SSD price

Corban227

Corban227

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when do you guys see the SSD prices droping to a reasonable price per gigabyte? im really intrigued but cant make myself pay for 60 gigs of really fast memory when i can get 2 TB of not as fast memory

im all for speed but 300 dollars is too much in my book. when are prices going to drop down?
 
When the new 25nm flash products hit in Q4 of this year (think christmas). Other foundries are still producing on older (more expensive) production methods.
 
The next generation flash NAND chips produced by Intel/Micron. It will also launch a new SATA 6Gbps Intel controller which would provide even more performance than the Marvell/Sandforce offerings now.

So the next big thing in SSD-world, will happen near christmas this year.
 
If Intel releases SSDs in Q4 2010 with more capacity and more performance than the competition, then what motivation does Intel have to also charge a lower price than the competition? Intel could easily keep the price at the status quo and still sell a lot of SSDs because theirs are the best. I think Intel learned their lesson with the G2s, where they set the MSRP lower than the status quo, and the result was that the retailers got a juicy profit margin charging more than MSRP. Next time I expect Intel will want to keep more of the profit for themselves.

Maybe the price per gigabyte will come down a little in Q4 2010, but I do not expect a significant price decrease until there is a second (and maybe third) producer of 2X nm flash NAND.
 
Don't expect lower prices. Not anytime though.. Flash memory is still expensive to produce.
 
when we talk not soon, even if intel doesn't lower the price of their 3Gps units, how much time are we talking? 1 year, 2 year etc? i mean if its going to be that long , ill suck it up and buy one this summer
 
Prices aren't gonna drop significantly before 2011, period. By the end of this year Intel and others will probably start making SSD based around 25nm flash (all current drives use 34nm flash or larger in the case of older Indillix-based drives from OCZ/Patriot/etc.); at that point we'll see a shift in prices... Probably not before year's end tho, once you account for price gouging and the premium the new drives will initially carry just because they're new. 'Till then what you see is what you get, aside from the occasional discounts and rebates.

SandForce-based drivers still seem like a bit of an unknown quantity and there's not much data on their cheaper SF-1200 controller... Crucial/Micron's newest drive (C300) is faster than anything else but also carries a $50-100 premium over anything else at the same size. Not terrible, but not worth it to most people either ('specially if you don't have a mobo w/SATA 6Gb/s ports already).

The best deal out there right now for a 120GB drive is easily the OCZ Solid 2 on Newegg for $285 AR... Comes out to less than $2.40/GB, whereas most other drives are closer to $3/GB, if not higher. If you can live with something smaller then the 60GB version ($154, $2.60/GB), or an 80GB X25-M G2 ($220-260, if you can find it in stock), or a 40GB X25-V ($120) are all good buys, tho you'll pay more per GB. The Solid 2 is just an Indillix Barefoot drive w/34nm flash btw, same controller as the Vertex/Agility.

The Agility drives are occasionally a great deal too when you catch a really good rebate or discount on 'em. Personally I'm quite happy w/80GB on my desktop and 40GB on my laptop/netbook. I don't really need more than that for an OS drive, at all. It'd be nice to have extra room in there for more games (so I don't have to shuffle them on and off the SSD as I play thru them), but that's about it. Eventually I guess I'd like to move to something larger on the laptop just so I don't have to depend on the external drive or SDHC cards as much, but it's not a very big deal.

I'll probably wait 'till next year to do so though... So I can actually get something significantly larger for the same price I paid for my existing drive(s). In the meantime I'll probably be buying a 120GB OCZ Solid 2, though not to upgrade either of my Intel drives, it'll be a gift for my sister's laptop (in all three cases the decision for me has been driven by price/capacity, not performance vs each other).

Basically, it's not a bad time at all to buy a SSD, since you won't see a steep cut in prices for a good while. The only reason to wait is if you're looking for top-flight performance and you're willing to pay for it (and the controller if your mobo doesn't support SATA Rev3), the new Micron/Crucial drive comes out this week apparently. I'm very happy w/my purchases, bought the X25-M in August and the X25-V last month. Just know what you're getting into, if you're not a heavy multi-tasker then a SSD might not be for ya... Personally I love mine, 'specially on the netbook (for reasons beyond performance).
 
Last edited:
hmz said:
Don't expect lower prices. Not anytime though.. Flash memory is still expensive to produce.
Click to expand...

I agree. SLC price has remained static. MLC has dropped by a few percentage points. Both are bound by high demand.
 
I can't say that I've seen any new SLC drives coming out since the OCZ ones. Intel hasn't even done anything with theirs.
 
Intel won't be using SLC for the successor of the X25-E; it will use only MLC memory. SLC is dead.

SLC was still nice before advanced controllers were constructed that get plenty of performance out of MLC. Also nice to note the Random read IOps of Intel G2 is higher than the X25-E SLC brother; though the SLC products are slightly older due to older process technology. Right now the MLC NAND is made on 34nm.
 
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