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vader1990

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 23, 2008
220
2
Forget price for a minute, but based on sheer read and write speeds, what is THE FASTEST?

People tell me intel X-25M or E are the best, but others say that the OCZ Vertex are the fastest?

Which have the best performance?

Thanks!!
 
x25-M is the fastest reasonably priced SSD, read performance is the best.

Vertex is a good budget alternative. Not as fast as the x25-m, but it beats it in one area which is sequential writes. (the 120GB model is the fastest)

the x25-E is the full blown balls to the wall stupid fast ssd with read speeds of x25-M, and the fastest write speeds as well, but it's mad expensive and comes only in 32GB and 64GB configs, which is netbook standards...
 
x25-M is the fastest reasonably priced SSD, read performance is the best.

Vertex is a good budget alternative. Not as fast as the x25-m, but it beats it in one area which is sequential writes. (the 120GB model is the fastest)

the x25-E is the full blown balls to the wall stupid fast ssd with read speeds of x25-M, and the fastest write speeds as well, but it's mad expensive and comes only in 32GB and 64GB configs, which is netbook standards...

Don't forget that "fastest" has a couple of different definitions. Some drives are faster than the Intel X25-E in large sequential writes. The Intel is much faster than the others with small random writes. The type of function that is most important for you depends on what you use the drive for...
 
for most users the most important aspect is random read and write. the intel is best at this. so if you can afford it buy that. but i am still waiting for TRIM. you may have heard that the SSD's slow down over time. TRIM is what helps slow down and maybe eventually stop that issue.
 
I have the Intel x 25m 80GB in my 2.4 Uni MacBook It is Super Fast. It boots in 15sec and shuts down in 3sec. I had a MBA 1st gen with a SSD and the Intel SSD smokes that one.
 
I have the Intel x 25m 80GB in my 2.4 Uni MacBook It is Super Fast. It boots in 15sec and shuts down in 3sec. I had a MBA 1st gen with a SSD and the Intel SSD smokes that one.
I have a question to ask: If you replace your hdd with a SSD, the boot time and the shut down time is referring to the OS boot and shut down time is it? Besides the boot and shut down time, any other speed that is increased by replacing with a SSD?
 
I have a question to ask: If you replace your hdd with a SSD, the boot time and the shut down time is referring to the OS boot and shut down time is it? Besides the boot and shut down time, any other speed that is increased by replacing with a SSD?

The SSD's also load applications much much faster. load times within games are improved by about 12 seconds. this is also the case with files in applications like your load times of a word document will be faster. also any editing files you load within programs like photoshop or pro tools if you do music editing. things of that nature. the only big speed advantage that SSD's do not give you is the random writes. they are pretty on par with regular HDD.
 
A lean os x install (and lets face it, you don't have a choice with 80 gigs) and your machine will fly on the x25-m. I have one but I have the older generation which has the bootcamp issue. My machine boots up in a little bit less time than the poster above, I once got 4 seconds ,don't ask me how (it wasn't from standby) but in general I get about nine seconds from cold boot to desktop.
 
for most users the most important aspect is random read and write. the intel is best at this. so if you can afford it buy that. but i am still waiting for TRIM. you may have heard that the SSD's slow down over time. TRIM is what helps slow down and maybe eventually stop that issue.

The Vertex has TRIM now (with latest firmware).
Just OS X doesn't know what TRIM is (only Win 7 and Linux have native TRIM I think).
OCZ might release a TRIM application later for OS X, they only have one for Win32bit at the moment.
 
The SSD's also load applications much much faster. load times within games are improved by about 12 seconds. this is also the case with files in applications like your load times of a word document will be faster. also any editing files you load within programs like photoshop or pro tools if you do music editing. things of that nature. the only big speed advantage that SSD's do not give you is the random writes. they are pretty on par with regular HDD.

Large random writes, you're correct. For small random writes, SSDs are still impressively faster.
 
Large random writes, you're correct. For small random writes, SSDs are still impressively faster.

And it's worth stating that those small random writes are a big part of what makes SSDs so appealing since much of what goes on in day to day computer use involves small random writes as opposed to moving around gigantic files.
 
If we forget about money for a second, like the OP said.
Than we can get two 64GB X25-E drives in striped raid 0 (removing the superdrive) for the fastest 128GB of laptop storage conceivable. It would be faster than any hard drive by a wide margin in every benchmark.
 
I would probably sit this round out. The SSD market is starting to really heat up. Keep an eye on anandtech as they've been doing the roundups. Apparently the first round competitors that got trashed are coming back with better chipsets and firmware revisions. It should be interesting to see what plays out when the 500gb SSD's start rolling out.

Intel for the moment is still the leader, but there's some rumors floating around that situation may be short lived. It's way too soon to comment on quality though.
 
If we forget about money for a second, like the OP said.
Than we can get two 64GB X25-E drives in striped raid 0 (removing the superdrive) for the fastest 128GB of laptop storage conceivable. It would be faster than any hard drive by a wide margin in every benchmark.

:D That will be my next move up. I have 2 Intel Xm 25 running Raid 0 right now. Just waiting for the E class to come down in price BUT I am going extremely fast on this box and in many ways beating my old MacPro 2.66 with 12gb of Ram and 10k drives. Now that is something.
 
I have the Intel x 25m 80GB in my 2.4 Uni MacBook It is Super Fast. It boots in 15sec and shuts down in 3sec. I had a MBA 1st gen with a SSD and the Intel SSD smokes that one.

I get 28 seconds with my Vertex 120GB on my Macbook Pro and I have a new Macbook Pro. Read and Write speeds are similiar on the Vertex and Intel so I don't see how your laptop can boot in 15 seconds..:confused:
 
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