Intel 34nm SSD released

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eit412
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Intel 34nm SSD released

Post by eit412 » Tue Jul 21, 2009 8:52 am

New 34nm Intel SSD's should be faster and cheaper based on THIS article at Anandtech

Matija
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Post by Matija » Tue Jul 21, 2009 9:56 am

I'd be willing to pay 50€ for a 128 GB version. Still much, much too expensive.

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Post by nutball » Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:02 am

Too expensive by far, and it looks like they're playing marketing silly-buggers with Windows 7 TRIM support. Intel should stick to enterprise-grade SLC stuff.

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Post by croddie » Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:10 am

I disagree. This is great value. And will have TRIM support.
For $225 you get an 80Gb boot drive, a decent size for OS and programs and non-media files for many people. A drive which might double or triple the speed of the computer for average uses. Low-power, silent, small, and robust too.

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Post by Matija » Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:18 am

1) $225 *will* translate to at least 225€ or £225

2) People content with 80 GB of storage space are also content with an old HDD

SSDs are still very far from having great value. But should I manage to win the lottery and stop worrying about putting food on my table, I'll consider them ;)

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Re: Intel 34nm SSD released

Post by AZBrandon » Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:22 am

eit412 wrote:New 34nm Intel SSD's should be faster and cheaper based on THIS article at Anandtech
I would say the drive is quicker, not faster. The difference is that quick is generally the term you'd use to describe latency, which seems to be what they've addressed in bringing random read latency down to 65 microseconds and increasing 4KB write IOPS from 3300 to 6600-8400 IOPS as a result of the improved latency. The throughput is still the same 250/70 mb/sec, so I would say the drives are equally fast to the old ones, just quicker. To see the expected prices dropping from $345 to $225 for the new 80gb model is very exciting.

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Re: Intel 34nm SSD released

Post by eit412 » Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:43 am

AZBrandon wrote:I would say the drive is quicker, not faster. The difference is that quick is generally the term you'd use to describe latency,
Good point about the difference between latency and throughput. I was just quoting the original article. The price was the part I was excited about. I will deffinatley be picking up one of these in a couple of months and loading Windows 7 on it for my HTPC.

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Post by nutball » Tue Jul 21, 2009 11:02 am

croddie wrote:I disagree. This is great value. And will have TRIM support.
Sorry. I'll be more explicit. This drive will get a firmware upgrade to support TRIM, the previous generation won't. This is just a marketing ploy to get people to buy a new, expensive, SSD to replace the old one.

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Post by qviri » Tue Jul 21, 2009 12:15 pm

Matija wrote:2) People content with 80 GB of storage space are also content with an old HDD
Actually, far from it. 64 or 80 GB is more than enough for a standard office setup, and comfortable for a programming setup. As a programmer, I would absolutely love a 80 GB SSD in place of the slow 160 GB 7200.7 in my computer right now - improvements in both random access and continuous read would be ridiculously huge.

You could even put on a couple of testing or development VMs on the 80 GB - practically zero access time would be very handy for using two OSes at once.

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Post by Matija » Tue Jul 21, 2009 12:21 pm

A standard office setup could run on a dinosaur-age 10 GB drive. We're talking mainstream here.

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Post by qviri » Tue Jul 21, 2009 12:26 pm

Except again, it couldn't, because that'd be entirely too slow.

I think there's a fair market of people who don't need half a terabyte but would appreciate the speed.

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Post by Matija » Tue Jul 21, 2009 12:52 pm

People in my office are running on very old 20 GB Maxtor drivezzzzzzzzzbbbzzzzzzzzz and nobody is complaining because they have no reason to. They don't need anything faster. I have an 80 GB Seagate and while it's a bit slow because of high access time, it's not really that annoying, and doesn't hurt my work at all.

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Post by PartEleven » Tue Jul 21, 2009 12:58 pm

I don't see what you are arguing about. Mainstream or not, those who want the speed SSD offers aren't necessarily going to need a terabyte of space. My system partition is only 100gb. It'd be even less if I chose to install my programs into a separate drive.

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Post by jessekopelman » Tue Jul 21, 2009 1:46 pm

My problem with current SSD prices is not that they are too high. They are actually pretty reasonable for the performance gain. It is that you know they will continue coming down very rapidly. Basically, with computer stuff like this it is not about price/metric but just price. You pick a price you are willing pay and buy the best thing for that price. If you are willing to pay $300 for an SSD, your time is now. If you are willing to pay $200, your time is soon coming. For those of us who are cheap/patient, our time is probably still a year or two away. It is no different than any other component. I'd never buy a >$200 CPU or >$100 GPU, but for those who would, I don't see why you'd balk at current SSD prices.

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Post by Wibla » Tue Jul 21, 2009 1:48 pm

You need to differentiate between OS/programs and storage. I have 13+TB of storage, but I'd still be interested in an 80GB SSD to get my programs and OS running faster.

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Post by Rewdoalb » Tue Jul 21, 2009 2:31 pm

this is very exciting news.

Also, the fact that it is Halogen-free and thus could now be used by Apple has the potential to increase volume and lower price more down the road.

I may not be content with 80GB storage, these don't have to be for storage. Intel's SSD could be the drive with all my OS and program files, maybe even document files, I'm fine having a 1TB storage drive handle any pictures/video that needs to be stored.

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Post by halcyon » Wed Jul 22, 2009 2:17 am

While it's true that space-wise SSDs are not very good value yet for many people, speed-wise they are great value to a lot of people.

Increase in IOPS is great as is the promise of TRIM support in future firmware. Not supporting the earlier generation with a TRIM update is - imho - really lame as there is no technical reason not to. That really leaves a sour taste in my mouth about Intel and it's customer support.

80GB will be enough for me. It fits Ultimate Win 7 full install along with paging file, plenty of system restore files, even hibernation if needed + Office 2007 + a few gigs worth of mail boxes + other main programs I use, and still have 15% free space for the automatic TRIM and wear-level block re-allocation algorithm to do it's trick properly.

But it is true that within two years the price of a 160GB SSD will probably be 1/4 of what it is now.

But such is the nature of technology.

However, additional reduction of noise for the next 2 years is worth the 200€ for me, not to mention all those hours and nerves saved by not looking at the hour glass icon and waiting for things to start working :)

YMMV, of course.

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Post by alleycat » Wed Jul 22, 2009 4:53 am

jessekopelman wrote:My problem with current SSD prices is not that they are too high. They are actually pretty reasonable for the performance gain. It is that you know they will continue coming down very rapidly. Basically, with computer stuff like this it is not about price/metric but just price. You pick a price you are willing pay and buy the best thing for that price. If you are willing to pay $300 for an SSD, your time is now. If you are willing to pay $200, your time is soon coming. For those of us who are cheap/patient, our time is probably still a year or two away. It is no different than any other component. I'd never buy a >$200 CPU or >$100 GPU, but for those who would, I don't see why you'd balk at current SSD prices.
My thoughts exactly. I'm a bit surprised at the many negative comments I've seen about SSDs on SPCR. Not only are SSDs low power, robust, and silent, they give your system a massive performance boost, which is worth the cost alone IMHO. Many people here pay hundreds of dollars more for a better processor, graphics card, etc, but only get an incremental performance increase. An SSD has been the single best performance upgrade I have ever made. I use a 30GB one for OS/apps and I've only used half the space. I know that not everyone has the same usage patterns, but having a separate drive for this purpose is a good idea anyway, so for many people a small SSD is a great choice for a fast, flexible system. Maybe in a year's time it will cost $100 less, but meanwhile I've had $100 use out of it. Anyone who's worried about buying stuff that might later fall in price probably shouldn't buy tech products. You'll always be able to buy cheaper and faster in a year's time.

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Post by Shamgar » Wed Jul 22, 2009 7:49 am

alleycat wrote:
jessekopelman wrote:My problem with current SSD prices is not that they are too high. They are actually pretty reasonable for the performance gain. It is that you know they will continue coming down very rapidly. Basically, with computer stuff like this it is not about price/metric but just price. You pick a price you are willing pay and buy the best thing for that price. If you are willing to pay $300 for an SSD, your time is now. If you are willing to pay $200, your time is soon coming. For those of us who are cheap/patient, our time is probably still a year or two away. It is no different than any other component. I'd never buy a >$200 CPU or >$100 GPU, but for those who would, I don't see why you'd balk at current SSD prices.
My thoughts exactly. I'm a bit surprised at the many negative comments I've seen about SSDs on SPCR. Not only are SSDs low power, robust, and silent, they give your system a massive performance boost, which is worth the cost alone IMHO. Many people here pay hundreds of dollars more for a better processor, graphics card, etc, but only get an incremental performance increase. An SSD has been the single best performance upgrade I have ever made. I use a 30GB one for OS/apps and I've only used half the space. I know that not everyone has the same usage patterns, but having a separate drive for this purpose is a good idea anyway, so for many people a small SSD is a great choice for a fast, flexible system. Maybe in a year's time it will cost $100 less, but meanwhile I've had $100 use out of it. Anyone who's worried about buying stuff that might later fall in price probably shouldn't buy tech products. You'll always be able to buy cheaper and faster in a year's time.
I think the problem a lot of people have is the difference in cost between even a bottom rung SSD and a reasonably capable, quiet HDD. There is also a "Let's wait and see" attitude amongst consumers, fostered in part by mainstream publications who act as their PC advisors. SSDs generally get poor reviews in these publications, and to them, SSD doesn't appear to be "sorted" yet. Most people who have light uses do not need to fork out for an SSD at its current prices now. They should not be peer pressured into it either because it's flavour of the decade with some performance users on SPCR. People have other more important things in life they need to spend money on, and the opportunity cost right now of purchasing an SSD is too great, even for its performance and silence gains. Being "behind the times" is nothing to be ashamed of. Whatever hardware you buy, you are behind no matter how far ahead you think you are.

But sometimes you need to get what you need to get. An example: back in 2003 I bought my first digital camera and needed a CF card to go with it. The best I could find was a 64MB no-name card for ~AU$60. A few years later I bought another digital camera and this time I bought a 4GB SanDisk SDHC card for ~AU$20. I could probably find an 8GB card for not much more now. I didn't consider it that expensive back in 2003 because it was near market price and I needed the card in order to use that particular product.

So, if you really feel you need an SSD for today's computing, you would pay whatever you need to for it, within reason. But it doesn't make one any more of a "true believer" than those who are still using the obnoxious HDD. Someday, we will join the camp. For now, many of us live with what we have and make the most of it.
halcyon wrote:YMMV, of course.
It does.

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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Wed Jul 22, 2009 12:06 pm

Good price on 80GB drive, too bad it's too small. I have no idea how people can live with 80GB, much less 30GB. I have Vista 64 Ultimate installed, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Management Studio 2008, three games, Valve HL2 series, all of them including Orange Box, Prey, RTCW:ET, a bunch of smaller programs to work with MKV and SRT files, I don't even have Microsoft Office installed, and yet I only have 30GB left out of 100GB. I do not keep anything else on the OS drive but programs. 80GB drive would have about 10GB left, that's too close for comfort and I suspect SSD drives would deteriorate performance wise when low on space.

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Post by jessekopelman » Wed Jul 22, 2009 12:13 pm

Shamgar wrote:Most people who have light uses do not need to fork out for an SSD at its current prices now.
Sure, but that is not the attitude I was disagreeing with. It is perfectly fine to say SSD is too expensive for me right now (I say this myself). What I have a problem with is people complaining about is $/GB. I don't hear people saying, "oh, I'd love an i7, but it is too expensive per Megaflop." Either a CPU/GPU is worth the money to you or it isn't. There is not some magic performance metric/$ that has to be met. SSD is no different. Given that SSD prices are already in line with high end CPU/GPU prices, the argument that their costs are out of line doesn't hold true. They are either a good price to you or not (I'm still in the not camp), but it has nothing to do with cost per GB.

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Post by jessekopelman » Wed Jul 22, 2009 12:21 pm

JazzJackRabbit wrote:Good price on 80GB drive, too bad it's too small. I have no idea how people can live with 80GB, much less 30GB.
Because most people don't have Vista 64 Ultimate, Visual Studio, and SQL Management Studio . . .
JazzJackRabbit wrote:80GB drive would have about 10GB left, that's too close for comfort and I suspect SSD drives would deteriorate performance wise when low on space.
That is what the TRIM command (that these new Intel drives will support with a firmware upgrade) is for. In theory, it should prevent performance deterioration as the drive fills up.

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Post by qviri » Wed Jul 22, 2009 1:01 pm

JazzJackRabbit wrote:Good price on 80GB drive, too bad it's too small. I have no idea how people can live with 80GB, much less 30GB. I have Vista 64 Ultimate installed, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Management Studio 2008, three games, Valve HL2 series, all of them including Orange Box, Prey, RTCW:ET, a bunch of smaller programs to work with MKV and SRT files, I don't even have Microsoft Office installed, and yet I only have 30GB left out of 100GB. I do not keep anything else on the OS drive but programs. 80GB drive would have about 10GB left, that's too close for comfort and I suspect SSD drives would deteriorate performance wise when low on space.
I have XP, Office 2007, VS 2005, VS 2008, RIM JDE (Eclipse), another copy of Eclipse, a number of Windows Mobile SDKs, BB Desktop Manager, freaking Lotus Notes and a couple of other things, and I'm using 29 GB of my 100 GB system partition...

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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Wed Jul 22, 2009 1:45 pm

My Windows directory is 25GB and Program Files X86 is 32GB (although 20 of those GB is steam). If I could use 80GB drive I would.

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Post by alleycat » Wed Jul 22, 2009 3:39 pm

Shamgar wrote:Being "behind the times" is nothing to be ashamed of
Wasn't implying that in any way at all. I'm always behind the times, and if you knew me better you'd see that around I tend to recommend cheap, simple, and DIY solutions. I usually buy low end processors (except for Celerons!) and mature chipsets. I only recently upgraded from a Pentium 4, which was obsolete even when I originally bought it. My current system including SSD cost me under AUD800. I carefully prioritise my spending.

The point I was trying to make is that SSDs can't really be compared to conventional "storage". They're in a league of their own, especially for both silent PC and performance enthusiasts, and that's a not-so-common combination in itself. Also, I'm speaking from experience, not from something I read on a tech blog.

I don't own shares in a memory company. I'm not saying that you must go and buy an SSD. If I needed 100GB for my system partition it would be way out of my price range. Fortunately I don't need that, nor do I need a quad core or an expensive graphics card, so I get to enjoy an amazingly responsive system at a fairly reasonable overall system cost.

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Post by colin2 » Wed Jul 22, 2009 8:00 pm

Ditto the above. I'm real happy with an x-25M after a week or so of use. If your work involves a lot of opening large files, it's a big time-saver. Depends heavily, of course, on what you do with your PC.

I'd also agree that given the silence and low power requirements of these things, a little geekish enthusiasm should be expected on a forum like this.

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Post by confusion » Wed Jul 22, 2009 9:56 pm

I realize I'm certainly not typical in disk usage, but aside from a computer used for gaming, I can't imagine how I'd ever fill an 80GB drive. This machine has an ~18GB drive with only about 10GB used, and it'd be less than that if I cleaned up useless junk.

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Post by nutball » Wed Jul 22, 2009 10:59 pm

colin2 wrote:I'd also agree that given the silence and low power requirements of these things, a little geekish enthusiasm should be expected on a forum like this.
The geekish enthusiasm has been tempered by the issue that the SSDs that have come onto the market over the past year or two have been so deeply compromised by the controller issues combined with the high prices.

I've been using a couple of first-generation OCZs for some months now, one in a server and one in an HTPC. These drives were used for some heavy real-world benchmarking beforehand (benchmarking in which they lost to a Velociraptor!), so they're in a state many others SSDs might be in in a year or two. The performance improvement I see over 3.5" or even 2.5" HDD is fairly minimal and the performance degradation when the drive controller has an eppy is mind-blowing. Most people don't pay those prices and expect to experience those issues - if they're silent and the same price as an HDD maybe I could forgive them, but I can't given what they cost.

With the new generation SSDs, TRIM support in Windows 7 and prices drifting down (I hesitate to use the word dropping), they are beginning to look like a viable option for the system drive of my next main PC. Until very recently however a VR has been a better option than an SSD.

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Post by Shamgar » Wed Jul 22, 2009 11:57 pm

to: jessekopelman and alleycat,

I was not making my comments specifically at either of you. I often quote someone's comments and go on to speak generally on a matter. Please understand that. I was making an argument for those who may not want to buy an SSD now. If you read through the end of my previous post, you'll notice
I wrote:So, if you really feel you need an SSD for today's computing, you would pay whatever you need to for it, within reason.
and I also used the example of my digital camera flash card which I paid an "exhorbitant" price for in 2003.
alleycat wrote:
Shamgar wrote:Being "behind the times" is nothing to be ashamed of
Wasn't implying that in any way at all. I'm always behind the times, and if you knew me better you'd see that around I tend to recommend cheap, simple, and DIY solutions. I usually buy low end processors (except for Celerons!) and mature chipsets. I only recently upgraded from a Pentium 4, which was obsolete even when I originally bought it. My current system including SSD cost me under AUD800. I carefully prioritise my spending.
I read through many, many posts on SPCR and get acquainted with some of the members' views on things through them. So I was not implying that you or anyone else here wasn't for budget computing or that some users are only for the high end of town. (Although some do appear to be that way, but I wouldn't know in truth as I don't know anyone here personally.) Sometimes I do make my points strongly on the forums: I have strong views, be it on technology, academic, moral, life, faith issues, and I enjoy using words to articulate those views. I apologise if it comes off the wrong way.
jessekopelman wrote:
Shamgar wrote:Most people who have light uses do not need to fork out for an SSD at its current prices now.
Sure, but that is not the attitude I was disagreeing with. It is perfectly fine to say SSD is too expensive for me right now (I say this myself). What I have a problem with is people complaining about is $/GB. I don't hear people saying, "oh, I'd love an i7, but it is too expensive per Megaflop." Either a CPU/GPU is worth the money to you or it isn't. There is not some magic performance metric/$ that has to be met. SSD is no different. Given that SSD prices are already in line with high end CPU/GPU prices, the argument that their costs are out of line doesn't hold true. They are either a good price to you or not (I'm still in the not camp), but it has nothing to do with cost per GB.
I perfectly understand your feeling on the matter and I was not attempting to counter your argument in the first place. I agree with it on most counts, but I wanted to speak up for those who didn't feel strongly about SSD now. That is all. I'm all for SSD and its benefits for today's computing.
alleycat wrote:The point I was trying to make is that SSDs can't really be compared to conventional "storage". They're in a league of their own, especially for both silent PC and performance enthusiasts, and that's a not-so-common combination in itself. Also, I'm speaking from experience, not from something I read on a tech blog.
Let's agree for now that SSD is a "specialist" product, no different than buying a specialist expansion card like a high end soundcard, audio-interface, video and RAID card et al. As jessekopelman said, there's no use complaining about the prices for those who are now interested in them when people spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on other performance oriented gear.

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Post by kaange » Thu Jul 23, 2009 4:43 am

JazzJackRabbit wrote:My Windows directory is 25GB and Program Files X86 is 32GB (although 20 of those GB is steam). If I could use 80GB drive I would.

Why not use a smallish SSD for your OS and those programs that really choke on i/o (visual studio is a prime candidate, IME) and use a standard HDD for all of your less important storage (steam, games etc)? If you use a notebook, then I understand your position better.
Shamgar wrote:Let's agree for now that SSD is a "specialist" product, no different than buying a specialist expansion card like a high end soundcard, audio-interface, video and RAID card et al. As jessekopelman said, there's no use complaining about the prices for those who are now interested in them when people spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on other performance oriented gear.
Except that an SSD affects pretty much all usage of a PC while high end soundcard, audio-interface, video and RAID card etc are only relevent if you need those particular capabilities. I'm only waiting because I use a notebook so I need a 250Gb HDD

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