Would you buy an Intel G1 80GB SSD for $125 or $150 at this point?

[lizardboy]

Co-worker just upgraded to an Intel G2 160GB SSD and offered to sell me his x-25m G1 80GB for $150. I think I can probably talk him down to $125. I've been holding out for the G2's to drop under $200 (missed the sale at Newegg with BCB that dropped the drives to $194). This would be used in my main desktop PC running Win7 x64 along with a 1TB WD "Green" drive for storage.

Just curious what the consensus is on the value for the money at this point for SSD's without TRIM.

Thanks

 

[Seven]

Definitely.

 

[rcpratt]

I definitely would. They still perform great, and reformatting once every 4-6 months to refresh the drive really isn't too bad.

 

[zuffy]

I wouldn't.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Yes, even in a hobbled state, they're still faster than ANY hard drive, and in random writes faster than indilinx drives.

If you don't buy it, I'll buy it from your friend

 

[lizardboy]

So putting aside the difference in size, is the Intel G1 80GB a better performer than the Kingston 40GB (with the Intel controller) or the OCZ Vertex 30GB?

 

[ElFenix]

I definitely would. They still perform great, and reformatting once every 4-6 months to refresh the drive really isn't too bad.

honestly that sounds horrible.


unless you mean imaging the drive to a spinning disk, formatting, and transfering the image back. that may be ok. still a pain but no where near as bad as reinstalling windows (which is a nerd badge of honor)

 

[Engineer]

So putting aside the difference in size, is the Intel G1 80GB a better performer than the Kingston 40GB (with the Intel controller) or the OCZ Vertex 30GB?

Yes, with the exception that the OCZ Vertex might be faster in sequential writes. The Kingston is a neutered Intel G2 drive (run at half speed) that should received TRIM however. The Vertex already has Trim (or Garbage Collection if running RAID) and will soon have TRIM/Garbage Collection in one updated firmware (1.50).

The Kingstons are $89.99 with FREE shipping - Bing (7% IIRC) at Buy.com right now (Hot Deals forum).

Can you run a wiper utility on the Intel G1 drives?

 

[rcpratt]

honestly that sounds horrible.

unless you mean imaging the drive to a spinning disk, formatting, and transfering the image back. that may be ok. still a pain but no where near as bad as reinstalling windows (which is a nerd badge of honor)

It doesn't bother me too much, but cloning it and cloning it back would work too.

And no, you can't run the wiper on the G1s.

 

[ElFenix]

The Kingstons are $89.99 with FREE shipping - Bing (7% IIRC) at Buy.com right now (Hot Deals forum).

i suppose it's not worth it to return the one i have to amazon and RAID doesn't sound great either atm.

It doesn't bother me too much, but cloning it and cloning it back would work too.

And no, you can't run the wiper on the G1s.

there is a skill and an art to keeping a system running trouble free through drive, video card, motherboard, processor, and even intel <> amd swaps.

(frankly the video card swaps are the worst! switching from red to green is sometimes easier than one red to another )

 

[Zap]

Co-worker just upgraded to an Intel G2 160GB SSD and offered to sell me his x-25m G1 80GB for $150. I think I can probably talk him down to $125.

No, you shouldn't buy this old outdated crap!

(Pssst, BTW please PM me your co-worker's phone number. I have, ahem, er, some business I need to discuss with him.)

The Kingston is a neutered Intel G2 drive (run at half speed)

I think that was to hit the low capacity by using 5 chips instead of 10 chips with the same controller. Lower level of parallelism or somesuch. It would be like taking your 4GB dual channel RAM kit and deciding to offer a 2GB kit... by taking away one of the sticks. Of course the published specs are a hair more than half, so I wonder if the lack of performance and capacity can be made up through running two of the 40GB drives in RAID0.

Still, even with the "neutered" SSD, it is still faster than the VelociRaptor by almost 50% in sequential reads. Sequential writes are slower of course, where normal HDDs have zero performance hit. Random reads and writes similar to more "normal" usage of a hard drive (versus just copying huge tracts of data) is where even this "baby" SSD will stomp all over a VelociRaptor.

 

[Engineer]

No, you shouldn't buy this old outdated crap!

(Pssst, BTW please PM me your co-worker's phone number. I have, ahem, er, some business I need to discuss with him.)



I think that was to hit the low capacity by using 5 chips instead of 10 chips with the same controller. Lower level of parallelism or somesuch. It would be like taking your 4GB dual channel RAM kit and deciding to offer a 2GB kit... by taking away one of the sticks. Of course the published specs are a hair more than half, so I wonder if the lack of performance and capacity can be made up through running two of the 40GB drives in RAID0.

Still, even with the "neutered" SSD, it is still faster than the VelociRaptor by almost 50% in sequential reads. Sequential writes are slower of course, where normal HDDs have zero performance hit. Random reads and writes similar to more "normal" usage of a hard drive (versus just copying huge tracts of data) is where even this "baby" SSD will stomp all over a VelociRaptor.

Oh, I know that they kick spindle drives ass...just commenting vs regular Intel drives. Also seems to have half the cache as an Intel drive. I guess I used too strong a word in "neutered" :biggrin:

Can't wait to see your 3 drive results! :biggrin:

 

[AlgaeEater]

I wouldn't.

Same here, although $125 would be a long hard look before the decision is made. Besides I am assuming you are talking about your main rig, or the computer you use the most. If I had a bunch of laptops laying around I needing speeding up, it would be a no brainer to buy them.

 

[Makaveli]

Co-worker just upgraded to an Intel G2 160GB SSD and offered to sell me his x-25m G1 80GB for $150. I think I can probably talk him down to $125. I've been holding out for the G2's to drop under $200 (missed the sale at Newegg with BCB that dropped the drives to $194). This would be used in my main desktop PC running Win7 x64 along with a 1TB WD "Green" drive for storage.

Just curious what the consensus is on the value for the money at this point for SSD's without TRIM.

Thanks

For that price I would jump on it, a 80GB g2 is still at the $300 Cdn mark.

I would then look for another Gen 1 drive in say the spring time frame and raid 0 them. which will help with the 80Mb/sec write cap on the 80GB's drives.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Yes, but that's if I had the G2 already.

I have the G1 so its half/half i guess.

In the dream world which that I had the G2 already, I'd use the 80GB G1 as the storage drive. Yea, I know it doesn't make sense initially, but listen up. When I stuck a slow hard drive for testing purposes, it radically slowed my system down even though the main was the SSD drive.

Figure even if that's not true, I'd rather have a fast, and cheap G1 as a storage. Plus being storage I wouldn't worry about TRIM anyway.

 

[skid00skid00]

Search my prior posts for G1 benches. They are better when thoroughly used than the competitors with trim enabled! You can run AS-cleaner.exe to reset the unused cells to avoid the erase-then-write slowdown, too.

 

[CurseTheSky]

I probably would if I didn't already have a 160GB G2 and 80GB G2. I'm an addict.

I'd shove it in my spare desktop / SFF portable / backup computer.

 

[postmortemIA]

honestly that sounds horrible.


unless you mean imaging the drive to a spinning disk, formatting, and transfering the image back. that may be ok. still a pain but no where near as bad as reinstalling windows (which is a nerd badge of honor)

I agree. You can run off evaluation of vista or win 7 for 120 days, and then format and reinstall again for next 120 days. cheap's man way to run win 7 . Almost like that.