Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Intel 510 vs Vertex 3 SSD

K

kart

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 16, 2011
202
96
AU
hey all!
Brand new to the site, and finding some brilliant info!
Im after a 120gb SSD for my 2011 17" MBP and wondering out of the two drives, what is better, and why?
Honestly don't know much about SSD's except how blistering fast they are ;)
Have heard that you can't really go past the Vertex 3 but the Intel has some good reviews.
Anyone use either drive? Would their be much speed difference in things like opening CS4 programs and the booting of the computer, between the drives?

Thanks :)
 
I've got the 120gb Intel 510 in my 2011 15" 2.2 Ghz MBP. It runs great! My wifes laptop still has the stock 5400 drive. I can't stand using it now that I am used to the SSD speed.
 
My recommendation is neither; get the OWC Mercury 6G.

The intel 510 are reported to have issues in some of the new MBPs and they don't have a great garbage collection. And the TRIM hack isn't viable as it slows down the performance of the drives...

The Vertex 3 is an amazingly fast drive but it's backed by a piss poor company.

The OWC has the specs of the V3 with very good reliability and a company that backs their drives 100%
 
kart said:
hey all!
Brand new to the site, and finding some brilliant info!
Im after a 120gb SSD for my 2011 17" MBP and wondering out of the two drives, what is better, and why?
Honestly don't know much about SSD's except how blistering fast they are ;)
Have heard that you can't really go past the Vertex 3 but the Intel has some good reviews.
Anyone use either drive? Would their be much speed difference in things like opening CS4 programs and the booting of the computer, between the drives?

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

I wouldn't recommend Intel 510 because of some issues with Macs.

I wouldn't recommend any Sandforce based SSD because they're a lot less reliable than other SSDs.

Crucial M4 128GB is cheaper and faster than Intel 510. It's about as fast as Vertex 3 120GB and a lot more reliable.

59152.jpg

http://www.notebookreview.com/shared/picture.asp?f=59152

kart said:
hey all!
Anyone use either drive? Would their be much speed difference in things like opening CS4 programs and the booting of the computer, between the drives?
Click to expand...

Ever considered Seagate Momentus XT?

I sold my SSD to use the XT. It does everything I need at SSD speed. The video shows how it performs in my MBP 2011:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMldqf5oUZw
 
OWC is even worse than(or rather as worse as) the Vertex. That too uses the SandForce controller so no better than the Vertex, and it is expensive as hell. I would avoid OWC at all costs simply cause OWC is not as experienced as a company as OCZ and still uses the SandForce controller, that cannot be good at all. The Intel 510 on the other hand has some issues with Macs. I would go with a Crucial M4 cheaper, great performance and reliable.
 
Last edited:
First off, thanks for all the posts thus far.
Secondly, like i have said, I know basically nothing about SSD's BUT, looking at the Crucial M4, it is only a SATA 2

Crucial does however look good, and is quite a bit cheaper. Is it still 6gb/s?

Thanks, once again.
 
Don't do it :)

I got my new MBP15" a few days ago and the very first thing I did after unpacking was placing my Intel SSD (510) in there and reinstall. After the installation I ran some tests with xbench and must say that I was very disappointed when I read the results of other people. It's just not that fast as other brands are.

Apparently the Crucial M4 is pretty good

Screenshot2011-07-09at53755PM.png
 
After alot of research I got the 120 GB Vertex 3 Max IOPS. It´s fast, really fast and I have had no problems at all with it.
 
Locodice said:
Where is all this Sandforce scaremongery coming from?
Click to expand...

The history and customer reviews of SF based drives speak for themselves -
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB reviews
OCZ Agility 3 120GB reviews
Corsair Force 3 120GB reviews
OCZ Agility 2 240GB reviews
OCZ Vertex 2 90GB Reviews

Crucial M4 has an average rating of 4 stars(5 for the 64gb version) on the other hand, the only reason it is not 5 is the LPM issue that has now been fixed. Also Crucial has a good track record with the C300, isn't reliability and quality the reason you bought a MAC over a cheaper PC which had better specs.
 
As for the original question posted by the OP: i would go for the V3.

For us heavy users the M4 has poor garbage collection - with a lack of trim on OSX, as anand said, not the best choice in a OS that lacks TRIM.
If you are a light user and intent to frequently update ure system, then i guess this matter not. Also, head on over to the crucial forums and one can ascertain that the M4 users have also had a number of issues in OSX.


I have gone for the patriot wildfire 120GB - it is currently sitting in a warehouse one mile away.. will be getting it delivered tomorrow :D
 
I've had no issues with Intel 510 in my 2011 MBP. Trim enabler is on.

Xbench figures below

Results 375.31
Disk Test 375.31
Sequential 243.99
Uncached Write 196.90 120.89 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 316.56 179.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 147.59 43.19 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 724.39 364.07 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 812.67
Uncached Write 578.34 61.22 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 539.04 172.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2326.24 16.48 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1101.39 204.37 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
hawk1410 said:
The history and customer reviews of SF based drives speak for themselves -
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB reviews
OCZ Agility 3 120GB reviews
Corsair Force 3 120GB reviews
OCZ Agility 2 240GB reviews
OCZ Vertex 2 90GB Reviews

Crucial M4 has an average rating of 4 stars(5 for the 64gb version) on the other hand, the only reason it is not 5 is the LPM issue that has now been fixed. Also Crucial has a good track record with the C300, isn't reliability and quality the reason you bought a MAC over a cheaper PC which had better specs.
Click to expand...

Cherry picking reviews isn't exactly evidence
 
Locodice said:
Cherry picking reviews isn't exactly evidence
Click to expand...

You would have point if these were exceptions. They're not though. Nearly all Sandforce reviews on Newegg have about 20% failures in them.

I'm not saying no one should buy Sandforce, I am saying reliability of Intel, Crucial and Samsung is in a different league
 
Philflow said:
You would have point if these were exceptions. They're not though. Nearly all Sandforce reviews on Newegg have about 20% failures in them.

I'm not saying no one should buy Sandforce, I am saying reliability of Intel, Crucial and Samsung is in a different league
Click to expand...

Its not 20% failures, its 20% of people coming back to the site to write a review doing so because they had a problem. That's not unusual for a hard disk. Check out the Velociraptor 600GB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136555
 
dsio said:
Its not 20% failures, its 20% of people coming back to the site to write a review doing so because they had a problem.
Click to expand...

Ofcourse, that's why I said 20% of the reviews have failures in them.

That's ~ 5 times more than Crucial, Intel and Samsung drives.
 
Philflow said:
Ofcourse, that's why I said 20% of the reviews have failures in them.

That's ~ 5 times more than Crucial, Intel and Samsung drives.
Click to expand...

Once you factor in the 25% of the population that are complete idiots and the 3% that tried to wear it as a hat, the drives are still ahead tbh.
 
dsio said:
Once you factor in the 25% of the population that are complete idiots and the 3% that tried to wear it as a hat, the drives are still ahead tbh.
Click to expand...

This also should be the same for the Crucial and Intel drives. Unless you mean that idiots buy Sandforce drives and the more wiser population buys the Crucial and Intel drives. :p
Anyway i agree newegg reviews dont say everything but all SF based drives have bad reviews whereas Intel, Crucial and Samsung have great reviews, go see for yourself. I agree there are some who probably did not know how to get the OCZ drives working or that mostly those people post a review who have had failures, but the same should be true for Intel, Samsung and Crucial.
The thing is OCZ and other Sandforce drives maybe be slightly faster but they cant compete with the above 3 in terms of quality and reliability
 
Cheers for all the reply's.
I am thinking heavily towards the Crucial M4 256gb SSD now..
I am located in Australia and this drive sells over here for just over $500.
Really don't want to spend that much. But looking at some U.S sites they are just over $400.
Because I am not in the know of reliable and cheap U.S sites that would sell this drive, could someone please post up some links.
Lastly, how much should I expect to pay out of the U.S for the drive? Hoping that with the AUD a few cents up on the USD, I could save some extra money!

Thanks :)
 
kart said:
Cheers for all the reply's.
I am thinking heavily towards the Crucial M4 256gb SSD now..
I am located in Australia and this drive sells over here for just over $500.
Really don't want to spend that much. But looking at some U.S sites they are just over $400.
Because I am not in the know of reliable and cheap U.S sites that would sell this drive, could someone please post up some links.
Lastly, how much should I expect to pay out of the U.S for the drive? Hoping that with the AUD a few cents up on the USD, I could save some extra money!

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

I've just ordered 2x OCZ 240GB Vertex 3's from Newegg and had them shipped to a mate in the USA for shipping back to Brisbane ;) AU pricing is a complete ripoff. Ended up being $960 for the pair.
 
Philflow said:
You would have point if these were exceptions. They're not though. Nearly all Sandforce reviews on Newegg have about 20% failures in them.

I'm not saying no one should buy Sandforce, I am saying reliability of Intel, Crucial and Samsung is in a different league
Click to expand...

My OWC 6G SSD (Sandforce) will run circles around non Sandforce SSDs, and it works fine.
Point taken?

kart said:
Cheers for all the reply's.
I am thinking heavily towards the Crucial M4 256gb SSD now..
I am located in Australia and this drive sells over here for just over $500.
Really don't want to spend that much. But looking at some U.S sites they are just over $400.
Because I am not in the know of reliable and cheap U.S sites that would sell this drive, could someone please post up some links.
Lastly, how much should I expect to pay out of the U.S for the drive? Hoping that with the AUD a few cents up on the USD, I could save some extra money!

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

Ditch what everyone said and get this
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/SSDEX6G240/

Trust me, you won't regret it. I live in Australia and its what I did.
 
Macsavvytech said:
My OWC 6G SSD (Sandforce) will run circles around non Sandforce SSDs, and it works fine.
Point taken?
Click to expand...
I've had both Vertex 3 and Crucial M4 in my MBP 2011. Sometimes Sandforce is faster, sometimes Crucial is faster.

Sandforce drives do well with easily compressible data. Like Anandtech uses in his reviews.

Crucial M4 and Intel 510 do much better than Sandforce drives when it comes to incompressible data.

Here's what a Vertex 3 120GB looks like after I wrote a decent amount of incompressible data to it. Write speeds dropped heavily.
tortured-1.png


Here's what the Crucial m4 looked like after exactly the same treatment.
compresM42.png

No performance loss whatsoever.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back