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Intel 160gb X25-M G2 for $345 a good deal?

peapody

peapody

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Oct 7, 2007
3,176
142
San Francisco, CA
I really need more space for virtual machines. 80gb for all my apps gives me just 20gb for VM....which is enough, but cutting it close I think.

Anyone with advice here? I want the best ssd for the money, which I know wouldn't be intel but it is the best for now isn't it?
 
Thanks for your post hellhammer!

I been trying to read up on ssds, and for the most part Intels are highly favored. Whenever I read other forums they tell me to wait wait wait for ssd prices to go down...but I need something now haha.
 
peapody said:
Thanks for your post hellhammer!

I been trying to read up on ssds, and for the most part Intels are highly favored. Whenever I read other forums they tell me to wait wait wait for ssd prices to go down...but I need something now haha.
Click to expand...

If you find the price to be fine, just go ahead. Prices are coming down, that's for sure but they don't go down that fast so you would end up waiting months, possibly a year to get much cheaper SSD
 
Maybe you will like to wait a little, for the new Intel's SSD generation which is going to be released this year.
 
gonzaload1987 said:
Maybe you will like to wait a little, for the new Intel's SSD generation which is going to be released this year.
Click to expand...

It's still up to ~6 months of waiting plus if Intel suffers the same supplying issues as they did with G2, it might be long till 2011 before they are widely available. Anyway, they won't deliver much more speed, only capacity and possibly lower prices so IMO it's not worth waiting, especially as the schedule is still open
 
Ordered one to install with my new 15" MBP i7, and it's simply amazing. Solid, fast, reliable.

*edit* : Ah, and it's a good deal :)
 
Hellhammer said:
It's still up to ~6 months of waiting plus if Intel suffers the same supplying issues as they did with G2, it might be long till 2011 before they are widely available. Anyway, they won't deliver much more speed, only capacity and possibly lower prices so IMO it's not worth waiting, especially as the schedule is still open
Click to expand...


What do you think about OWC SSD Drives? I'm very interested about the 240 gb capacity, it's shows impressive performance from what i have seen.

Thank you for your help! :)
 
gonzaload1987 said:
What do you think about OWC SSD Drives? I'm very interested about the 240 gb capacity, it's shows impressive performance from what i have seen.

Thank you for your help! :)
Click to expand...

It seems to be one of the fastest on market. +260MB/s real world read/write speeds are great. If i could afford, I would buy one

SSDBenchmarks.jpg
 
Haha there is a member on the forum selling theirs for $320 shipped.


Oh well. I need it like now anyways since I want to use my new mac in it's settled state. Thinking about getting a momentus xt to put in the optibay and sell my hitachi 7200rpm 500gb. I always strive for the best within my budget :)
 
peapody said:
I really need more space for virtual machines. 80gb for all my apps gives me just 20gb for VM....which is enough, but cutting it close I think.

Anyone with advice here? I want the best ssd for the money, which I know wouldn't be intel but it is the best for now isn't it?
Click to expand...

I have an intel X-25m 160gb, its blazing fast in reads. If you write to your disk alot than you might be better of going with a new ssd with the sandforce 1200 controller. Otherwise intels in the top of the charts with reads. Yeah the 345$ is a good price. I payed 500$+ for it a year ago.
 
It's easily the best upgrade you'll ever invest in, and that's a great price. Don't be fooled by specs on other drives that focus on sequential read/write performance. The Intel drive does a much better job of random access throughput which is typically what really matters for day-to-day use.
 
Reluctant Adept said:
It's easily the best upgrade you'll ever invest in, and that's a great price. Don't be fooled by specs on other drives that focus on sequential read/write performance. The Intel drive does a much better job of random access throughput which is typically what really matters for day-to-day use.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this information.

What I gathered from reading around is that the leading contenders are

Intel X25M G2
OWC Sandforce?
OCZ Vertex 2

Crucial is up there but not as high as those guys, I guess?

I don't write that much to my disk, but the random reads are important. I keep mostly all of my data on my media drive which accompanies the ssd that sits in the optibay.

So many people have told me not to get it not to get it because "SSD prices are going down". In fact, last year I was told not to get it because "intel was coming out with the newer generation". Sometimes I think that is just a phantom rumor, because I haven't heard anything yet..


Ace134blue said:
Trim is supported for the G2 intel ssd only. No trim is osx for a long time.
Click to expand...

I see. Haha that still will not deter me from getting an SSD/using OSX.
 
peapody said:
Thanks for this information.

What I gathered from reading around is that the leading contenders are

Intel X25M G2
OWC Sandforce?
OCZ Vertex 2

Crucial is up there but not as high as those guys, I guess?

I don't write that much to my disk, but the random reads are important. I keep mostly all of my data on my media drive which accompanies the ssd that sits in the optibay.

So many people have told me not to get it not to get it because "SSD prices are going down". In fact, last year I was told not to get it because "intel was coming out with the newer generation". Sometimes I think that is just a phantom rumor, because I haven't heard anything yet..




I see. Haha that still will not deter me from getting an SSD/using OSX.
Click to expand...

If you like to take a peek, you can see this extensive review: http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld.html

it compares the owc, crucial's sata 3 drive, and intel g2 from many different aspects that you may be interested. Conclusion: OWC FTW :D
 
peapody said:
I really need more space for virtual machines. 80gb for all my apps gives me just 20gb for VM....which is enough, but cutting it close I think.

Anyone with advice here? I want the best ssd for the money, which I know wouldn't be intel but it is the best for now isn't it?
Click to expand...

SSD's are not the way to go unless you have very specific situation you want to solve (say, fast boot up time).

The reason is simple:
A 2.5" hard disc use 1.7 watt power while a 64 GB or 128 GB SSD uses 5.7 watt of power...that is more than 3 tiuems the requirement of a normal notebook harddisc...and, you get much less space.

The 32 GB SSD's use 1.7 watt of power too so there the power usage is the same. But, since you wanted more space than that then a 2.5" can today hold 640 GB in 9.5 mm (2 -platter) from WDC or Toshiba.

Another issue with SSds is that they use more pwoer ALL the time when watching a movie. A SSD does not have "idle" currently so it will use 5.7 watt ALL the time if you are watching a movie - while a 2.5" normal hard disc goes down to 0.3 watt when idle...

SSD is really only good if you have very specific needs - in 5 years it has improved greatly, yes, but today it is more for a small part of teh market.
 
lutherdclooney said:
SSD's are not the way to go unless you have very specific situation you want to solve (say, fast boot up time).

The reason is simple:
A 2.5" hard disc use 1.7 watt power while a 64 GB or 128 GB SSD uses 5.7 watt of power...that is more than 3 tiuems the requirement of a normal notebook harddisc...and, you get much less space.

The 32 GB SSD's use 1.7 watt of power too so there the power usage is the same. But, since you wanted more space than that then a 2.5" can today hold 640 GB in 9.5 mm (2 -platter) from WDC or Toshiba.

Another issue with SSds is that they use more pwoer ALL the time when watching a movie. A SSD does not have "idle" currently so it will use 5.7 watt ALL the time if you are watching a movie - while a 2.5" normal hard disc goes down to 0.3 watt when idle...

SSD is really only good if you have very specific needs - in 5 years it has improved greatly, yes, but today it is more for a small part of teh market.
Click to expand...

Where are you getting those numbers? 160GB Intel SSD consumes 1.5W and only 0.06W when idle. Western Digital Scorpio Blue consumes 2.5W.

Of course that depends on the drive because OWC SSD consumes 2.5W for example.
 
lutherdclooney said:
SSD's are not the way to go unless you have very specific situation you want to solve (say, fast boot up time).

The reason is simple:
A 2.5" hard disc use 1.7 watt power while a 64 GB or 128 GB SSD uses 5.7 watt of power...that is more than 3 tiuems the requirement of a normal notebook harddisc...and, you get much less space.

The 32 GB SSD's use 1.7 watt of power too so there the power usage is the same. But, since you wanted more space than that then a 2.5" can today hold 640 GB in 9.5 mm (2 -platter) from WDC or Toshiba.

Another issue with SSds is that they use more pwoer ALL the time when watching a movie. A SSD does not have "idle" currently so it will use 5.7 watt ALL the time if you are watching a movie - while a 2.5" normal hard disc goes down to 0.3 watt when idle...

SSD is really only good if you have very specific needs - in 5 years it has improved greatly, yes, but today it is more for a small part of teh market.
Click to expand...

Your a nut, ssd's use less wattage because there is no read/write head. Its all non moving parts.
 
What are the best tools for benchmarks of hard drives and ssd new ones? I just use xbench, but it seems a kind of old being the last version of 2006 :eek:

Do you know another tool for speed tests, and to know the ssd condition (bad sectors, temperature, etc...) ???
 
gonzaload1987 said:
What are the best tools for benchmarks of hard drives and ssd new ones? I just use xbench, but it seems a kind of old being the last version of 2006 :eek:

Do you know another tool for speed tests, and to know the ssd condition (bad sectors, temperature, etc...) ???
Click to expand...

None that i know of for osx, but a lot for windows.
 
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