jmke

We had high hopes for Intel's first solid-state drive. As a master fabricator, the company has the chip-making chops to churn out fast, power-efficient memory cells. More than a decade of core-logic chipset design also gives Intel the storage controller mojo necessary to craft a wicked-fast SSD architecture. The X25-M delivers on both fronts, with low power consumption that should make notebook users swoon and truly inspiring performance with some workloads.


Solid-state drives have an inherent power consumption advantage over their mechanical counterparts, so the energy efficiency isn't much of a feat. What's more impressive is the X25-M's performance. Thanks to a 250MB/s sustained read rate and a smart Native Command Queuing implementation, Intel's first SSD sets a new standard for MLC-based solid-state drives. Unfortunately, though, Intel can't escape the relatively slow write speeds that plague MLC drives, and that results in a performance profile that's decidedly mixed.


When the X25-M is good, it's exceptional. The drive absolutely dominated our IOMeter workloads and ran away from the field in our sustained-read-speed drag race and in our real-world file read tests. The X25-M also posted speedy game level load times and a higher WorldBench overall score than any other drive—solid-state or mechanical.


Price is another problem for solid-state drives, and with the 80GB X25-M slated to sell for just under $600 in 1,000-unit quantites, Intel's first entry in the market won't be cheap. At that price, the X-25M sits between budget MLC-based models and their more expensive SLC-based cousins, which seems about right to me. After all, the X25-M was often faster than Samsung's SLC-based FlashSSD, which costs nearly $800 for only 64GB.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15433/1

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jmke

Anandtech's review: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=3403

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