Intel 320 Series 300GB SSD

This is the new consumer SSD, the main goal was to reduce cost I guess. And as such it is IMHO fast enough for most applications, just like the G2 series.
 
I think the price should be lower. Kingston is really coming close to constantly staying around $1 to $1.15 per gb with drives after rebates, and the sandforce drives are staying around there too with rebates also. Intel really needs to come down in price at least to $1.75 per gb at most on all their drives.
 
if you look at spot prices for NAND they are loosing money on the rebates. Although Intel lost money when I paid $169 for my 120GB G2 SSD on black Friday.
 
drescherjm said:
if you look at spot prices for NAND they are loosing money on the rebates. Although Intel lost money when I paid $169 for my 120GB G2 SSD on black Friday.
Click to expand...

That means they really lose money every time I buy it for $120.
 
a123456 said:
Yeah, I didn't see a direct quote saying that either. The only thing he alluded to is that on the 4K random writes, QD=3 is similar to what an OS drive would see. There, the G3's performance was near the bottom.

I guess if you benchmark your SSD a lot, this drive isn't that great. It's relatively slow compared to all the Vertex 3 and C400.

I think it'll still find a market from being more "reliable" since they added the built in RAID-4 to help preserve data integrity in case of NAND failure. The AES sounds great but I don't think that many people will actually set a password on it.
Click to expand...

It should be noted that he benchmarked the 300GB version, which is the second largest (and fastest). The performance of the smaller versions will be far worse, the sequential performance will scale down almost linearly.

The AES function will increase the lifetime of my laptop by another 2 years I guess, I was planning to upgrade this year to an AES-NI enabled model.
 
So it's still the same 2-year old controller, almost saturating the 6-year old SATA 3 Gb/s, just with updated firmware, more cache that is less power-hungry, and 25 nm NAND instead of 34 nm?

I dig the extra capacitors and AES 128-bit encryption, this should now be standard, but so should SATA 6 Gb/s; Even the older 510 Series has it. 320 Series prices are $130 lower than the 510S 120 GB on Amazon, $100 for the 300 GB (compared to the closest equivalent, 510S 250 GB,) so it's a great deal for the expected Intel reliability, but SATA 3 Gb/s is a no-go for me in 2011 for SSDs.

The 320 Series is in the lower half or even the slowest of all drives in several PC Perspective, Legit Reviews and AnandTech benchmarks; Sometimes even slower than a Velociraptor HDD. :[ And it's not all due to obsolete benchmark software. Mainstream sucks rotten dodo eggs...

Other manufactures also have read/write performances that increase the bigger the capacity. Why is that? Intel's announcement states that the 320 Series uses 10 parallel channels, it does not say that lower capacity drives use less NAND chips and channels. I'd like to use a SSD for my operating system, and therefore keep it small, like 160 GB, to keep system drive backups small too, but I feel cheated if my OS drive is slower than bigger SSDs in the same series. I wouldn't notice the speed difference anyway, I just wonder why this is happening, if anyone knows the reason.

@IntelEnthusiast It is a soft launch, the 320 Series is not available on NewEgg at all, and won't ship before 1-3 weeks on Amazon either, several models are even listed as not in stock.
 
Drive is available at Superbiiz. I just ordered mine yesterday and ti's on its way. Prices are a bit higher than MSRP, but that's to be expected.

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php...2-Solid-State-Drive-for-Laptop-and-Desktop-PC

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php...2-Solid-State-Drive-for-Laptop-and-Desktop-PC

I really like that they improved reliability and capacity. Frankly, I doubt anyone will notice any speed difference between this drive and all the new SATA 3 drives out there in actual day to day use.
 
nsx241 said:
Drive is available at Superbiiz. I just ordered mine yesterday and ti's on its way. Prices are a bit higher than MSRP, but that's to be expected.
Click to expand...

What MSRP? I was not aware that Intel has an MSRP on the 320 SSDs.

The only prices I have seen from Intel are actual price quotes in 1000 unit quantities.
 
Yea The more I read on it the less I suspect that the 320 series is going to be a hit. Intel with as big as they are I dont think could pull off pricing a drive into the mix. Crucial on the other hand if anyone could they should be able to get a drive made cheaper then anyone else considering how much memory MT makes.
 
nsx241 said:
Drive is available at Superbiiz. I just ordered mine yesterday and ti's on its way. Prices are a bit higher than MSRP, but that's to be expected.

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php...2-Solid-State-Drive-for-Laptop-and-Desktop-PC

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php...2-Solid-State-Drive-for-Laptop-and-Desktop-PC

I really like that they improved reliability and capacity. Frankly, I doubt anyone will notice any speed difference between this drive and all the new SATA 3 drives out there in actual day to day use.
Click to expand...
a bit higher? that's $85 over the 1000 unit price which is usually pretty close to MSRP (for example, newegg prices sandy bridge CPUs about $10 over 1000 unit price)
 
Brahmzy said:
In stock and CHEAP at ExcaliberPC

$322.56 for the retail 160GB
http://www.excaliberpc.com/603867/intel-ssd-ssdsa2cw160g3k5-9.5mm-gen3.html
$311.36 for the OEM 160GB
http://www.excaliberpc.com/603866/intel-ssd-ssdsa2cw160g310-9.5mm-gen3.html

Those are pretty good prices.... VERY tempting.....
I think these things will sell like hotcakes....regardless of SATA2.
Click to expand...
that's actually not too bad if you need it now, but still higher than the after rebate price of the G2
 
EnderW said:
a bit higher? that's $85 over the 1000 unit price which is usually pretty close to MSRP (for example, newegg prices sandy bridge CPUs about $10 over 1000 unit price)
Click to expand...

The 300gb version is $564, plus $15 off code, I'd say that's "a bit higher" than the 1000 unit price, wouldn't you agree?
 
nsx241 said:
The 300gb version is $564, plus $15 off code, I'd say that's "a bit higher" than the 1000 unit price, wouldn't you agree?
Click to expand...
yeah I guess the 300GB one isn't too bad of a deal
300GB $20 over
160GB $60 over
 
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Burnout01 said:
Might not want to jump on these until they have been out a bit.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18048/new_intel_320_ssd_replaces_x25_m_prices_dropping

I know this is just a opinion, but he has some good points.
Click to expand...

If history repeats the prices will go up short term, with the intel X25m 160gb on release was $499, to move toward $530 the next weeks, mostly out of demand. Recently with intel 510s happen the same, $585 on preorders, the were blown and all retailers move up to $615-640. I do believe all will come down in price, but not fast, probably in 3-4 months, in between i believe the drives will go up from MSRP price as it has happen in the past, but really going to depend on availability on how the market reacts, also this time there is the Sata III monsters coming short term like Vertex 3, Crucial Force GT and Micron/Crucial C400/M4, so it might drop in price faster, still i prefer just to get my hands on one couple of months before, enough with mechanical drives on my desktop.
 
Burnout01 said:
Might not want to jump on these until they have been out a bit.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/18048/new_intel_320_ssd_replaces_x25_m_prices_dropping

I know this is just a opinion, but he has some good points.
Click to expand...

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.
Click to expand...

Difficult to read the article when it's behind a reg wall.
 
More important than cost, the real question for me is whether reliability of the 320's
will truly drop to a level far below the X25-M, which had very low failure rate.
 
omniscence said:
This is the new consumer SSD, the main goal was to reduce cost I guess. And as such it is IMHO fast enough for most applications, just like the G2 series.
Click to expand...

Exactly, but this is what 'sells" to the GB/$ crowd.

These are not cutting edge drives and were never meant to be.

There's nothing wrong with the GB/$ crowd but it doesn't work with my philosophy of "all out screaming OS drive with the rest in storage" set-up. :)
 
elpibe10 said:
I won't trust Amazon on that. They're getting into the habit of listing products without actually having any inventory in their warehouse.

Part of their strategy to accumulate orders before placing an order with the distributor to minimize cash-flow tie-down I guess ...
Click to expand...
everytime I've ordered something from amazon that was out of stock, they've beat their estimated delivery time, usually by a lot
this is the cheapest price shipped and it's from the most reputable e-tailer so I don't mind waiting a week or two
plus if you have amazon prime, you get 2 day shipping
 
aamsel said:
More important than cost, the real question for me is whether reliability of the 320's
will truly drop to a level far below the X25-M, which had very low failure rate.
Click to expand...

In terms of failure rate as in the drive dies prematurely, I don't think you have anything to worry about. In terms of lifespan, yes 25nm Nand can't handle as many writes as the older 34nm Nand. Knowing this companies put a lot more effort into optimizing the firmware to reduce wear on the SSD. This applies to pretty much everyone though since the majority of next gen drives are on 25nm. The Intel 510 being the exception.

I don't think the 320 will have a significantly lower failure rate than the G2. I think the 320 will be more reliable in terms of data. The G2 found its way into the Enterprise market because it was much cheaper than the X25E. This time around Intel add some feature for the Enterprise market like capacitors for power failure and full disk encryption. The power failure capacitors are a good feature for data reliability.
 
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techreport had some interesting things to say about Intel reliability:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20653

Regardless of how long individual flash cells are supposed to survive, failures are inevitable. The Intel 320 Series protects against any data loss that might occur in this situation by employing "surplus data arrays." Also referred to as XOR—the logical operation often used to calculate parity bits for RAID arrays—this redundancy scheme is capable of recovering data from a failed bit, block, or even an entire failed die. Intel describes XOR as a NAND-level RAID 4, making it sound rather similar to the RAISE technology employed by SandForce controllers.

RAISE is described as more of a RAID 5 than a RAID 4, though. SandForce says RAISE spreads redundancy data across the entire drive, and that the storage capacity lost amounts to the capacity of one flash die. Intel isn't specific about the amount of storage consumed by XOR, but it does say the redundancy data is rolled into the 7% of total flash capacity reserved for use by the controller. According to Intel, XOR is governed by a mix of hardware and firmware that doesn't introduce any performance-sapping overhead. The only time it'll slow the drive down is when data is being recovered in the event of a flash failure.

How often might such a failure occur? Intel says it ran nearly 1,400 drives through a simulated five-year workload. Across all of them, XOR stepped in to recover data a total of 14 times. Thanks to its assistance, only a couple of the Intel 320 Series drives suffered irrecoverable failures. Intel ran the old X25-M through a similar test and had five drives fail, suggesting that the new model should be more reliable than the old one—thanks to XOR. Without the redundancy scheme, those 14 XOR recoveries would have pushed the number of Intel 320 Series failures to 16. Intel does point out that its 320 Series is brand new, while the X25-M is a mature product whose flash has been in production for quite some time now. I'd expect error rates in Intel's 25-nano flash to decrease over the life of the product. In the interim, XOR should provide some peace of mind.
Click to expand...
 
I wonder how you as a user will notice that it's failing? Striping the data over a lot of chips will ensure you can get it out when a chip dies, but only to a point, would smart raise a flag to let you know you are running on leased time?
 
dropadrop said:
I wonder how you as a user will notice that it's failing? Striping the data over a lot of chips will ensure you can get it out when a chip dies, but only to a point, would smart raise a flag to let you know you are running on leased time?
Click to expand...

You mean what happens when an SSD completely runs out of extra chips to write to because all of them are all used up?

In theory, the write will just fail and the SSD will turn into a read-only device. I don't know how much this has actually been tested, though, since it takes a long time to use up all the chips.

You can look at the smart data to see how much you have left. It gives a percentage left. Most people are probably sitting at 90+% writes left even after a couple of years.
 
Depends on demand I suppose. Like most here, I've been waiting to purchase a couple of drives. I need one 40gb and one 80gb. After seeing what they're offering - and the price...I pulled a couple of my old velociraptors out of the closet. I plan on using these indefinitely. I think I've been priced out of the market. I just don't feel this new 320 series is worth this much? To each his own here, but I couldn't spend the money.

Best,

Liquid Cool


Abula said:
If history repeats the prices will go up short term, with the intel X25m 160gb on release was $499, to move toward $530 the next weeks, mostly out of demand. Recently with intel 510s happen the same, $585 on preorders, the were blown and all retailers move up to $615-640. I do believe all will come down in price, but not fast, probably in 3-4 months, in between i believe the drives will go up from MSRP price as it has happen in the past, but really going to depend on availability on how the market reacts, also this time there is the Sata III monsters coming short term like Vertex 3, Crucial Force GT and Micron/Crucial C400/M4, so it might drop in price faster, still i prefer just to get my hands on one couple of months before, enough with mechanical drives on my desktop.
Click to expand...
 
Anand had this to say about the write failure...

Crucial sent along a 256GB drive populated with sixteen 16GB 25nm Micron NAND devices. Micron rates its 25nm NAND at 3000 program/erase cycles. By comparison Intel's NAND, coming out of the same fab, is apparently rated at 5000 program/erase cycles. I asked Micron why there's a discrepancy and was told that the silicon's quality and reliability is fundamentally the same. It sounds like the only difference is in testing and validation methodology. In either case I've heard that most 25nm NAND can well exceed its rated program/erase cycles so it's a non-issue.
Click to expand...
 
Abula said:
If history repeats the prices will go up short term, with the intel X25m 160gb on release was $499, to move toward $530 the next weeks, mostly out of demand. Recently with intel 510s happen the same, $585 on preorders, the were blown and all retailers move up to $615-640. I do believe all will come down in price, but not fast, probably in 3-4 months, in between i believe the drives will go up from MSRP price as it has happen in the past, but really going to depend on availability on how the market reacts, also this time there is the Sata III monsters coming short term like Vertex 3, Crucial Force GT and Micron/Crucial C400/M4, so it might drop in price faster, still i prefer just to get my hands on one couple of months before, enough with mechanical drives on my desktop.
Click to expand...

The same is starting to happen with Intels 320s as it happen before, resellers are starting to jack up the price, check this example,

Intel 320 Series 300 GB SATA 3.0 Gb-s 2.5-Inch Solid-State Drive SSDSA2CW300G3K5

The preoder from amazon is $544, while the other relailers are starting go from $590 to $644, soon amazon will increase the price as they did with Intel X25m and Intel 510.
 
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