newegg, but they haven't had the 320 300GB in stock. I don't have much experience with the variety of online sellers who use Amazon as their storefront. I hope the order goes well.

Allright, I just installed my 120gb 320 in my 2011 15" mbp.
Very straight forward, just carbon copied the original disk and the switched, everything worked right away. Just a bit of a hassle with the flower screws on the HDD..
What kind a benchmark tool should I run?

JGO said:

Normally I buy through Newegg, but they haven't had the 320 300GB in stock. I don't have much experience with the variety of online sellers who use Amazon as their storefront. I hope the order goes well.

Click to expand...

I rarely use the Amazon sellers, just straight up Amazon.

hey guys, is there enough speed boost here to justify an upgrade over an X-25 G2?

Yey, it seems to have better read IOPS performance than 120GB Vertex 3.

Xbench: Intel 320 SSD, 300GB

Xbench - MBP 2011, 17" and Intel 320 SSD 300GB
Bought it here: http://www.proshop.dk/showproduct.aspx?prodid=417071 (720 USD )

Results 442.35
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.7 (10J3250)
Physical RAM 8192 MB
Model MacBookPro8,3
Drive Type INTEL SSDSA2CW300G3
CPU Test 250.33
GCD Loop 334.91 17.65 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 220.53 5.24 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 158.73 5.24 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 463.26 80.67 Mops/sec
Thread Test 931.70
Computation 865.08 17.53 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 1009.43 43.43 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 583.43
System 589.56
Allocate 762.17 2.80 Malloc/sec
Fill 430.54 20934.03 MB/sec
Copy 687.82 14206.62 MB/sec
Stream 577.44
Copy 566.88 11708.78 MB/sec
Scale 548.84 11338.83 MB/sec
Add 609.47 12982.95 MB/sec
Triad 588.12 12581.34 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test 343.74
Line 298.43 19.87 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 391.32 116.83 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 326.62 26.62 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 338.55 8.54 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 381.07 23.84 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 647.55
Spinning Squares 647.55 821.46 frames/sec
User Interface Test 519.42
Elements 519.42 2.38 Krefresh/sec
Disk Test 361.31
Sequential 240.98
Uncached Write 360.59 221.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 310.57 175.72 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 122.04 35.72 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 414.57 208.36 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 721.67
Uncached Write 510.22 54.01 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 566.92 181.49 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2027.90 14.37 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 754.30 139.97 MB/sec [256K blocks]

GiLLER said:

Disk Test 361.31
Sequential 240.98
Uncached Write 360.59 221.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 310.57 175.72 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 122.04 35.72 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 414.57 208.36 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 721.67
Uncached Write 510.22 54.01 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 566.92 181.49 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2027.90 14.37 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 754.30 139.97 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Click to expand...

Interesting, I just enabled TRIM on my 2011 MBP with the OWC SSD and my Xbench scores are a little lower for write (probably because the OS is now involved with TRIM) but overall the system is faster.

What's interesting is while the Intel 320 is better in sequential, the sandforce in my OWC is better at random IO. I used to get a total score in Xbench for disk in the 340 range. So it's not much faster.

Disk Test 309.84
Sequential 184.14
Uncached Write 273.36 167.84 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 295.21 167.03 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 83.53 24.44 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 369.62 185.77 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 976.33
Uncached Write 1483.08 157.00 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 482.75 154.55 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 3037.30 21.52 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 978.48 181.56 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Edit: Would be interesting to see what your scores are if you enable TRIM.

My disk arrives Monday, it will be replacing my 120gb X25

Just ordered a 300gb from amazon. Hope it doesn't take 2 months..

GiLLER said:

Disk Test 361.31
Sequential 240.98
Uncached Write 360.59 221.40 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 310.57 175.72 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 122.04 35.72 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 414.57 208.36 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 721.67
Uncached Write 510.22 54.01 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 566.92 181.49 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2027.90 14.37 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 754.30 139.97 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Click to expand...

Odd, I've got a 2010 15" with an X25-M G2 160GB drive. I get better speeds on the Random side (for the most part):

Results 309.62
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.7 (10J869)
Physical RAM 8192 MB
Model MacBookPro6,2
Drive Type INTEL SSDSA2M160G2GC
Disk Test 309.62
Sequential 200.26
Uncached Write 174.95 107.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 173.29 98.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 165.97 48.57 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 406.21 204.16 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 682.10
Uncached Write 786.85 83.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 319.89 102.41 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2309.93 16.37 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 966.76 179.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Seems kind of odd. I'll have to go back and look at Anand's benchmarks again.

intel 320 120gb på 2011 macbook pro 15"

Any UK sellers got these in stock yet?

So theres absolutely no compatibility issues with this drive? (sleep, hibernation, etc?)

Im ready to buy but want to be sure this is the best choice! I dont have a 2011 mac pro so SATA III drives arent on my radar.

So the 3 drives Ive narrowed it down to are this one, the C300 and the F120. But from what I can tell the C300 and F120 have the sleep/wake issue (as they sandforce drives?)

argh...so confusing!

I am preparing to get the intel 325 ssd bundle from maxupgrades. Let's see how everything goes! Till now, the person at maxupgrades seem to be pretty nice and helpful=)

smileyborg said:

I have disabled hibernation on my mac (following this guide) so that I don't have my 8GB of RAM being written to my SSD and wasting 8GB of space. I have not yet tried sleeping with the 320 series drive I just installed, but I expect it to work fine as it did with my OCZ Vertex 2. Unless you let your Mac sleep for long periods of time unplugged or drain the battery to near zero and don't shut down, there's little to lose by disabling hibernation.

I have noticed that this Intel drive has been working flawlessly so far, where as the Vertex 2 would occasionally cause the grey screen before the Apple logo on boot to last for 10 seconds or so.

If I discover any problems, I will report back here.

Click to expand...

Great, thanks.

Whats your boot time now from cold?

I have exactly the same spec mac as yours, except ill be using my 1TB alongside the intel SSD.