The Inq: Intel Launching Cheaper 34 nm SSDs in Two Weeks Time

[Sylvanas]

Too good to be true? Not according to The Inquirer

RUMOURS ARE growing louder that Intel will be launching new SSDs based on the firm's 34nm NAND chips within just a couple of weeks. Previous reports had said Chipzilla planned to come out with its new 34nm flash memory drives in Q4, but that timetable has been nudged up.

Solid State Drives (SSDs) have been around for a while, but their high costs, limited capacities and sometimes questionable reliability have ensured the drives have remained somewhat niche. But this is all about to change, apparently.

We've been told that with these new 34nm NAND SSDs, users can expect higher performance, higher capacities, and most importantly, lower prices.

Amongst the 34nm offerings hot off the production line will be a 320GB drive, plus 160GB and 80GB capacities too. But there very well could be more. Our sources tell us there will be drives big enough to replace the HDDs in most, if not all laptops.

Intel is said to be really optimistic about SSD prospects in 2010, especially considering the smaller and cheaper process node along with SSD specific optimizations built into Windows 7.

So brace yourselves for these new drives coming out in about two weeks, and watch as prices fall to lower levels.

 

[Idontcare]

That's great news. If this pushes the 80GB pricepoint below $160 for the Intel drives then I think the adoption rate could reach a real tipping point as the OCZ and others will be pushed to hit even lower pricepoints points.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Interesting. I was just finally starting to seriously consider a SSD purchase...maybe I need to keep waiting.

 

[alcoholbob]

Price gouge time. If it sells at the current price point of the 160GB it's fair. If it's $800 then I'd rather get the 160GB from one of the cheaper retailers.

 

[taltamir]

well.... newegg did just have a killer sale of X25 drives...

 

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Interesting. I was just finally starting to seriously consider a SSD purchase...maybe I need to keep waiting.

I'm in the same situation- guess I'll hold on a little longer.

 

[taltamir]

i made myself a promise not to buy any SSD before trim is finalized and working well... but the intels are soooooo tempting right now, if only they were half the price.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Originally posted by: taltamir
i made myself a promise not to buy any SSD before trim is finalized and working well...

I didn't promise myself that, but yes, Wait we must!

 

[n7]

I'm hoping this eventually pushes pricing on the current X25-Ms way down, as i'd love to have another one or two of those.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Good news. This might be my first SSD once intel sorts out future i7/i5 upgrade paths. i7/i5 plus SSD plus Win7 would be nice to have.

The only thing is I'll probably need at least 100GB boot drive, which means 160GB model which I'm sure will be quite expensive.

 

[WildW]

Faster, bigger AND cheaper? Good times if its true. I'm currently feeling the early adopter blues - my OCZ vertex is selling for nearly half the price I paid for it a month ago. Ah well =)

 

[Denithor]

But will these new drives support TRIM?

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: Denithor
But will these new drives support TRIM?

They better add trim to the orignal drives considering how much they charged for them.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
If this pushes the 80GB pricepoint below $160 for the Intel drives

Sheesh, that might get me to buy a few... and I'm pretty happy with all my VelociRaptors.

 

[Scionix]

Must....resist...too...expensive....agh

BUT I WANTS IT

 

[rcpratt]

I couldn't last any longer. I sucked it up and ordered an Intel X25-M the other day. I'm about to poop myself in excitement from all the hoopla I've read.

 

[aamsel]

Originally posted by: taltamir
well.... newegg did just have a killer sale of X25 drives...

Was that the $285 for the 80GB X25-M that you are referring to?
I have read several places that a 20% price drop in NAND is what can be shortly expected.
That would put a 320GB Intel drive (if released) at around $999.
I don't think we will see people rushing to rip the hard drives out of their laptops for that?

Originally posted by: Idontcare
That's great news. If this pushes the 80GB pricepoint below $160 for the Intel drives then I think the adoption rate could reach a real tipping point as the OCZ and others will be pushed to hit even lower pricepoints points.

$160 (or below) would seem too low a price to even hope for.
That would be a 50% price drop.
I can't see that as being even remotely possible in any upcoming
announcement.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Hopefully these new intel SSDS add the TRIM feature. I just realised that although intel X-25Ms are considered the best overall, it only had a write speed of 70MB/s! (compared 180~200MB/s on competing products)

My trigger finger is feeling the itch again.

 

[taltamir]

actually cookie monster, realistic testing shows that competitors are not any faster; in fact they are usually slower Ignore the ADVERTISED values, and look at the TESTED values. indlinx drives are also more prone to internal fragmentation.

 

[aamsel]

oops

 

[Rubycon]

Areca controllers can do on the fly modification of RAID0 stripe size. Seems to me future upgrades could also do discrete trim to participating members in active arrays on a scheduled basis. That would be very nice indeed!

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: taltamir
actually cookie monster, realistic testing shows that competitors are not any faster; in fact they are usually slower Ignore the ADVERTISED values, and look at the TESTED values. indlinx drives are also more prone to internal fragmentation.

Of course. But even if those competing drives dont reach those advertised values, they still beat the X25-M when it comes write performance. However this doesn't stop the intel SSD from being the best overall.

 

[taltamir]

http://www.pcper.com/article.p...733&type=expert&pid=13

 

[jkresh]

any updates (been about two weeks and I am seriously considering picking up an ssd to use as my boot drive for windows 7 (technet, hopefully rtm later this week)).
Currently looking at the x25-m (80gb), ocz vertex (120), ocz summit (120, new samsung chipset), or the corsair 128 (same as the ocz summit, but cheapest per gigabyte of any by a relatively significant number).

 

[alcoholbob]

Intel X25 series have the highest random write performance of any SSDs. As far as sequential writes, I guess if you wanted to copy and paste a 1GB file 50 times on your hard drive, it might take a little longer than some of the other SSDs.