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

SSD Drives?

W

W00DI

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 10, 2009
49
0
Anyone know where I can find the cheapest SSD's for a uMBP?
I've already look around and the prices are ridiculous!
 
In SSDs market there is a star who shines above them all: Intel x25-m G2 a.k.a. Postville a.k.a. the new 34nm one.
The 80gb version retails for about 220$ and has by far the best quality/price ratio on the market.
So if you want to get an SSD I think that is the choice, it is self-destructive to get anything else. Yeah you can find cheaper ssd with best cost per gb but you will get worse speed and worse overall experience. Intel x-25m is the way for people who want to enjoy the SSD revolution from the front row.
 
^^^ What gianly wrote. Remember that's 80GB. A 160GB will run $450.

Nothing will improve the perceived speed of your laptop like a SSD. Hurry up Intel and get them fixed and out the door!
 
I just finished digging through various SSDs with the help of Google - their reviews, and the various prices that they sell at. I could gather enough courage to buy the Intel X25-M G1 80Gb from Newegg but finally decided 80Gb was just not going to cut it.

And I could not convince myself spending close to $700 for a 256Gb model - it just is not that attractive a proposition for my kind of use -

I have a new HP 8530p on order and it comes with a 160Gb 5400RPM disk - I guess for now I will just get a WD 7200RPM 320Gb drive and settle. Idea being that I will never need the SSD speeds if Vista agrees to sleep/wake properly - I am not going to be rebooting it and so boot time or application load times are not that big of a deal. If it sleeps/wakes fast (and that's not a big if) then I can always keep a FireFox and other application instances in memory - so app load times is not going to be an issue either. (I primarily use a bunch of PuTTY instances, VPN, Eclipse, GVim etc. all developer stuff)

So what else is the selling point of SSDs at their current prices? (Apart from bragging rights of course :) )
 
NC MacGuy said:
This is really your best bet:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167016

You don't want to slap a piece of junk in your new MBP.

You can also get a gen. 1 X25M 80 for the same price now but I'd wait a couple of weeks.
Gen. 1
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167005
Click to expand...

I have 2 Gen 1's in Raid 0 in my Mac Pro, and they fly, I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one, in fact I'm going to buy another Gen 1 Friday, rather than wait for the new ones to come back in stock, the average user most likely won't see that BIG of a difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2, because no matter what they are both FAST.

:D
 
Andrew Henry said:
I have 2 Gen 1's in Raid 0 in my Mac Pro, and they fly, I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one, in fact I'm going to buy another Gen 1 Friday, rather than wait for the new ones to come back in stock, the average user most likely won't see that BIG of a difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2, because no matter what they are both FAST.

:D
Click to expand...

I must disagree, not only G2 are slightly faster (but they're both very fast so OK), but they are TRIM-ready (they will get it via firmware update within a couple of months), whereas the G1s will probably never get the TRIM command. (based on what Intel has declared so far)

What is TRIM command and why is it important

So today the G2s are the only way to go, don't buy G1s anymore. And let's hope Snow Leopard will support TRIM command.

EDIT (september 09): in-depht reviews revealed that the G2 are so damn good that they don't even need the TRIM command after all, so don't care about it
 
Andrew Henry said:
I have 2 Gen 1's in Raid 0 in my Mac Pro, and they fly, I wouldn't hesitate to buy another one, in fact I'm going to buy another Gen 1 Friday, rather than wait for the new ones to come back in stock, the average user most likely won't see that BIG of a difference between Gen 1 and Gen 2, because no matter what they are both FAST.

:D
Click to expand...

Was very tempted when my Gen 2 didn't make it out the door because of the BIOS snafu. I think that the Gen 1's price will drop further once the Gen 2's get fixed and restocked. It really sucks because I ordered one day of release, in-stock, tracking number, geek excitement then next day RMA number and pulled from shipping.:mad:
 
I'll vouch for the Indilinx Barefoot based SSD's, like OCZ Vertex, G.Skill Falcon and Patriot Torqx.

The new upcoming firmware upgrade will most likely make TRIM obsolete and unnecessary == We don't have to wait for Apple to add support for it.

See:
http://hothardware.com/News/OCZ-and-Indilinx-Collaborate-On-New-SSD-Garbage-Collection-Scheme/

Edit:
But it's probably good to wait for a price cut on for example the Vertex so that it can compete better with the new Intel X25-M G2's.




NC MacGuy said:
Was very tempted when my Gen 2 didn't make it out the door because of the BIOS snafu. I think that the Gen 1's price will drop further once the Gen 2's get fixed and restocked. It really sucks because I ordered one day of release, in-stock, tracking number, geek excitement then next day RMA number and pulled from shipping.:mad:
Click to expand...
The BIOS password issue should be solved now:
http://hothardware.com/News/Intel-Issues-BIOS-Bug-Fix-For-34nm-Solid-State-Drives/
 
Dan73 said:
Well then get the second generation Intel, its one of the best SSDs you can get right now.

The only downside is 80GB size.
Click to expand...
What spec numbers are you looking at out of curiosity? A write speed of 70MB/s doesn't seem all that great compared to several larger capacity, cheaper SSDs with writes close to 200MB/s and reads over that...
 
gianly1985 said:
I must disagree, not only G2 are slightly faster (but they're both very fast so OK), but they are TRIM-ready (they will get it via firmware update within a couple of months), whereas the G1s will probably never get the TRIM command. (based on what Intel has declared so far)

What is TRIM command and why is it important

So today the G2s are the only way to go, don't buy G1s anymore. And let's hope Snow Leopard will support TRIM command.
Click to expand...

There has to be support both ways, SSD drive firmware and the operating system. If one supports, but not the other, then it's useless.

Good thing, this is just software and will be available in the future.
 
gianly1985 said:
I must disagree, not only G2 are slightly faster (but they're both very fast so OK), but they are TRIM-ready (they will get it via firmware update within a couple of months), whereas the G1s will probably never get the TRIM command. (based on what Intel has declared so far)

What is TRIM command and why is it important

So today the G2s are the only way to go, don't buy G1s anymore. And let's hope Snow Leopard will support TRIM command.
Click to expand...

One question really bothers me.
Why on earth would you need TRIM support when Intel has already done such a great job on the fragmentation issues?
 
Great information from everyone. Seems like more and more SSD threads are popping up. Nice :D
 
p3ncil said:
One question really bothers me.
Why on earth would you need TRIM support when Intel has already done such a great job on the fragmentation issues?
Click to expand...

You are right, actually the G2s wouldn't need TRIM at all, they suffer of insignificant degradation.

When I wrote that post this wasn't so clear as it is nowadays. (after the third installment of Anandtech "SSD Bible")
 
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