Intel Delivers Industry's First 34nm NAND Flash SSDs

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Intel Corporation is moving to a more advanced, 34- nanometer (nm) manufacturing process for its leading NAND flash-based Solid State Drive (SSD) products, which are an alternative to a computer's hard drive. The move to 34nm will help lower prices of the SSDs up to 60 percent for PC and laptop makers and consumers who buy them due to the reduced die size and advanced engineering design.

The multi-level cell (MLC) Intel® X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD is aimed at laptop and desktop PCs and available in 80 Gigabyte (GB) and 160GB versions. SSDs are data storage devices found inside computers. Because SSDs have no moving parts they offer faster performance and greater energy efficiency and durability than traditional hard disk drives (HDDs).
 
The production costs might drop up to 60%, but I don't think that the novelty factor will drop as much. I'd be happy with $200cdn for an 80GB Intel drive for our products.
 
Jakalwarrior said:
So now they will just be expensive instead of insane?
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Yeah, no kidding. I want an SSD drive so bad, but with the prices it's just impossible.
Heck, I can build an entire computer before I can buy just enough SSDs to fit my OS, Applications, and Games. If I wanted to put my music and video collection too, that will probably cost me a few months of my salary. And if I wanted to transfer my backup drives too, I'd probably consider donating one of my organs to a hospital. lol.:p


RickyJ said:
The production costs might drop up to 60%, but I don't think that the novelty factor will drop as much. I'd be happy with $200cdn for an 80GB Intel drive for our products.
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The gap would still be too big. You can easily buy a 1TB HDD for $80 here in the US, and that's including taxes and shipping.
SSD has a long way to go before it can be considered by the average user. Even with a 60% price drop, they would still be too expensive.
 
We're getting there at least. I might make the jump later this year or early next year. I'd like at least 250+ GBs at <$500 with a decent controller.
 
Get me a well controlled 120GB drive, for 200$ and I'll bite. Until then... 60% my ass ;)
 
BTW, there's a big thread rollin' in the STORAGE section on these SSD's.
 
This is great news... as far as costs goes... SSD's of today are inline with what WD was charging for 10K rpm Raptors when they were top dog.
 
There comes the long awaited press release. Actually I didn't expect these new drives to be released this soon. By the time Win7 debuts, these drives will get support for trim and hopefully even cheaper and also available in quantities. Other manufacturers must lower prices now to stay competitive.
 
Im telling you, come christmas/Early 2010, we could have drives close to £1/GB which is around $1.65/GB
 
[H]adouken!;1034385289 said:
Im telling you, come christmas/Early 2010, we could have drives close to £1/GB which is around $1.65/GB
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You can already get the Kingston Value series 128 GB drive for that price per gig. Redesigned jmicron/toshiba controller though.
 
Odin75 said:
Yeah, no kidding. I want an SSD drive so bad, but with the prices it's just impossible.
Heck, I can build an entire computer before I can buy just enough SSDs to fit my OS, Applications, and Games. If I wanted to put my music and video collection too, that will probably cost me a few months of my salary. And if I wanted to transfer my backup drives too, I'd probably consider donating one of my organs to a hospital. lol.:p
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Why would you need your music and video collection (let alone your backups) on SSD drives though? It's not gonna benefit much, if at all, from the performance boost... Yeah 80 or even 160GB might be too small an OS drive for some people, but for many it's enough, or it's worth the sacrifice of moving some games to a regular HD just for the huge performance boost on everything else... Imo anyway. Come October I'm definitely jumping on one of those 80GB drives for $225 or w/e (to go along w/the fresh Win7 install).
 
Given it's exactly 3 months out, it should be at a better price by then due to the competition having to react.
 
One can hope! :D Seeing as it's not even available yet though, I'm not getting my hopes up. $215 sounds a lot better than $320 anyway.
 
Impulse said:
Why would you need your music and video collection (let alone your backups) on SSD drives though? It's not gonna benefit much, if at all, from the performance boost... Yeah 80 or even 160GB might be too small an OS drive for some people, but for many it's enough, or it's worth the sacrifice of moving some games to a regular HD just for the huge performance boost on everything else... Imo anyway. Come October I'm definitely jumping on one of those 80GB drives for $225 or w/e (to go along w/the fresh Win7 install).
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After thinking about it, you are absolutely right. I just did some extra research, and saw a few videos in youtube running 2x30GB OCZ Vertex in Raid 0, the the performance is mind blowing. I mean, i had no idea SSD had catched up so fast. I was still under the impressing they were $1k for a single good 32GB SSD drive.

Oh wow, this really changes everything. This actually encourages me to change to SSD, even if it's only for the OS. I mean, you open about 20 apps before I can even load PS CS3 alone, or boot into XP around 30secs when it takes me around 5min.:eek: Just picturing myself with all that speed just makes me smile.:)
 
The Intel X25-M 80GB G2 is now listed on Newegg but it's out of stock, I've no idea if it was ever in stock... But they've got it listed at something very close to the MSRP so maybe there won't be any price gouging when it's finally available. I think the 160GB G2 version is already available as well (and in stock) and it's price is also close to the MSRP... Personally I can barely wait, might just end up getting one before Win7 ships to me though I'm trying to force myself to wait and see if prices drop any further.

OCZ is already dropping prices across it's Vertex line which is pretty good news... I'm doing a clean install soon so I'll be able to judge pretty well if I can live with 80GB for the OS or if I wanna spend a lil' more (and sacrifice just a lil' performance) to go w/a 128GB Vertx instead.
 
Impulse said:
The Intel X25-M 80GB G2 is now listed on Newegg but it's out of stock, I've no idea if it was ever in stock... But they've got it listed at something very close to the MSRP so maybe there won't be any price gouging when it's finally available. I think the 160GB G2 version is already available as well (and in stock) and it's price is also close to the MSRP... Personally I can barely wait, might just end up getting one before Win7 ships to me though I'm trying to force myself to wait and see if prices drop any further.

OCZ is already dropping prices across it's Vertex line which is pretty good news... I'm doing a clean install soon so I'll be able to judge pretty well if I can live with 80GB for the OS or if I wanna spend a lil' more (and sacrifice just a lil' performance) to go w/a 128GB Vertx instead.
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It was in stock, but sold out in about 2 hours. I have one on order for $230 shipped at Newegg, expected delivery of Monday.
 
We are really getting there in the price/performance area. I'm really hoping for another push down in price and bump up in capacity in time for the Windows 7 release. I'm all over one for my new PC build in late October/early November if I can get a good 250GB SSD for something that isn't completely insane (I'm prepared for "really expensive" :))
 
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