Intel X25-V G2 40GB SSD

[dhanson865]

That was a good price but it only lasted a few hours until newegg sold out. Word has it that they'll put other SSDs on sale tomorrow.

edit: I'm not seeing any sale prices yet. Looks like they get another shipment of the $99 40GB drives on the 6th.

[syrian_gamer]

That was a good price but it only lasted a few hours until newegg sold out. Word has it that they'll put other SSDs on sale tomorrow.

edit: I'm not seeing any sale prices yet. Looks like they get another shipment of the $99 40GB drives on the 6th.

Can you please post a link to your information? I hope its correct. I have a feeling NCIX might perhaps cancel my order, or not price match it since its out of stock. If thats the case then I will just buy the damn drive from newegg. Here is a link to the sale in case you were interested.

http://www.newegg.ca/Special/ShellShock ... _-04012010

They didnt even leave the page there! That means for sure NCIX wont price match. Could you be so kind as to let me know how you got the info that a new shipment is coming? Is it just US or Canada also?

[dhanson865]

I swear it changes like the wind. If you don't take a screenshot not everyone will see it. Since it was an out of stock price they probably just change the price after they get new stock in.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 40gb%20ssd now shows them in stock at $125 instead of the $99 it was at this morning.

newegg ssd sale is probably good for another 3 hours but at midnight or so all those prices will change again.

[syrian_gamer]

Just a quick update for all, turns out that ncix price matched the hard drive from newegg and shipped it i should be getting it this week. ill let you guys know how much i like it when i get it

*edit* So i got my hard drive set up with windows 7, runs great. Definitely no regrets for buying it. Bootup is fast, launching programs is also fast. The "slower" write speeds arent noticeable for me yet, although it could be because i came from XP which had lots of programs on it. For all those considering it, get it, you wont regret it, although it is small on space :S

[twinbee]

Disk Management shows a 40GB SSD as 37.25GB. I formatted mine at just over 25GB but you could get the full 37GB if you care about the capacity.

I'm tempted to get this SSD myself, but I'm rather concerned at the 25GB quote. How do you get the full 37 GB capacity and what are the trade offs here?

I'm going to be doing a fresh install of Windows 7 64 bit, and that apparently requires 20 GB (is the pagefile, hibernate, and system restore included in all that?). I would want about 5 GB for programs, and I've also heard leaving 20% of the drive free is good practice. Could be an issue there.

I was also considering the Intel X25-M 80 GB, but apparently TRIM may not be supported in that (AFAIK, it's only available as generation 1, whilst the X25-V 40 GB is generation 2).

Any thoughts?

[ilovejedd]

The X25-M 80GB comes in both G1 and G2 flavors. The G2 version supports TRIM.

[dhanson865]

Disk Management shows a 40GB SSD as 37.25GB. I formatted mine at just over 25GB but you could get the full 37GB if you care about the capacity.

I'm tempted to get this SSD myself, but I'm rather concerned at the 25GB quote. How do you get the full 37 GB capacity and what are the trade offs here?

I'm going to be doing a fresh install of Windows 7 64 bit, and that apparently requires 20 GB (is the pagefile, hibernate, and system restore included in all that?). I would want about 5 GB for programs, and I've also heard leaving 20% of the drive free is good practice. Could be an issue there.

I was also considering the Intel X25-M 80 GB, but apparently TRIM may not be supported in that (AFAIK, it's only available as generation 1, whilst the X25-V 40 GB is generation 2).

Any thoughts?

There is a G2 version of the 80GB drive. It is noticeably faster than the 40GB version but costs about twice as much. If you can afford it you should grab the 80GB version. Keep in mind though that the price will drop again later this year or very early next year when the 3rd generation Intel SSDs are released. Buyers remorse is very common in tech, more so with SSDs that can drop in price drastically in a matter of weeks.

Any G2 drive from Intel supports the toolkit which means with or without OS level trim you can manually trim or schedule automated trim.

The whole 20% free doesn't mean free space on the partition (drive letter) it means formatting the drive to 80% or less than it's advertised capacity.

Pick a number between 1 and 32 GB if you buy the 40GB and pick a number between 1 and 64GB if you buy the 80GB version. Don't let windows format the drive to full capacity and run the Intel toolkit on a schedule and you'll not have to think about it much.

[twinbee]

Many thanks - that's very helpful.

The whole 20% free doesn't mean free space on the partition (drive letter) it means formatting the drive to 80% or less than it's advertised capacity.

I imagine that's to help TRIM do its thing better, and that it also applies to other drives (e.g. with the sandforce controller) as well as the Intel one.

[josephclemente]

What kind of improvement is expected by using an undersized partition on an SSD? My SSD drives have always performed great with a 100% sized partition.

[Modo]

This advice sounds like something the first SSDs would benefit from. Most current models clearly have spare capacity set aside by the manufacturers. Just look at how many don't show capacities that are powers of 2.

[Eunos]

I've always formatted mine to full capacity, however I only actually use a minority of the drive. On my laptop, the X25-V has Win 7 as well as several programs, hybernation enabled etc. Grand total is still under 20 GB from memory.

To my knowledge, formatting to partial capacity has no technical advantage, however for people who do not keep their usage in check, you can't go wrong if it's formatted to <80%. I'm open to correction on this, but must say my X25-V/X25-M drives perform very well even after many months of regular use.

Cheers.

[Modo]

I have to correct myself. I found an Intel whitepaper (PDF link) stating that overprovisioning their SSDs can increase performance by 10%. However, it seems that you need to use their tools to reduce the available capacity, not just leave parts unformatted.

[dhanson865]

Modo, where have you been? I guess I need to link to all the articles on Anandtech that mention why to do it and all the other threads on SPCR where we discussed this over and over...

Probably easier if you just go read this thread viewtopic.php?f=7&t=58422&start=0 unfortunately some of the URLs got broken by the boards upgrade.

Anand has recommended this for years now and Intel has as well.

If you prefer to hear it from Intel verbally and with more graphs than the white paper you linked to try the first 15 minutes of http://intelstudios.edgesuite.net/idf/2 ... S003/f.htm which covers the concepts pretty well.

And no you don't have to use any special tool so long as you don't make the mistake of formatting the drive to full capacity. If you do make that mistake you can use the Intel Toolbox v2 to secure erase the drive and then reformat it again to the desired capacity.

You do have the option if you want to send a command to the drive to have it change the reported capacity so that no one accidentally comes along behind you and formats the space you tried to set aside but that is not required if you are the only one that will use the drive and you know to leave the space unpartitioned.

[twinbee]

dhanson865, do you think this would also apply with the Sandforce controller? I've actually plumped for a Mushkin 60 GB model in the end which uses the SF-1200 controller. Apparently, when formatting the 60 GB model, one will only be left with 55 GB automatically, so maybe they think 5 GB is enough? What do you think?

[dhanson865]

dhanson865, do you think this would also apply with the Sandforce controller? I've actually plumped for a Mushkin 60 GB model in the end which uses the SF-1200 controller. Apparently, when formatting the 60 GB model, one will only be left with 55 GB automatically, so maybe they think 5 GB is enough? What do you think?

The whole issue of "overprovisioning" comes down to how you use the drive. More free space means faster writes (because a free sector is more likely to be available) and less write amplification (extra writes that are used in the wear leveling/garbage collection process). Less write amplification leads to a second affect on write speed and affects the life of the flash memory.

As to do I think it affects sandforce? Yes, absolutely, in some ways more and in some ways less, but it's still an issue. http://www.anandtech.com/show/3690/the- ... nce-loss/2 shows a little there but other sites have tested the sandforce controller more thoroughly with compressed/encrypted/randomized data and found even larger performance losses.

Now realistically this is more of an issue on lower capacity drives. If you have a 256GB or 600GB SSD it won't matter as much as with a 32GB or 40GB SSD but the more writes you do per day/hour/minute the more important that spare capacity is.

If you are going to use your SSD as a backup drive and write to it once a day every day you don't need spare area.

If you are using it as an application drive, a boot drive on a system that sees little use, or any other light usage scenario you can think of it's a small matter but one I'm still going to address every time I format an SSD.

But if you are a power user who torrents, encrypts, transcodes Video/audio, benchmarks, etcetera you'll want a hefty reserve of free space on the drive to prevent serious problems. Just google for SSD slowed down and you'll see tons of stories of users that loved their SSD for the first few hours/days/weeks/months depending on their usage and the drives Trim/Garbage collection. Giving the drive more free space to work with extends the amount of time you can go before getting into that condition and it may even totally prevent it. In those cases the spare area needs to be even larger than the light usage cases.

[twinbee]

Thanks - I intend mainly to use it as a boot drive with Win 7, though realistically I'll probably use it for a few applications, along with the pagefile and system restore.

I asked the question (along with others) at the official Mushkin support forum, and he says that the drive already has overprovisioning built in, so I can format to the full capacity:

http://mushkingames.com/phpbb2/viewtopi ... 28&t=17717

However, I'm going to take your advice to be on the safe side, and knock say 5-10 GB off a full format.

[twinbee]

Ah, hmmm.. during the install, there was options to prepare the drive, but unfortunately, the "format" option was blanked out (in that previous URL, he said not to format the drive, but maybe that's because he thinks I can have full capacity anyway).

I'm hoping therefore I won't suffer too much from any SSD slowdown. Even if the drive performs at 50% speed by next year, that's still an order of magnitude faster than a standard HD, so I'm fairly happy with that.

[Das_Saunamies]

This "just in" (for all those who don't visit the main site): http://www.silentpcreview.com/Consumer_SSDs

What on earth is going on with that X25-V... I guess some harsh cuts and optimization went on in there to make it cheap.

[dhanson865]

This "just in" (for all those who don't visit the main site): http://www.silentpcreview.com/Consumer_SSDs

What on earth is going on with that X25-V... I guess some harsh cuts and optimization went on in there to make it cheap.

It has the same controller and flash as the 80GB version just half as many chips. That slows down the write speeds by half vs the 80GB version.

Some of what you are seeing there is testing oddities that may or may not affect real world performance. It has been suggested that CnQ, Drivers, southbridge issues could be affecting those test numbers.

[Das_Saunamies]

Yeah, the testers do say in the conclusion that no stuttering was apparent, so it's probably a non-issue in the real world. I know a few people who own the SSD and none of them have complained. Most have in fact been very pleased, so I was surprised to see the test results this time around.

Haven't heard of those possible issues, thanks for the heads-up dhanson.

[Eunos]

I believe the X25-M's sequential write speed is as much as 3 times the 35 MB/s of the reviewed X25-V. It might have been a better candidate for the test. In any case, the Intel's formidable reputation for robustness would be a very significant factor to any potential buyer, even above performance differences.

On the other topic, I'm still a bit confused about the difference between formatting to a smaller size and simply leaving disk space free.

These drives are supposed to spread writes out over the entire drive. If this is the case, the only advantage of under-formatting would be idiot-proofing the drive so no one can fill it to the maximum and thus ruin its ability to TRIM and wear-level. The Intel talk does not seem to clarify this point. Nonetheless, in future I think I will format to a slightly smaller level regardless. There isn't much spare capacity to work with with a G2 X25-V, but this will not be an issue with higher capacity drives.

[dhanson865]

On the other topic, I'm still a bit confused about the difference between formatting to a smaller size and simply leaving disk space free.

These drives are supposed to spread writes out over the entire drive. If this is the case, the only advantage of under-formatting would be idiot-proofing the drive so no one can fill it to the maximum and thus ruin its ability to TRIM and wear-level. The Intel talk does not seem to clarify this point. Nonetheless, in future I think I will format to a slightly smaller level regardless. There isn't much spare capacity to work with with a G2 X25-V, but this will not be an issue with higher capacity drives.

Trim is not affected by the size of the partition. Nor is Trim a magic that will prevent all issues with SSDs.

Also note when you say "entire drive" you should be thinking "advertised capacity" instead. All SSDs have some percentage of space that is not available for you to use that is reserved for wear leveling and bad block replacement. How much is needed for these functions is up for debate and varies from drive to drive. The reason to parition to less than the full advertised capacity is to override the marketing/engineering decision that was made as to what that percentage should be.

The space on the drive is seen many different ways from lowest level to highest level we have (ignoring the boot process and BIOS issues)

flash inside the SSD
controller inside the SSD
controller on motherboard or PCIe card
Operating System
Application (OS components)
Application (3rd party)

I may have left something out of the loop or used labels that confuse some. Hopefully that makes sense to you.

When you partition the SSD you are having the Application (OS component) or 3rd party application make a request to the controller on the motherboard or PCIe card which makes a request to the controller inside the SSD which marks the space as USED. The SSD controller doesn't care that the partition may be totally empty. Once it is created that area is off limits for wear leveling.

If you partition it to the full size and then have the OS or an application "erase" the data, the SSD controller will still have that space marked as USED and off limits until the end of time.

The only way to make previously used space available for wear leveling is to "Secure Erase" the SSD. This will erase all partitions from the SSD and set it back to close to factory fresh. The SMART parameters will not be cleared and the wear to the flash can not be undone.

The SSD controller has little or no concept of file systems, partitions, operating systems, etcetera. All it knows is another piece of hardware sends it 1s and 0s. It does it's best to accept, receive, store, retrieve, and send those bits. The only way you as an end user can communicate with that controller and let it know that there is more space to use for wear leveling is by leaving space unformatted, unused, unpartitioned, untouched by any software tool. The second the software writes to a piece of flash memory in any way the drive has to consider it unavailable.

That's my attempt to turn this into laymens terms without just copying and pasting from anandtech or from some marketing BS. Let me know if that doesn't make sense.

[Das_Saunamies]

Makes perfect sense, thank you for taking the time to write it out.

[Eunos]

Agreed, thanks. I didn't realise unformatted space was treated differently, though it makes sense.

[Eunos]

Intel has finally done something interesting, full article on DT and StorageReview.

"The 160GB X25-M will now retail for $415, while the 80GB version will retail for $199. In addition, a new 120GB model will be introduced with an MSRP of $249.

For those looking for an even cheaper option, the 40GB X25-V will be available for $99."

Clearly the 120 GB is the value-for-money sweet-spot in the range. Presumably street prices will be a bit lower again.

[dhanson865]

Intel has finally done something interesting, full article on DT and StorageReview.

"The 160GB X25-M will now retail for $415, while the 80GB version will retail for $199. In addition, a new 120GB model will be introduced with an MSRP of $249.

For those looking for an even cheaper option, the 40GB X25-V will be available for $99."

Clearly the 120 GB is the value-for-money sweet-spot in the range. Presumably street prices will be a bit lower again.

darn you being so many time zones ahead of me. I just posted in the price thread about the same thing that I apparently saw many hours later than you

[Eunos]

Either that or my X25-M is so responsive that even though we may have posted at the same time, mine appeared first.

PS, as welcome as the pricing changes are, can anyone think of a comprehensible reason why a 160GB X25-M costs more than 4 individual X25-Vs? Don't give me "not produced in bulk". I wonder if Anand's comments made a few days ago prompted Intel to slightly improve its value equasion.

SandForce's partners who have to pay a big chunk of their margins to SandForce as well as the NAND vendor are actually delivering the best value in SSDs. Kingston and Western Digital also deliver a great value. Not Crucial/Micron and not Intel, which is not only disappointing but inexcusable. These companies actually own the fabs where the NAND is made and in the case of Intel, they actually produce the controller itself.

[dhanson865]

There is a huge speed difference between a X25-V and the 160GB X25-M. Ah looking at the specs to make this reply I just noticed that the 120GB version shares speed with the 160GB. I had wondered about that.

Intel specs say Sustained Sequential Write:

up to 35 MB/s (40 GB)
up to 70 MB/s (80 GB)
up to 100 MB/s (120 GB and 160 GB)

Sustained Sequential Read:
up to 170 MB/s (40 GB)
up to 250 MB/s (80 GB, 120 GB, and 160 GB)

and similar stories for

write latency
random IOPS

not to mention a laptop can't put 4 of the 40GB drives in one bay but it can put one 160GB drive there.

I see that as at least 2 good reasons why there is a price premium for the 160GB version (I'm willing to lump all the performance numbers into one bundle because for most of us the write speeds are the more noticeable part of the equation)

Intel X25-V 40GB ~$104
Intel X25-M 80GB ~$179
Intel X25-M 120GB ~$248
Intel X25-M 160GB ~$438

Since the 80GB version is now cheaper than two 40GB and
the 120GB version is even cheaper vs three 40GB or one 80GB plus a 40GB there is much less reason to stick with the 40GB drives now.

Really I don't care if the price comes down on the 160GB now that I know the speed is the same on the 120GB version and it's the cheapest per GB (until people notice).

oh yeah source documents are
http://download.intel.com/design/flash/nand/322208.pdf Nov/09/2010
http://download.intel.com/pressroom/pdf ... tBrief.pdf Dec/15/2009

[Eunos]

A little bit of news, the so-called 310 is basically an X25-V in a smaller form factor for tablet PCs etc.

Link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4078/inte ... orm-factor

[dhanson865]

A little bit of news, the so-called 310 is basically an X25-V in a smaller form factor for tablet PCs etc.

Link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4078/inte ... orm-factor

The 40GB 310 matches specs for X25-V 40GB but the 80GB 310 is noticeably faster (2x the write speed).

The dirty little secret of SSDs is the lower the capacity the lower the speed (unlike traditional rotating disks). Kind of hard to make generalizations about the 310 SSD without specifying capacity.