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Intel X-25 160GB vs Samsung P256 SSD?

hehe299792458 said:
No body? I'd really appreciate a comparison between the Samsung and Intel with regards to their multitasking performance. Thanks!
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I sent you the link that shows the difference between Intel and Samsung in their benchmarks. (Samsung is the Summit in that link)

Right now Samsung has shown that they suffer far worse performance degradation in the few reviews that I have read about.

Now, dr. shdw's link to hothardware shows the same thing, Intel is the best when it comes to random IOPS. But it comes to seq speed and write speed, Samsung beats Intel in that area.
 
This article published yesterday reviews Intel's, OCZ's, Samsung's and some other SSDs and gives a lot of useful information like multitasking performance, boot time and so on.

As you can see in the review, X25-M, Vertex and P256 are all fast. I'm using X25-M 160GB and quite satisfied with its performance. You can also read good reviews of the other two drives from members of this forum. According to several sources including the one I linked here, X25-M is marginally faster overall and pretty good at multitasking, but it doesn't seem the difference is big in real life. The sophisticated anti-degradation algorithm and longer warranty of Intel's SSD might be more important than its read/write speed.

As for multitasking, basically you're always supposed to be multitasking because the OS is doing the behind-the-scene work nonstop such as recording onto your SSD which file you opened and when you made changes. This doesn't necessarily mean X25-M is noticeably faster than others in any situation, but if you're planing on multitasking heavily, then a multitasking friendly drive might be a better choice for you. I'm not sure if you'll notice the speed difference, though.

As some other posters said, I think you'll be satisfied with any of the three SSDs. They're all much faster than mechanical HDDs anyway. At the end of the day, it depends on your budget and usage.
 
magamo said:
This article published yesterday reviews Intel's, OCZ's, Samsung's and some other SSDs and gives a lot of useful information like multitasking performance, boot time and so on.

As you can see in the review, X25-M, Vertex and P256 are all fast. I'm using X25-M 160GB and quite satisfied with its performance. You can also read good reviews of the other two drives from members of this forum. According to several sources including the one I linked here, X25-M is marginally faster overall and pretty good at multitasking, but it doesn't seem the difference is big in real life. The sophisticated anti-degradation algorithm and longer warranty of Intel's SSD might be more important than its read/write speed.

As for multitasking, basically you're always supposed to be multitasking because the OS is doing the behind-the-scene work nonstop such as recording onto your SSD which file you opened and when you made changes. This doesn't necessarily mean X25-M is noticeably faster than others in any situation, but if you're planing on multitasking heavily, then a multitasking friendly drive might be a better choice for you. I'm not sure if you'll notice the speed difference, though.

As some other posters said, I think you'll be satisfied with any of the three SSDs. They're all much faster than mechanical HDDs anyway. At the end of the day, it depends on your budget and usage.
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Why are you posting that link? It is one of the worst reviews I have ever seen on SSDs. They are using 5 years old machine with an inefficient OS, crappy storage subsystem and so on to review SSDs. Their data says that SSD isn't any better than HDD. They also said Apex is faster then Vertex which is too funny and retarded to say.
 
MikhailT said:
Why are you posting that link? It is one of the worst reviews I have ever seen on SSDs. They are using 5 years old machine with an inefficient OS, crappy storage subsystem and so on to review SSDs. Their data says that SSD isn't any better than HDD. They also said Apex is faster then Vertex which is too funny and retarded to say.
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Because it's one of the latest reviews that are comparing the SSDs mentioned in this thread and you already linked one of the best articles.

I know they're using a crappy machine (I'm not going to take issue with the OS here) and don't think it's an excellent article when compared with Anandtech or PC Perspective reviews. But I don't think they're blatantly lying either. Their results such as the IOmeter test are showing that SSDs are impeccable and faster than HDDs in that regard. Some graphs are certainly confusing, but I think they're just showing a large cache and internal RAID could, to some extent, mitigate slowness of bad controllers in some situations. I do know it's not the best way to compare SSDs and you could say it's kind of skewed, but when you do a similar test, the results should be similar unless they're lying. They should have given more details on their testing methods and explained why some results favored supposedly much slower drives, though. That way it would have been clearer why Apex and HDDs can be as fast in some tests.
 
thanks for the links, Mikhail. It'd seem that Intel is patently better than Samsung, and considering that I have a NAS that stored most of my music, picture, etc, I'll probably get the Intel.

However, I am still unsure as to whether the Intel one support TRIM. According to this (http://communities.intel.com/thread/3448), it does. However, I can't seem t find an official source that confirms it. To be sure, I am referring to this model in particular http://ncix.com/products/?sku=35678&vpn=SSDSA2MH160G1C5&manufacture=Intel
 
hehe299792458 said:
thanks for the links, Mikhail. It'd seem that Intel is patently better than Samsung, and considering that I have a NAS that stored most of my music, picture, etc, I'll probably get the Intel.

However, I am still unsure as to whether the Intel one support TRIM. According to this (http://communities.intel.com/thread/3448), it does. However, I can't seem t find an official source that confirms it. To be sure, I am referring to this model in particular http://ncix.com/products/?sku=35678&vpn=SSDSA2MH160G1C5&manufacture=Intel
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See: my first post in this thread, which was the 2nd post in the thread. :cool:

TRIM is not officially supported in Intel drives.
 
emt1 said:
See: my first post in this thread, which was the 2nd post in the thread. :cool:

TRIM is not officially supported in Intel drives.
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Yes, thank you too. I forgot to acknowledge you since the later posts were mainly made by Mikhail.

So, is it likely that TRIM will be support on the current Intel drives?
 
hehe299792458 said:
Yes, thank you too. I forgot to acknowledge you since the later posts were mainly made by Mikhail.

So, is it likely that TRIM will be support on the current Intel drives?
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It is totally possible that Intel already has TRIM support, we just don't know for sure because there aren't any real OS support for TRIM yet. Windows 7 RC has it built in. If the current Intels don't have it, it is likely they are waiting for the release of W7 before releasing another firmware update.

No news on the Mac.
 
I know it's a bit redundant to ask, but are there any new products destined for immediate release? I know there will always be newer, better products, but I'd rather not get it, and have a much better ssd arrive on the market in a week. Thanks a lot in advance!:D
 
hehe299792458 said:
I know it's a bit redundant to ask, but are there any new products destined for immediate release? I know there will always be newer, better products, but I'd rather not get it, and have a much better ssd arrive on the market in a week. Thanks a lot in advance!:D
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You can wait for the Computex Expo on June 6-9. It should tell us a lot for the near future of SSD market.

SanDisk G3 is scheduled to show up there and we have been hearing a lot of hype from them, more info here. SanDisk G3 is suppose to be brand new everything, including the memory chips itself and using the ExtremeFFS to help with performance.

Toshiba is planning to release 500GB SSD this summer, not a lot of info there tho.

Intel is ramping up production of faster and bigger SSDs for the Q3 2009 schedule. The roadmap did say something about 160GB/320GB X-25M models. Speed are to be double the write speed, 160MBps write. Read is probably going to be the same at 250MBps.

OCZ is releasing Summit by the end of the month or next month which is based on the Samsung's P256 controller but OCZ may be doing some firmware work just like the Vertex. They'll also be releasing the Vertex II in a while which is internally 2 Vertex in RAID0, we're talking about 500MBps/400MBps performance in a single SSD. OCZ already starting to ship out Vertex EX, the SLC version of Vertex, supposedly very fast and almost as good as Intels in all random IOPS.

That's all i know for the immediate market within 6 months.
 
Basically, unless the only you thing you care about is sequential performance, the Intel X-25 series blows everything out of the water.

Yes, I know... OCZ constantly trots out increasingly larger sequential speeds, but the fact is that their drives suck when it comes to 4K IOPS compared to the X-25 -- the Vertex gets about 10% of the 4K performance of the Intel. Given that nearly all desktop multi-tasking IO consists of 4K random reads/writes, it makes sense to get a drive optimized for that; that leaves just two options: pretty much any SLC drive, or the X-25M.

One more point to consider: the X-25M has phenomenally low power consumptions (both idle and under load.) The Vertex draws substantially more both when under load and when idle. If you're going to be using the drive on the road, you might want to take a good, hard look at power consumption ratings...

Oh, and the Intel drives are firmware-upgradeable too. In fact, unlike the OCZ drives, flashing doesn't nuke all the data on the drive.
 
X25-M: Hands down

I agree...people keep focusing on the market hype instead of real-world performance. OCZ I am sure makes great fast SSDs, but every review I have read comparing the OCZ and Intel SSDs declare the Intel X25-M to be the overall winner.
 
walshlink said:
I agree...people keep focusing on the market hype instead of real-world performance. OCZ I am sure makes great fast SSDs, but every review I have read comparing the OCZ and Intel SSDs declare the Intel X25-M to be the overall winner.
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I agree completely. Intel is the undisputed winner in terms of real world performance.

Does anyone know when approximately the 320GB version will come out?
 
hehe299792458 said:
I agree completely. Intel is the undisputed winner in terms of real world performance.

Does anyone know when approximately the 320GB version will come out?
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Real world performance doing what? If you're just using your computer regularly, you're not gonna notice a difference. And did you not read the road map? Q4 09...
 
dr. shdw said:
Real world performance doing what? If you're just using your computer regularly, you're not gonna notice a difference. And did you not read the road map? Q4 09...
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I was hoping for a more precise date - e.g. late September, mid-November, something like that
 
hehe299792458 said:
I was hoping for a more precise date - e.g. late September, mid-November, something like that
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Nobody has that information, not even Intel themselves. All they have is a goal and they are pushing for Q3/Q4 2009, or by the end of the year.

They are waiting for the switchover to 32nm from 50nm process technology for the flash memory. Smaller means it'll be much faster, bigger, and cheaper.
 
MikhailT said:
Another latest review of both Samsung P256 vs. Vertex.

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/ed...rticles/archive/c0907/17c07/17c07.asp&tid=cpu
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I know this is sorta asking everyone to predict the future but after reading that article it really shows how much more advanced the intel drives are.

I need to buy a ssd at the start of august and I would like a 256Gb ssd. The 160 gb intel is just too small. The thing is though that none of the 256Gb ones seem to come close.

Will the 256 OCZ Summit be any different than the corsair p256(since they are both based off the same model.

is there any ssd maker that will release a 256gb ssd before the start of august that will compete with the intel ssd's in terms of performance?
 
Battlefield Fan said:
I know this is sorta asking everyone to predict the future but after reading that article it really shows how much more advanced the intel drives are.

I need to buy a ssd at the start of august and I would like a 256Gb ssd. The 160 gb intel is just too small. The thing is though that none of the 256Gb ones seem to come close.

Will the 256 OCZ Summit be any different than the corsair p256(since they are both based off the same model.

is there any ssd maker that will release a 256gb ssd before the start of august that will compete with the intel ssd's in terms of performance?
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Summit has the same controller as Corsair but may have better performance if OCZ takes the time to optimize the firmware but it still won't beat the Intels in the random IOPS. Most SSD are still optimizing for seq performance, not random IOPS like Intel do.

I do think by the end of the year or early next year, the SSD makers will start to focus on random IOPS instead of seq.

Casual users will be just fine with both the Samsungs and Vertex, they are exceptional. Intels are for heavy power users that do a lot of random stuff.
 
I planning on buying a MBP, and love the speed of the X-25, but the Bootcamp problems make it a no-buy for me.

Should I just get the Apple (Samsung) 128 GB drive (using bootcamp partition for games) or get save my money and wait for new Intel SSD which will be Bootcamp compatible?
 
Unprocessed1 said:
I planning on buying a MBP, and love the speed of the X-25, but the Bootcamp problems make it a no-buy for me.

Should I just get the Apple (Samsung) 128 GB drive (using bootcamp partition for games) or get save my money and wait for new Intel SSD which will be Bootcamp compatible?
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You should note that the Intel 160GB and newer 80GB X25 drives supposedly do not have any problems with bootcamp.
 
Unprocessed1 said:
I planning on buying a MBP, and love the speed of the X-25, but the Bootcamp problems make it a no-buy for me.

Should I just get the Apple (Samsung) 128 GB drive (using bootcamp partition for games) or get save my money and wait for new Intel SSD which will be Bootcamp compatible?
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Don't bother with the Apple's SSD. There are no bootcamp problems with the recent 80GB models and no problem with ANY 160GB model.

If you buy one new right now, it is most likely going to be perfectly fine. Intel will replace it for you if you call them up and say that it doesn't work.
 
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