SSD: "I think Intel just Conroe’d the HDD market."

[Mr. Smith]

Really interesting and insightful read (17 pages; how they work, MLC's cache etc, etc) here is a teaser...

The closer we got to release and the more time I spent with competing products, the more I realized that Intel's biggest launch of 2008 wasn't going to be Nehalem - it was going to be its SSDs. If Intel could price them right, and if Intel could deliver on the performance, the biggest upgrade you could do for your PC - whether desktop or notebook, wouldn't be to

in a faster CPU, it would be to migrate to one of these SSDs. Combine Nehalem and one of these mythical SSDs and you were in for a treat. But that was a big if...Intel still had to deliver.

...

Honestly, within 6 months I'd expect it to be just as important to have one of these drives in your system, as your boot/application drive, as it was to have Conroe in your system back in 2006

...

Conclusion

At the high level, SSDs are still the key to truly solid performance and this is where the issues with the JMicron based MLC drives are really unfortunate, because it means that the most accessible SSDs on the market can actually deliver a pretty bad user experience. But if you look at what Intel's X25-M and the Samsung SLC drives can deliver, it's really quite good.

As I've mentioned before, the random write issues with JMicron JMF602 based MLC SSDs are simply unacceptable and in my opinion they make the drives unusable for use in any desktop or notebook that you actually care about. Next year we may see a JMicron controller that fixes the problem but until then, I'd consider those drives off limits.

Link

 

[Rastalovich]

Honestly, within 6 months I'd expect it to be just as important to have one of these drives in your system, as your boot/application drive, as it was to have Conroe in your system back in 2006

Not a chance without a dramatic price per gig reduction. That sounds more like a sales pitch to company managers to make them feel like they`re the next "must have" piece of equipment or ur company with lag behind - and it aint the case.

Still think these are a stepping stone to something more affordable and as-fast. The way the market goes, I wouldn`t put it past firms to make SSD that are only devices capable of SATA3 or something, just to have them as necessary purchases.

 

[FarFarAway]

If Intel can lower prices to a reasonable level (and there's no reason why they shouldn't do with their production facilities), then these will be a winner.

 

[Diablo]

At that price, even I would wince. When a Velociraptor does everything I need, I just can't see myself spending another £300-£400 on an SSD. Just think, I could invest in a comfortable chair for £100 for waiting the extra nth of a second and spend the rest on something more useful (i.e. a certain alcoholic liquid).

How many enthusiasts would prefer to Raid 0 a pair of Velociraptors and save a bit of cash, whilst still getting a cheaper package?

If it was maybe 250GB for £250-£300 maybe, but I don't think they will have everyone running SSDs in 6 months.

 

[JN]

Unless this offers a SIGNIFICANT improvement over the SSD's we've seen so far, the price per GB is still way too high. 2x Samsung F1's in Raid 0 or a Velociraptor offers so much more.

...and I really don't see the point in all this "use it as an OS drive" crap. The longest part of my rig starting is the BIOS stage. If there was anything I would want to load quicker, it would be games/vids/music folders. All the stuff the current price of SSD isn't suitable for.

 

[Diablo]

Exactly my feelings, Vista takes about 25 seconds to load from the end of POST to the appearance of the windows logo. That's on my Samsung F1 disk, the velociraptor is used for games, which load very quickly. I haven't even bothered to RAID 0 anything yet (fund related problem). For the concievable future, I think the Velociraptor remains the choice for most enthusiasts(except for the really well off ones)

 

[sizeak]

I want some just for the sheer speed increase in loading times, paging would be alot faster to, not that you need it with the amount of RAM people like us use lol

 

[Bungral]

I think SSD's will be the next step in storage but prices do need to fall. As the tech becomes more mature, prices will inevitably fall as with all new tech.

Until then, I just got sent an email from Aria and they have the 1TB F1s on super special and I have to say I really really am tempted to get one or slap two in RAID 0. Only £67 inc. or something. I'm getting sick of my old 250GB Barracuda.

 

[Diablo]

I can thoroughly reccomend those f1s, they are an excellent alternative to raptors (the velociraptors are quite a bit quicker, but not massively so) plus 1TB. I bet a pair of these in raid 0 would overtake a raptor. Plus they are so much cheaper per GB than ssds

 

[rrjwilson]

You can buy 120Gb SSD for £300 now anyway which is getting closer.

Once SSD and Raptor are the same it will be worth it as a boot drive but still not as storage simply because they aren't big enough. When is the SSD write speed gonna get better too every single one is just awful so far.

If you discount the seek time of all Raptors the specifications become ordinary. The Samsung F1 1TB drive according to OC3D review and many others beats the Velociraptor in read speeds and they cost 1/5 of the price and contain 3x as much data. Realistically it is just stupid to buy Raptors but we as enthusiasts don't think with our head but with our heart.

 

[tonpal]

The timescale of 6 months for SSDs to be a mainstream component might be a bit optimistic but I have no doubts they will overtake mechanical drives as the technology matures and becomes more reasonably priced. I have seen comments about Windows 7 being optimised to work with SSDs so maybe that is the next step forward.

 

[rrjwilson]

Mature?! I know someone who has been building them for the military for over 5 years so its pretty normal now. We just need military grade to come our way for consumer prices.

 

[Rastalovich]

Well that's just about typical. The military tend to spend big bucks on such things like they have a blank cheque to buy stuff with. Sure I can understand the practicalities of being able to throw the likes of SSD drives around and not have them break, but I'm sure "5 years ago" it would most likely have cost £10k for a poxy 16g drive.

Add to that that I can automatically assume that, similarly to other govt related institutions, they dont exactly get discounts - quite the opposite, they pay over the odds for regular stuff. FYI it costs certain corporations £50 for a dvdrw. I sheet u not.

We wonder why the eff they complain they dont have cash for stuff they say they want. And could probably throw certain criticism to their claims when they're paying extreme cash for things like this.

For £10k 5 years ago, I'm sure u could buy a regular magnetic drive and house it for protection against all kinds of elements. Jeez 10 of these u could buy a 160g magnetic drive and a hum-vee to drive it around in.

 

[tonpal]

Mature?! I know someone who has been building them for the military for over 5 years.....

I can't comment on military SSDs as I do not have access to any information on them. In terms of maturity I would judge it on the ability to outperform the previous technology rather than the time the it has been around.

In comparason to mechnical drives, consumer SSDs (both MLC and SLC) still still have poor write performance and are only available in small sizes. These issues need to be addressed before the SSD technology can be considered mature enough to take over from mechanical drives.

 

[rrjwilson]

In comparason to mechnical drives, consumer SSDs (both MLC and SLC) still still have poor write performance and are only available in small sizes. These issues need to be addressed before the SSD technology can be considered mature enough to take over from mechanical drives.

Completely agree but the technology is pretty mature because of its military development. It still has awful write speeds in all forms and until this improves I certainly feel that they will be as pointless as a USB fan (pretty stupid but fun to have).

At last count the military builld their own from scratch (according to my source).

 

[Bungral]

It isn't mature in a commercial sense. The companies that will ultimately be the ones to mass produce these drives haven't been churning them out like the one company that would have been doing so for the military with their military contract.

 

[Ted93]

you can get 1 terabyte hard sisks now for about 100 pounds. which is really good I think. i would rather buy that than a £300 SSD. that's only 120GB.

 

[Bungral]

Get them for less than that... A little under £70