Intel's New Solid State Drive - Video Review @ [H]

$600 ... here is my solution :)

I've been reading a lot on the SSD front and for now, with SSD prices pretty much out of reach, I've the done following.


Below is my results for testing my new array (Highpoint RR 3510 and 4 x WD 640GB).

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I have to say that this does provide a nice real world benefit; I've had all the raptors from the old 36GB up until the 150GB. This array (which stores all my data and windows, etc) is by far one of the best upgrades I've done in a long time (almost as good as going from P4 to C2D)

Thoughts and any comments of course are welcome.
 
Kyle, the site content over the last couple weeks has been impressive.

I would like to see a 15k SAS drive in the line up. At present, SSD is aiming for the high price / high performance catagory, which is the same catagory 15k SAS has occupied on the desktop for years. The server snobs over at Storage review tell everyone there's absolutely no reason to run 15k SAS on the desktop, but even some of their own tests show significant gains in game related performance.

I wish GigaByte had continued devlopment of their i-RAM series of drives. My old i-RAM still smokes my Velociraptor.
 
Dan_D said:
Individually hard drives don't use that much power when compared to everything else in the system. It just isn't that important.
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I concede, on individual hard drives. But, this being the enthusiast site of choice, I'd hope to see a pair of these striped in this kind of comparison in the next year. Vista 64-bit load time of 20 seconds, anyone? :eek:
 
dj_spanmaster said:
I concede, on individual hard drives. But, this being the enthusiast site of choice, I'd hope to see a pair of these striped in this kind of comparison in the next year. Vista 64-bit load time of 20 seconds, anyone? :eek:
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I've thought about doing just that but frankly the cost vs. my return on the "investment" isn't enough for me. I'm going to stick it out with some Velociraptors in RAID 0 and a pair of 500GB SE16 hard drives in RAID 1 until SSD prices and capacities (not to mention performance improve enough for me to make the plunge.) I'm far from frugal and I really did consider buying a pair of these Intel 80GB SSD's but I just don't think they are worth it.
 
Kyle, while I really am enjoying the new video reviews allow me to offer some constructive criticism.

1. As someone said above it would be nice if you spoke with less speech holders, like the uhs and stuff. Eliminate those and it would sound much nicer.
2. Instead of having printed out graphs, instead incorperate the graphs directly in the video. Do you have a good video editor? It would be great if the scene cut into a slideshow of the graphs with you narrating and explaining what the results are.

Other than that it's quite good and I love the intro scene, it gets you pumped up :p. I also like how you put the graphs and stuff under the video, that makes things much better, and I like how you wrap up your thoughts at the end, because truth be told halfway through the charts I just skipped ahead to the end because I wanted to hear your closing thoughts and opinions about the drive.

Keep it up :)
 
trick_m0nkey said:
Kyle, while I really am enjoying the new video reviews allow me to offer some constructive criticism.

1. As someone said above it would be nice if you spoke with less speech holders, like the uhs and stuff. Eliminate those and it would sound much nicer.
2. Instead of having printed out graphs, instead incorperate the graphs directly in the video. Do you have a good video editor? It would be great if the scene cut into a slideshow of the graphs with you narrating and explaining what the results are.

Other than that it's quite good and I love the intro scene, it gets you pumped up :p. I also like how you put the graphs and stuff under the video, that makes things much better, and I like how you wrap up your thoughts at the end, because truth be told halfway through the charts I just skipped ahead to the end because I wanted to hear your closing thoughts and opinions about the drive.

Keep it up :)
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1. Oh yeah, I am sucking in that department and well aware of it. Keep kicking me in the ass though. I will get this camera thing down sooner or later. ;)

2. Yes we can do it, bad thing is the video is still such low resolution that the graphs would still suck. Going to try some different approaches there.

Roger that on skipping ahead, there was a lot of talk there, more than I intended. And I promise we will not hide the conclusions. Will likely start tagging the sections of the video as Viddler supports that.
 
Video review was very cool. It was interesting to see someone finally crack one of those babies open and see what the big deal is going on inside.
 
Video reviews are good, keep em coming. I agree with most of the consensus here but I do like having the graphs below the embedded video. I look at those before watching the vid. Better imo than having to pause or even rewind the stream.
 
Thanks for the review. It answered a lot of questions I had, and it was nice to get a visual on the drives in question. I have a pair of 75GB Raptors that are in need of replacing, so it looks like I'm going to go with the Velociraptors for now.

Kyle, I think you're definitely getting better with the video reviews. This one seemed to flow a lot more smoothly. I do suggest that long reviews get broken into a few smaller chunks (like one for an intro and test setup, one for detailed results, and one for a conclusion). Makes it easier for those of us who just read the introduction and conclusions of reviews to get right to the meaty parts. Keep up the good work!
 
trick_m0nkey said:
Kyle, while I really am enjoying the new video reviews allow me to offer some constructive criticism.

1. As someone said above it would be nice if you spoke with less speech holders, like the uhs and stuff. Eliminate those and it would sound much nicer.
2. Instead of having printed out graphs, instead incorperate the graphs directly in the video. Do you have a good video editor? It would be great if the scene cut into a slideshow of the graphs with you narrating and explaining what the results are.
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1. I only agree 50% with you. I think having a few "major lines" to follow could help, however this is not Leo Laporte. HardOCP has always been "one of us". For me, Kyle is an old friend. I don't know him personaly, but it is how it feels. I know that when i read reviews and such on HardOCP, people speak to me like they know me and they want to discuss tech stuff. Leo Laporte would never tell me he went to pickup a stopwatch @ walmart.
Those videos makes you feel like someone you know is telling you about stuff, not feeding you the PR-BS. That's what HardOCP is for me and making it too "Pro" (both in video style and in communication form) wouldn't feel "true". My opinion.

2. Yeah gotta find a way to get them on screen where text is a bit more readable, even if not perfect.

Keep up the good work Kyle & the whole crew :)
 
overthetop said:
The review is out but the Intel SSD is not available anywhere yet.
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None for sale yet that I can find. I think most of these are going to notebook builders currently. They tell us soon though!
 
I don't remember the last time I actualy posted in the forums, but been a LONG time reader. Just wanted to say I like the new video review method. I admit I dont have enough time to watch the whole thing but I was easily able to skip around and check the graphs. Nice break from reading RSS feeds all day.

Thanks,
-Chris
 
I love you Kyle no doubt, but you say "uh" a LOT in your review :-\

However, I still like the video reviews :)
 
Thanks for the review... very well done. I say keep the paper and the sharpie - That's how I do my personal benchmarks at home when I am playing with new hardware.

As for the actual tech, I am very interested in getting an SSD for my desktop.

I have a MacbookAir with the 60GB SSD and I can tell you without a doubt that it is faster then the 80 GB spindle version. Over all it just plain "feels" faster. My buddy has the same laptop but with the 80GB spindle version and mine boots (from a complete shutdown) about 50 percent faster and my apps - especially MS Office 2008 apps - open at least twice as fast if not faster. Windows pop right open and it is just generally snappy compared to the spindle version.

Now I know that the 80GB spindle version is slow by its nature - a 1.8" laptop drive at 4200 RPM, but it is the only way to compare apples to apples.

I am very interested in obtaining that "snappy windows just pop feeling" on my desktop.

I have a pair of 150GB raptors now and while not slow... they just don't "feel" as fast as my lowly little MacbookAir. (And before anybody says anything, I really love my little MacbookAir, and yes it was stupidly expensive with the SSD but it worth the cost to me.)

Anyway... I am excited about this new drive tech from Intel. I do wish it was a higher capacity though.

JMHO
 
NKDietrich said:
Did anyone else half expect Kyle to open up with "Hi, Im Rodney Reynolds and this is another video review." LOL. Okay... maybe its just me then. *moves along*
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Nothing against Rodney, but his presentation makes him come off as a radio sports guy douche with the voice and all. Just one of my peeves. I have many. Thank you.
 
Rather get Optimus Keyboard over a solid state drive. Just too expensive for mere 80 gb come on...when they finally get 500 gigs on a solid state drive under 200 bucks I'll be impressed but right now its not worth the price.
 
Wow what exactly does go on with the game loading thing, i like my entire system feeling poppy, it looks like advancesments in SSD will be the answer though.
 
Thanks for the review. Great job on the video.

Makes me feel I made a solid decision on my Velociraptor.

I see some applications for those drives for sure though. They would be awesome in some small form factor servers, obviously laptops would be a great place to see them.

One thing that I haven't heard too much about is general reliability. Many seem to be optimistic that they are solid state, so no moving parts but eventually those NAND chips will wear out. Time will tell for sure. I'm sure we will laugh about these drives in a few years when the technology evolves. :)
 
Awesome review. The video really shows the size of the hardware which puts it in perspective for me. For example, I had not seen in the VelociRaptor in real life and didn't realize it was so small.

As far as the drive, I cannot wait for the technology to advance to make them smaller, faster and cheaper.

Please keep the video reviews coming!
 
Long time reader, first time video review watcher.

19 minutes for a drive review? WOW...

I think someone needs to do a bit of editing before releasing the new video review... this is way, way, way too long for my tastes.


Awol
 
Awol said:
Long time reader, first time video review watcher.

19 minutes for a drive review? WOW...

I think someone needs to do a bit of editing before releasing the new video review... this is way, way, way too long for my tastes.


Awol
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Ditto on that, man. Dig the videos, but they are seriously, like, uh, 5-6x too long. Be more concise. They aren't so much video reviews as they are chit-chat coffee talk about hardware, but without the coffee, and I can't chat back, and I'm watching it in a web browser. ...but thanks for taking the time to do the review - always appreciated.
 
TAXMANCOMETH said:
Ditto on that, man. Dig the videos, but they are seriously, like, uh, 5-6x too long. Be more concise. They aren't so much video reviews as they are chit-chat coffee talk about hardware, but without the coffee, and I can't chat back, and I'm watching it in a web browser. ...but thanks for taking the time to do the review - always appreciated.
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and thats everything i like about it. can't please everyone :(
 
I was hoping for the old sound for "A Current Affair."

Other than, I love the videos. Very informative, and Genuine.
 
Hey Kyle shouldn't the text above the video say read speeds of up to 230MB/s? You say read in the video.
Other than that, great review. The videos are a really nice way of doing it.
 
First of all, I really don't like video reviews, that said, your's is not bad but of course there's room for improvement.

uh, a few notes, umm

Uhhh, video is too long, uuh, 19 minutes is an eternity, you would need to cut it in half.
Its difficult to keep a persons attention for more than 10 minutes, people will loose interest, miss a lot of content or just skip parts.

err, hmm, It seems the video is done in one take. ahem.. Consider doing a couple of takes and narrating the video separately instead of doing it "live".

ahem, eeerr, aaah... it becomes annoying after a while, doesn't it. Try to keep speech fluent, all the pauses and ooh, aah, ugh ugh seems like either you are bored or don't know what you are talking about. Do some bullets and organize your ideas, but don't read, people will notice.

You can only blame yourself for making such great written reviews. That's why I set the bar so high for your video reviews.
 
Great to see the Velociraptor hauling ass vs this thing. When they come down in price I'll be getting a 2nd VR and putting them in RAID 0 for epic loading times :D
 
LOL.. can we get a decision on who the Raptor was made by?? Intel, Western Digital or Gigabyte???

nice review though =D
 
Can the Maxtor's performance with game loading be a result of the drive being virtually empty and the data being written on the fastest part of the platter? A phenomenon not associated with ssd drives.

For a short time I had a WD Raptor 160 drive in a Zalman HDD Cooler but just laying on top of the DVD drive. When Vista would index the drive it would be noticeably load and be a source of irritation to me but these SSD being all silent would be a boon to my preferences.

Hopefully these tests will be used for other ssd drive manufacturers. And if more video reviews are put up, it would be nice for a script to be followed so the video flows more smoothly and wouldn't have to be so long.

Are there readable temperatures from the drive? If there are what were they?
 
Dan_D said:
Considering a single hard drive doesn't really pull THAT much power I think that the power savings of SSD are one of its' least interesting features. Potential speed for the technology, lower heat production and of course reliability increases due to the lack of mechanical parts are far more appealing than a few watts of power saved.
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Those of us that would be using an SSD with a laptop may well find reduced power usage to be a very significant factor. How about a second, laptop review? In print would be perfect, because I like some others don't often have a chance to watch a video.
 
Pixelated said:
So kyle is a southern man. Never would have known. Is that accent Texas?
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Been here a while. Family moved to Texas from Georgia in 1865. Cattle business. Got my great grandfather's branding irons hanging in my living room. ;) I was born and raised in Houston, currently living in Plano, a suburb of Dallas.
 
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