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Intel SSD price drop on April 26

M

magamo

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 6, 2009
439
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EDIT: The latest info: http://vr-zone.com/forums/421608/int...pril-26th.html

"Intel plans to cut the prices of their SSDs ranging from $50 to $100 this coming Monday on the 26th of April. This is their second price cut on SSDs just two months after they conducted their first price cut in early February. Intel 80GB X18-M and X25-M will see their prices dropped from $385 to $335 while 160GB versions will be lowered from $760 to $660. However, the prices of the SLC models remain unchanged at $410 for 32GB and $790 for the 64GB."


A retail shop employee said on a Japanese PC forum that Intel was expected to reduce the price tags of its X25-M series around April 26.

At the same time, HP Japan announced that it will start shipping its new mini 2140 notebook with X25-M 80GB for about $800 (or 79,800 yen) at the end of this month, which is only about $100 more expensive than the 160GB 7200rpm HDD model. According to HP site in US, the price difference is currently $325 in US, which may support Intel's price cut rumor.

If the price cut is true, I'll replace every HDD I have now!

For those who can read Japanese: HP's mini notebook with Intel X25-M 80G and Intel's price drop rumor.
 
woooooooohooooooooooo! i cant wait! after using MBA rev.B with SSD, using a traditional 5400RPM hard drive in my UMBP17" is a pain in the ass. luckily the battery is much more so i can just sleep the computer and not to worry about the battery.

but with the MBA, i never sleep it, just turn it off because the boot time and application launch times are not bugging me! it's speedy gonzales!
 
Apparently HP is going to be getting intel M 80GB ssds for their 2140 netbooks. Too bad there is no pricing for the E SSDs though. For 79k yen, it is still on the high side for a netbook.
 
Wish the E class would drop like a rock . I already have the M models but would jump on the E class if the prices dropped drastically
 
Guy Mancuso said:
Wish the E class would drop like a rock . I already have the M models but would jump on the E class if the prices dropped drastically
Click to expand...

I know this is a total tangent but I heard a rumor that the X25-E has issues on the second time around (so the first time you use the drive it rocks, the second time it is slower exponentially)(perhaps all SLC, I do not know the facts).
 
Guy Mancuso said:
Wish the E class would drop like a rock . I already have the M models but would jump on the E class if the prices dropped drastically
Click to expand...

why? is it faster? from what i know is the E model has less storage space than the M model isn't it?
 
Yes running 2 of them in Raid o the writes times would be much faster than running Raid 0 with the M class

E class specs
Sequential Access - Read: up to 250 MB/s
Sequential Access - Write: up to 170 MB/s

M class
Sequential Access - Read: Up to 250MB/s
Sequential Access - Write: Up to 70MB/s

see the write times are over twice as fast

For users that write big files this can be huge advantage or processing Raw files for photography
 
Guy Mancuso said:
Yes running 2 of them in Raid o the writes times would be much faster than running Raid 0 with the M class

E class specs
Sequential Access - Read: up to 250 MB/s
Sequential Access - Write: up to 170 MB/s

M class
Sequential Access - Read: Up to 250MB/s
Sequential Access - Write: Up to 70MB/s

see the write times are over twice as fast

For users that write big files this can be huge advantage or processing Raw files for photography
Click to expand...

I see.. With the optibay? Damn that's fast. I almost bought corsair ssd 128gb yesterday. But i'm glad i delayed it.
 
Question RE: Intel SSD's

Is it only worth getting the X25-M since Mac's use the Sata interface or will the benefit of the Sata II X25-E series be noticed? I am not familiar with how Sata controllers work and if you need a Sata II interface to get the benefits of increased speed.

Thanks
 
It's a great question . Here is a quote from Lloyd and than the link to his article

SATA II a limiting factor at 300MB/sec

Already, read performance of the fastest SSD is very near the speed of SATA II itself, which is limited to 300 megabytes per second (3000 megabits at 8 bits plus 2 parity bits = 300MB/sec). This is more than ample for today’s hard SATA hard drives, which top out around 125MB/sec Example.

Write performance is where it’s (not) at: the Intel X25-M tested here is slower for writes than even notebook hard drives, and 3.5" desktop hard drives are almost twice as fast as the X25 at writes.

The speed of SATA will need to at least double to 600MB/sec to give SSD room to run, and that’s for a single SSD device. Needless to say, the technology of port multiplication is a complete non-starter for SSD.


http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD.html


Lloyd and i are friends and he actually helped me along with my setup and recommended me to move up to the E class when the prices drop. The biggest boost for me or anyone writing files is SSD falls short in the write times the read times are amazing already. Reason they boot fats and apps jump open like lightning the biggest issue is the write times for SSD and writing small files is not the gig deal it is heavy lifting like Photoshop with large files and Raw processing big files and also for video folks. So to increase the writes it is best to Raid 0 them especially the M class. Now you should really have a serious need here and I would not do this for normal using folks. This is really heavy lifting territory and today with my M class running Raid 0 I am going along very well indeed . My only other power boost left is the E class and putting two of them together would essentially give me the fastest box you can muster with SSD but this stuff is expensive and two of these today are 1500 for hard drives alone. That is a load of money for anyone. So have to be careful about what your true needs are or how fast you want to pull out your gun. LOL
 
Guy Mancuso said:
...
Write performance is where it’s (not) at: the Intel X25-M tested here is slower for writes than even notebook hard drives, and 3.5" desktop hard drives are almost twice as fast as the X25 at writes.

...
Click to expand...

For sequential writes yes, the desktop drives look about 30-40% faster then the M. Random writes are a different story though with the x25m about 20x faster then any desktop drive.

So it really depends on your workload.
 
Guy Mancuso said:
It's a great question . Here is a quote from Lloyd and than the link to his article

SATA II a limiting factor at 300MB/sec

Already, read performance of the fastest SSD is very near the speed of SATA II itself, which is limited to 300 megabytes per second (3000 megabits at 8 bits plus 2 parity bits = 300MB/sec). This is more than ample for today’s hard SATA hard drives, which top out around 125MB/sec Example.

Write performance is where it’s (not) at: the Intel X25-M tested here is slower for writes than even notebook hard drives, and 3.5" desktop hard drives are almost twice as fast as the X25 at writes.

The speed of SATA will need to at least double to 600MB/sec to give SSD room to run, and that’s for a single SSD device. Needless to say, the technology of port multiplication is a complete non-starter for SSD.


http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-SSD.html


Lloyd and i are friends and he actually helped me along with my setup and recommended me to move up to the E class when the prices drop. The biggest boost for me or anyone writing files is SSD falls short in the write times the read times are amazing already. Reason they boot fats and apps jump open like lightning the biggest issue is the write times for SSD and writing small files is not the gig deal it is heavy lifting like Photoshop with large files and Raw processing big files and also for video folks. So to increase the writes it is best to Raid 0 them especially the M class. Now you should really have a serious need here and I would not do this for normal using folks. This is really heavy lifting territory and today with my M class running Raid 0 I am going along very well indeed . My only other power boost left is the E class and putting two of them together would essentially give me the fastest box you can muster with SSD but this stuff is expensive and two of these today are 1500 for hard drives alone. That is a load of money for anyone. So have to be careful about what your true needs are or how fast you want to pull out your gun. LOL
Click to expand...

Interesting stuff - so Mac's have SATA II?
 
Umm, even the "slow" 70mb/sec writes are faster than many hard disks out there. With basically NO latency I don't see how you're going to beat it and I'm not sure where the handwringing WRT photography and video storage is an issue.

Far more critical is storage capacity- I've got nearly 400GB of files in my photo library and it's too expensive to store these on SSD at this point, but speed is not the issue.
 
Storage is a none issue and frankly should never be kept on your OS drive or even your machine. I have a Drobo that has 4TB of Data for all storage of Raws and Final Tiff files plus running a e-sata cable out to a 7200 32 cache drive for working files that I am working on at the moment than they get moved to the Drobo. Your OS goes down you lose your images . VERY bad practice to store on your system . Take everything offline. I even back up the Drobo but I am also working for clients and there files I can't lose and I also burn DVD for them than a extra copy for me to store. So no matter what happens ever . Fire or whatever the files in some form are elsewhere than my machine. Also have to remember you want your HD to have plenty of space to run. You start filling up a drive and it will slow down
 
Guy Mancuso said:
Storage is a none issue and frankly should never be kept on your OS drive or even your machine. I have a Drobo that has 4TB of Data for all storage of Raws and Final Tiff files plus running a e-sata cable out to a 7200 32 cache drive for working files that I am working on at the moment than they get moved to the Drobo. Your OS goes down you lose your images . VERY bad practice to store on your system . Take everything offline. I even back up the Drobo but I am also working for clients and there files I can't lose and I also burn DVD for them than a extra copy for me to store. So no matter what happens ever . Fire or whatever the files in some form are elsewhere than my machine. Also have to remember you want your HD to have plenty of space to run. You start filling up a drive and it will slow down
Click to expand...

Not keeping your data on your machine?? That makes no sense. I have drobo -and- a RAID5 nas -and- rotating fireproof safe hard drive backups -and- mozy backups so I'm covered for redundancy, but it makes no sense to run your primary data off of a drobo as it's very SLOW.

Now my primary machine is a mac pro, so for a macbook or MPB it may make more sense to have the external drive.

Keep in mind however that an SSD does NOT slow down as you fill it- that's one of the beauties, especially for a notebook.
 
Please be true

The Intel SSD are the champs right now and if they drop the price it's going to get a whole lot tougher for compananies like OCZ to make up ground.

I like Intel's approach regarding optimizing for random read/writes as that's what a multi tasking OS is going to present to storage more often than not for general computing.

For large sequential stores I'd prefer a fast NAS or iSCSI box with spinning rust.

I'd love to have a RAID-10 SSD setup for Boot drive with external multi terabytes array for the sequential stuff and large data stores.
 
pprior said:
Not keeping your data on your machine?? That makes no sense. I have drobo -and- a RAID5 nas -and- rotating fireproof safe hard drive backups -and- mozy backups so I'm covered for redundancy, but it makes no sense to run your primary data off of a drobo as it's very SLOW.

Now my primary machine is a mac pro, so for a macbook or MPB it may make more sense to have the external drive.

Keep in mind however that an SSD does NOT slow down as you fill it- that's one of the beauties, especially for a notebook.
Click to expand...

No when I process or work on the files I have them on the desktop but as soon as I am done they are moved off for storage. But I do work off the desktop and even if I did lose them the raws are already backed up 3 times.

Yes the Drobo is turtle slow. One reason I have that e-sata drive hanging out there I can just keep a months worth just hanging out and download real quickly to the desktop to work on them more. But yes the speed is in the SSD drives
 
nuckinfutz said:
The Intel SSD are the champs right now and if they drop the price it's going to get a whole lot tougher for compananies like OCZ to make up ground.

I like Intel's approach regarding optimizing for random read/writes as that's what a multi tasking OS is going to present to storage more often than not for general computing.

For large sequential stores I'd prefer a fast NAS or iSCSI box with spinning rust.

I'd love to have a RAID-10 SSD setup for Boot drive with external multi terabytes array for the sequential stuff and large data stores.
Click to expand...

See this comes down to the issue of limitations that they are putting on these laptops and somebody really needs to consider serious power users needs and the ability to be mobile. We are all not tied to a MacPro and a lot of folks work is not in there office but on the road for clients. More ports and more abilities to connect and fly
 
Guy Mancuso said:
See this comes down to the issue of limitations that they are putting on these laptops and somebody really needs to consider serious power users needs and the ability to be mobile. We are all not tied to a MacPro and a lot of folks work is not in there office but on the road for clients. More ports and more abilities to connect and fly
Click to expand...

I'd gladly accept Apple removing the optical drive ( I can always go external) and adding in another 2.5" bay. If downloadable movies and "ripped DVD" are going to be the future then the optical drive has outlived its usefullness as a device I want to tote around at all times.

This way one could mirror their primary storage run two separate drives.

We could see the first RAID-5 enabled laptop (Three 2.5" drives)
 
The big one that is needed is 4 cores if they can at least get us on a 4 core Laptop that would also serve us well and I agree make a machine that can handle two drives internally. Ripping my optical bay out was not a big deal but nice if that was setup nicely already for us and i agree having a DVD drive in there is worthless anymore. Heck put a movie on a 32gb thumb drive and also sell software that is on a thumb drive. There are alternatives to the DVD. Oh well guess we have a nice wish list for the future
 
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