New Intel 520 Benchmarks

[groberts101]

http://i546.photobucket.com/albums/hh423/doorules/gg.jpg

With the typical "lack of compression" related losses shown in AS SSD.. the dispute should now be over as to whether or not they will be Sandforce controlled.

 

[Coup27]

Are these your drives? Any chance of a single drive benchmark? Quite difficult to compare to other drives in R0.

 

[Burner27]

Not really much difference between two of these Raided and two m4s Raided

 

[Coup27]

I am at a bit of a loss as to what's going on with the 520. There has been no official product announcement from Intel nor any concrete articles on tech websites. It is not widely available in the channel but has appeared on a few lesser known websites and roberts above has clearly bought and received 2 of them. Usually AT would have a full review before the SSD hits the channel.

Not how things normally roll.

 

[jwilliams4200]

I think what has happened is that Intel has sent out some SSDs, both review units and some to the retail channel, with instructions for no one to disclose anything or sell anything until some future date. Rumor has it that date will be sometime next week.

But whoever at Intel is in charge of marketing the 520 should be fired. It is idiotic to send out any units, whatever the precautions, before officially announcing the product. The SSD marketing people should try to be more like the CPU people. Ivy Bridge is not due out until early April, but we already know most of the specifications.

By the way, the benchmarks have been posted by "DooRules" on xtremesystems.org. I'm not sure whether groberts101 is just reposting the links to the images, or whether he and DooRules are one and the same.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...ille-SSD-520&p=5042533&viewfull=1#post5042533

 

[bryanW1995]

Intel's ssd unit is nothing at all like their cpu unit. Their cpu people have a straight flush. The ssd people have a pair of jacks and a flush draw, they are pretty good but they can definitely be beaten. Samsung, crucial, marvell, sandforce are just a few other majore ssd players, and there are tons of minor players headlined by the hyper-aggressive Ryan Peterson and Co.

This whole 520 series is looking very "blah" to me. The 510 is already incredibly fast, and we don't have to worry about stupid sandforce bugs popping up at random intervals. 520 should just be a high end/enterprise drive and be marketed as such.

 

[razel]

Intel's ssd unit is nothing at all like thier cpu unit.

They are not interested in becoming a prime or performance storage company like Seagate or Western Digital. They want to sell chips. The SSD market is growing. They will eventually recede from controllers and continue to sell NAND to SSD makers. That is guaranteed profit. So is selling to enterprises like their 700 series. Those are usually bulk purchases like contracts and not sold individually at retail like to us.

The hard work of helping grow the market is done, they will go back and keep doing what they do best. Sell chips. They need a competitor. I wish AMD can nip at their heels again like 10 years ago.

 

[jwilliams4200]

Well, Intel is also losing on the flash front. Toggle flash beats ONFI flash. Just compare the Corsair Performance Pro (or identical Plextor M2P) versus the Crucial m4 or the Intel 510 series. All use the Marvell controller, but the toggle-based CPP and M2P have much better performance than the ONFI-based m4 and 510.

The Samsung 830 (toggle flash) also beats the ONFI-based SSDs, but that is not as straightforward a comparison since the controllers are also different, and the Samsung is not as fast at high QD random writes as the others.

 

[groberts101]

I think what has happened is that Intel has sent out some SSDs, both review units and some to the retail channel, with instructions for no one to disclose anything or sell anything until some future date. Rumor has it that date will be sometime next week.

But whoever at Intel is in charge of marketing the 520 should be fired. It is idiotic to send out any units, whatever the precautions, before officially announcing the product. The SSD marketing people should try to be more like the CPU people. Ivy Bridge is not due out until early April, but we already know most of the specifications.

By the way, the benchmarks have been posted by "DooRules" on xtremesystems.org. I'm not sure whether groberts101 is just reposting the links to the images, or whether he and DooRules are one and the same.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...ille-SSD-520&p=5042533&viewfull=1#post5042533

Thanks for the link there John.

I looked a bit over there.. got frustrated and quit right away. A while after I posted this thread I also thought that I should have at least mentioned that they were DooRules drives due to the possible follow-up questions to come from this thread.

Especially the.. "can you run a single drive benchmark?".. questions. lol

Anywho.. the drives are also listed here for sale as well. Would post them in the other thread in regards to the 520's availability but this one will probably stay hotter longer I would imagine.. so here it is.
http://www.applied-computer.com/Inventories/TechnoteDetail.aspx?Acpn=000000&GroupID=5467193

Says 95 in stock, which seems unlikely, and also that it's a 5 pack(PK?). Wonder where DooRules got his drives?

 

[nanaki333]

well.. if anyone can get sandforce to work properly, it's intel!

 

[bryanW1995]

Apparently, the 2281 controller is doing pretty well now, anyway.

Razel had an interesting post. I wonder if that is indeed intel's strategy, or if they'll continue to sell their own brand as well?

 

[nanaki333]

Apparently, the 2281 controller is doing pretty well now, anyway.

Razel had an interesting post. I wonder if that is indeed intel's strategy, or if they'll continue to sell their own brand as well?

i wish intel would release their controller in sata 6Gb. the way they keep adopting all these other controllers, it seems like they're going to eventually just phase out their own house brand controller (except for servers).

 

[palladium]

http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa316/ragnarok2007/INTELSSDSC2CW180A3_180GB_1GB-20120127-2038.png

Single drive on a SATA2 interface (for now). It does appear SATA3 improves performance, even in 4KB non sequential read/writes...

 

[groberts101]

For those who need more proof that the 520 uses the SF-2281 controller.

 

[grimpr]

For those who need more proof that the 520 uses the SF-2281 controller.

Suddenly, Sandforce is prestige, Intels magic touch has elevated the controller from the gutter of me too ram oems.

 

[groberts101]

Suddenly, Sandforce is prestige, Intels magic touch has elevated the controller from the gutter of me too ram oems.

LOL.. while likely true in public perspective. That "magic touch" was granted as soon as Intel released all the drivers needed to merge the devices correctly and gave Sandforce a fighting chance to find workarounds from their end of the game.

Then again, for some.. what you don't know about what you don't own.. won't hurt you. ^_^

 

[KingFatty]

Pure speculation: Sandforce was getting a bad reputation, and approached Intel to make some kind of partnership at any price to restore the sheen of prestige to all Sandforce-based SSDs as a halo effect.

 

[flamenko]

Review Posted:

http://thessdreview.com/our-reviews...-intel-releases-amazing-sandforce-driven-ssd/

 

[ViRGE]

AnandTech's review is up.

It's expensive, but boy does it look impressive.

 

[blackened23]

I'm interested! Certainly i'd trust intel for reliability. Now they just need to lower the price a wee bit to be comparable to other brands (crucial, ocz, etc)

 

[Coup27]

AnandTech's review is up.

It's expensive, but boy does it look impressive.

The only competitor to Intel in the outright "reliability" stakes is Samsung. It's rather odd how the price difference between the 120/128GB 520 and 830 is only $9, however all of the other price differences are quite huge.

 

[KingFatty]

From the Anandtech article:
"Codenamed Cherryville, Intel's SSD 520 would go through a full year of validation before Intel would sign off on the drive for release. In fact, it was some unresolved issues that cropped up during Intel's validation that pushed Cherryville back from the late 2011 release to today." (Emphasis added.)

 

[Coup27]

I'm interested! Certainly i'd trust intel for reliability. Now they just need to lower the price a wee bit to be comparable to other brands (crucial, ocz, etc)

But thats the whole point. They've reportedly spent a year validating and testing this thing, so they're not going to sell it at the same price as people who have spent weeks or a few months, if that. The only reason to release a SF drive was to guarantee 100% stability out of the box. Look at the price of the 510 even now. If you want reliability and SF speed, be prepared to pay.

 

[hclarkjr]

AnandTech's review is up.

It's expensive, but boy does it look impressive.

i have read 3-4 reviews today and it is impressive, but it is also impressively priced

 

[exar333]

But thats the whole point. They've reportedly spent a year validating and testing this thing, so they're not going to sell it at the same price as people who have spent weeks or a few months, if that. The only reason to release a SF drive was to guarantee 100% stability out of the box. Look at the price of the 510 even now. If you want reliability and SF speed, be prepared to pay.

QC is expensive, and Intel is pretty picky about what products have their name on it, especially when they want to retain and gain new business.

Many companies use 320 drives today, and if there was ANY suspicions around the stability of the 520, it could be a huge revenue loss for them. Intel tested and found a number of issues and fixed them prior to release. That has to count for something. It's also brand-new, so street pricing will likely dip as time goes on.