Details on Intel's Third-Gen SSD 25nm Refresh

Why does Intel have poor write performance compared to other manufacturers?

I like seeing the 300/600GB capacities up there... wonder how much something like that would cost - the gross national product of a small country perhaps? Cool to see this tech advance though.

still no SATA 3 speed?

A hand and a leg for 160/300 GB. Probably a kidney as well for the 600GB

It looks like Intel's next gen controller is barely level with the current SandForce and Marvell offerings.
SandForce advertised for their next gen controller and the specs are way more impressive (I know, wait until actual benchmarking is done).

What it could mean, though, is lower priced SSD's, which is what WE NEED.
Last year, SSD prices hovered around $3 to $4 per GB. Today it's more like $2 per GB (for SandForce and Marvell anyway).

When the prices hit $1 per GB, count me in.

Slower than expected. Bummer.

Its good to see that the lifespan has been improved.Intel needs to lower prices to get it right with this one.

Very rarely do you write a lot of data sequentially on an OS drive, outside of installing new programs or copying big files. For daily operations random read/write is what you want.

This is why Intel drives, even with their lesser write performance still beat most of the other drives out there. The intel offering is known for its amasing random read/write performance.

Of course SandForce has changed the game with their chip, I suppose only benchmarks will tell which is the better option for this generation of drives.

would be nice to see the 80 and 160's get pushed down to lower price points and the 300/600 take their places but that will never happen. we can all still hope for 1$/1GB tho. ill keep my 80gb g2 drive for awhile longer.

still going to have to wait on these...too expensive in this economy.

From the Anandtech article:

"The new drive uses 25nm IMFT Flash, which means we should get roughly twice the capacity at the same price."

While that would be quite good, Intel's drives seem to be quite overpriced as it is - a 160GB drive costs £320 here, whereas you can get a 256GB for the same money. If they release a 300GB drive for the same price then it would only just be cheaper than most of the competition.

I may consider getting a 300GB drive if it comes in at under £300 to replace my 256GB Crucial drive. If they come in at under £250 then I'll snap one up right away.

Hmmmmm, I have one of the 80Gb 2nd Gen ones, durable yes they are, speed wise they lag, so will look forward to the new ones, I only hope I can afford it.

Seems that improvements on the controller are minimum (perhaps write performance). But what performance comes from improvements on the controller and which one comes from the fact of 25nm flash. What will happen when other manufacturers (Sandforce) start using 25nm flash ?

One reason I REALLY like my Intel drives....I regularly get performance BEYOND what is advertised. As supposed to the sandforce and indilinx drives I have had where the advertised performance is only a dream

That and the size of Intel are what will keep me with them. They make very solid products. The Corsair x128 I had was extremely flaky where the intel drives are tanks

This is over week old news. And the 2nd gen Sandforce-controller is the highlight of the day:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3971 [...] d-60k-iops

How can 'Total 4K Randon Writes' be the same for a drive sizes. Is there some standard for this measure? What does it mean?

Can't wait ti'll these drives start hitting the SSD PCI-E performance level. 540/490 Read/write? I'm game. And that's the slowest speeds on the one's for sale at Newegg. Anyone think they have any idea when these SSD's will start catching up?

waiting for official TRIM support for all RAID modes

Too bad the majority of folks can't afford to drop $250+ on a storage device only capable of >100GB of storage. But on a brighter note, it will bring down the cost of Intel G2 devices. JMO

Anyone notice the increased power consumption? When active, this thing will suck twice as much power as the last generation. Sure that's still less than a hard drive, but it's not the direction we should be moving.

It's difficult to really max out SATA 2 so, SATA 3 is not really needed yet... And some of you just HAD to have it.. lol Anyways Sandforce has announce a new SSD controller chip the will allow up to 500MB/s transfers!
It's the Sandforce 2000 series (yet to be released) Those will max out SATA 2 and make use of the extra speed SATA 3 offers.

A refresh of the G2 drives is certainly needed, but Intel seems to be playing catchup right now. Sandforce's 2nd gen seems to be on paper a more impressive controller. Unless Intel plans some price cuts, I think they will still be a middle of the pack SSD vendor.

"The new drive uses 25nm IMFT Flash, which means we should get roughly twice the capacity at the same price."

Well this only means that the production cost comes down, not the actual prize / GB... These will be very expensive at first like all previous upgrades, but as HavoCnMe said above, it will pring G2 devices down for a while.
The real prize drop can be expected, when there are enough competition in 25nm SSD devices...

Interesting how the maximum power usage has doubled, in return for a 70MB/s performance boost in write.

Seems like a great upgrade... but that drive life is still frightening. >

Sounds great. All it needs is lower power consumption, and perhaps some 3.5" models. A reduction of price is also something I want.

30-60TB's of writes huh? It'd be nice if it were higher, but I guess it's perfect if I don't store anything temporary on it.

Haha! Copy the article from Anandtech.

That's fine.

more like when prices hit 10 to 50 cents then count me in for the larger spaced ssd's

For the time being though, Intel will have the largest drives size wise (Micron also but they are the same). And thats what SSds lack even now. Size.

If they get 600GB ones out, I wouldn't mind looking into two for a RAID 0. Just need a bit better price.

why so turnd down by the speed we haw yet to se the only reel importance cost, might be a bargen alto i realy dont c it happening. 300gb for a 250/200dollar and im in