Yes, it is very silly. The manufacturers are going all shiny over the new SandForce controllers, giving us only 60 GB and 120 GB SSDs. Well, just how is a 500 MB/s read/write on a 120 GB going to interest me when I'm running out of space on my nine month old 128 GB SSD on my laptop?

Kingston! If you give us a 256 GB option, without the scary aggressive TRIM, at about RM 1,280, I'll buy another SSD from you!

This post has been edited by everling: Jan 15 2011, 01:17 PM

In sequential performance, probably yes. But in random read/write performance, dream on.

But yeah, I'd buy only one for my laptop. A 128 GB is sufficient for a desktop.

Capacity is far more important than performance.

• SSD performance vs HDD performance, SSD will always win, unless you somehow got a very old and obsolete SSD.
• SSD performance vs SSD performance, if your SSD is slower, you only need to wait a little longer.
• SSD capacity vs SSD capacity, if you run out of space, you will either need to start deleting things or move it off to another storage device. 80 GB vs 60 GB means you can store 20 GB more before needing to do anything. This is especially important if the SSD is in a laptop and you're limited to USB 2.0 external HDDs.

Only if you have a suitably powerful computer that can utilise it. With HDDs, the bottleneck was clearly at the HDDs. With SSDs, the bottleneck tends to be at the CPU.

Or if you don't mind waiting for the Vertex 3.

This post has been edited by everling: Jan 20 2011, 01:40 AM

If you're budget sensitive, waiting may be a good idea, as the Vertex 3's introduction will surely depress the Vertex 2 prices. But only if you can avoid the temptation of buying new shiny hardware.

And I also think that most people won't be able to appreciate the difference between an SSD with SATA2 or SATA3 interfaces. Unless you find yourself regularly wishing your data can be copied at 400-500 MiB/s, a 'slow' 200 MiB/s should suffice. SATA3 won't improve on the access time, you're already getting that just by switching to any SSD.

In the case of your Intel SSD, you won't need it. Even the next generation of Intel SSDs will not be fast enough to require faster than SATA 3.0 Gbps. You will need to buy a SATA 6.0 Gbps SSD with an actual read/write throughput that exceeds 300 MB/s in order to make use of a system that supports SATA 6.0 Gbps storage devices.

That's incomplete information. Intel's SSDs are well known for their lacklustre write speeds. That RAID-0 setup would indeed have 500 MB/s sequential read, but you would also only have 200 MB/s sequential write. However, while SandForce-based SSDs can outperform Intel SSDs on all factors, Intel's SSD still has two things going for them. One is "good enough" and the other is cheap OEM versions. Unfortunately the retail ones are not cheap.

Unfortunately Intel's G3 is specced to 250 MB/s sequential read and 170 MB/s sequential write. Still much slower than SandForce's best. However, there are expectations that the G3 will double capacity for the same price. Coming up sometime this quarter (Janaury-March). Potential buyers may be torn between extreme performance and limited capacity of SandForce SSDs or Intel's good enough performance and twice the capacity.

Source: Intel's 3rd Generation X25-M SSD Specs Revealed

People may think that more performance is better, thinking they'll simply be careful to use their capacity and moving things to and fro from their 1TB drives. But having already owned two SSDs, I'm preferring more capacity and good enough performance myself.

This post has been edited by everling: Jan 25 2011, 11:52 AM

Citation would be great, please. I was under the impression that their next release would have been based on their 25nm process.

cannavaro, hard to say. Back then, there weren't any devices that could expose substandard SATA 3 Gbps interfaces. The companies could have cut some corners on any part between the SSD and the CPU.

Probably the "Intel Inside". Every current SSDs have TRIM. And Intel should have great latitude with pricing, since we can buy Intel 160GB OEM SSDs for only RM 750.

1) gaming - depends on the game but some start times and load times may be faster.
2) applications - depends on the application, some yes, some no.
3) programming - from noticeably yes to YES
4) file searching - YES
5) disk wipe - yes
6) installation - yes
7) boot up - yes

This post has been edited by everling: Jan 28 2011, 01:26 AM

It really depends on what you plan to do with it. If your primary goal is gaming, SSDs are not very important. If you're a programmer or work with tons of tiny files everyday, then you should consider SSDs. For me, SSDs reduced my compile time of a huge C project from 6 hours to 3 hours. RM 800 well spent and I feel it every time I need to recompile that application. This may be one technology where office workers would see much more value than gamers would.

One thing just occurred to me. That 256GB SSD might not have a spectacular performance and the OEMs like Dell might overcharge on the SSD. You might want to investigate further about the SSD that they will bundle together with your laptop. Of course, you'd have to balance it out with the fact there aren't any alternative cheap 256GB SSD on the retail market. But good luck anyway.


I don't know the programs very well, but I could say that Photoshop's font loading would be faster.

Upgrading from old rig to SB gives less performance improvement than getting an SSD. Your priorities are just fine.

The difference can be a lot and it can also be hidden. A simple method to show the difference is to view image galleries in the Windows Explorer in icon mode. With SSDs it'll almost be instantaneous and noticeably slower for HDDs. However, Windows 7 will then hide the difference by using the cache, so long as it has spare memory available.

If you're lacking in RAM, SSDs will give a noticeable all around improvement. Even if you're not lacking in RAM, SSDs will still be good for the initial scan and generally lower latency.

If you have the budget, I would recommend considering owikh84's RM 750 for an OEM Intel G2 160GB. While it isn't as fast as current SSDs, it is still good enough on performance and rather cheap on capacity.

This post has been edited by everling: Feb 9 2011, 12:33 PM

The new Intel SSD firmware doesn't carry a significant performance improvement patch. You should only expect increased stability and reliability. And that isn't something that is noticeable unless you have the related problems.

This post has been edited by everling: Feb 10 2011, 10:31 PM

Owikh is selling OEM Intel G2 160GB SSDs for RM 750. Check his signature. 250MB/s read and 100 MB/s write. One week personal warranty only as it is OEM. Be sure to stress test it before the week is out.

It is rather dated, but still performs well enough and is attractive for that capacity at that price.

40 to 60 GB sounds sufficient.

This post has been edited by everling: Feb 11 2011, 08:39 PM

Although the Intel X25 G2 suffers from its slow write speed and can be rather overpriced, it still performs well enough. My recommendation is to avoid them for being overpriced, but do seriously consider them if you can buy them for a price much cheaper than most other SSDs.

If you want more specific performance details, please find and read at least one of the multitude reviews freely available on the internet. The X25 has been heavily researched and you will learn far more from them than you will get from most comments here put together.

RM620 for a 160GB is a very attractive offer for the performance given, costing only RM3.875/GB. Most other retail products will cost a median of RM7.68/GB. If seller is legitimate and the product is genuine and in fine condition, that would be a good deal.

Intel's G3 25nm offering will only be worth waiting for if we can get a price drop of about 30% to 50%, as is expected since their manufacturing cost should drop by about 50%. Unfortunately, we already have 25nm flash SSDs in the market now from other manufacturers, but we have yet to observe the expected price drop. Since the Intel G3 are not expected to outperform current alternatives, it will not be worth it if its prices remain stable.



Attached is an Excel file (compressed with 7z) with the current SSD prices taken from http://www.hardwarezone.com.my/priceguide/download.php on the 14th. If there are any mistakes or unintended omissions, please inform me.

Items of note:

• The cost/GB is heavily dependent on the exact capacity. RM720/128GB=RM5.625/GB sounds great, but RM720/120GB=RM6/GB is less so. The numbers are taken from the price guides and aren't checked for accuracy. Caveat emptor (trans: Let the buyer beware!).
• Kingston offers some of the best cost/GB ratios. Good if you value capacity over performance, a good consideration for laptops.
• Jayacom is offering Intel 120GB for only RM720. Worth checking out.
• The 240GB SSDs from various manufacturers are second place for great cost/GB ratios, after a variety of Kingston SSDs. Too bad about the high cost.

Updated to fix Viewnet prices error.

This post has been edited by everling: Feb 18 2011, 12:16 AM


Attached File(s)
 SSD_Prices.7z ( 3.52k ) Number of downloads: 9

Firewire 800 is limited to 98.25MB/s raw bandwidth and it will be less after all the protocol overheads are counted in. Regular HDDs can possibly hit that limit, but they will still suffer from the higher latency compared to the SSDs. If you wish to use your SSD in this manner, you want the cheapest possible SSD as you will not be utilising all of its strengths. But I would recommend to use the SSD as your OS drive instead.

Seconded.