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Intel X25-M G3 SSD in the Wild, Gets Benched

By - Source: Tom's Hardware US

Say hello to a 25nm SSD.

The Intel SSDs, while always reliable and stable performers, are being outpaced by newer, younger SandForce-powered models.

Intel won't stay down for long, as it is currently prepping its 25nm Flash follow-up to its G2 offerings, which it will called the Postville Refresh.

Oddly enough, it appears as though a G3 part has hit the eBay equivalent in China and someone bought it and ran some benchmarks.

There are many counterfeit items in the Chinese marketplace, but early benchmarks don't show a terrible difference between Intel's specifications and the real world results.

Read speed was tested up to 218MB/s, which is below the Intel-promised 250MB/s. Write speed, however, posted 167.4MB/s, near the official 170MB/s.

If it is a fake, it's a very fast one.

Source: EXPreview

There are 46 Comments. B
Top Comments
  • 14
    TheRockMonsi , November 1, 2010 12:07 PM
    Hi :) 
  • 12
    amk09 , November 1, 2010 12:22 PM
    exoditeIntel have nice and reliable drives but unfortunately their G3 doesn't seem to outperform what's already on the market right now.I'll wait for the second generation of consumer Sandforce drives I think.


    Lets not forget about price either, if they price these nice and low it won't matter if they outperform whats on the market already.
  • 12
    stm1185 , November 1, 2010 12:21 PM
    218/170, looks like the Sandforce drives already put it to shame and the next gen Sandforce drives will over double its speeds.
Other Comments
  • 4
    amk09 , November 1, 2010 12:02 PM
    Hello sexy ;) 
  • 14
    TheRockMonsi , November 1, 2010 12:07 PM
    Hi :) 
  • 7
    anonymous@guest , November 1, 2010 12:12 PM
    me wants!!
  • 10
    exodite , November 1, 2010 12:18 PM
    Intel have nice and reliable drives but unfortunately their G3 doesn't seem to outperform what's already on the market right now.

    I'll wait for the second generation of consumer Sandforce drives I think.
  • 12
    stm1185 , November 1, 2010 12:21 PM
    218/170, looks like the Sandforce drives already put it to shame and the next gen Sandforce drives will over double its speeds.
  • 12
    amk09 , November 1, 2010 12:22 PM
    exoditeIntel have nice and reliable drives but unfortunately their G3 doesn't seem to outperform what's already on the market right now.I'll wait for the second generation of consumer Sandforce drives I think.


    Lets not forget about price either, if they price these nice and low it won't matter if they outperform whats on the market already.
  • 2
    dEAne , November 1, 2010 12:24 PM
    Even the original were being fakes?
  • 1
    dogman_1234 , November 1, 2010 12:31 PM
    Seems slow...but I cant complain at all. Good job for Intel. All I am waiting is for an engineer to intro fiber optics.
  • 5
    mianmian , November 1, 2010 12:32 PM
    I do not expect a big jump in performance. But I do hope it can pull the price of SSD down.
  • 0
    oxxfatelostxxo , November 1, 2010 12:34 PM
    apparently none of you are taking in to consideration the better i/o performance of intel ssd's in general, not to mention the awesome quality.
  • -1
    wintermint , November 1, 2010 1:03 PM
    Anyone else hoping for AMD to expand into SSD?
  • 0
    compton , November 1, 2010 1:38 PM
    I love my X25V. I get better than stated speeds. It is cheap and reliable. The SSD Toolbox is fantastic. I have a faster SSD in a higher capacity made by OCZ, but the speed difference isn't as noticible as it should be. The OCZ benchmarks lower than advertised by quite a bit. The Intel seems to get faster the longer I own it. I have confidence in the drive. I'll probably pick up a G3 version if its the faster cheaper bigger version Intel promises. If not, I may get some more of the G2 X25-Vs.
  • 0
    alyoshka , November 1, 2010 1:49 PM
    Have the G2 wouldn't mind getting a G3 too :) 
  • 11
    JonnyDough , November 1, 2010 2:23 PM
    If it's a fake drive, couldn't the numbers be faked even more easily? How about we just wait for an official review from a trusted source like Anandtech? Oops, I mean Tom's. :) 
  • 5
    danwat1234 , November 1, 2010 3:12 PM
    Well, the Sandforce 2000 chip will give the G3 a beating.
    G3:
    Sequential Read: 250MB/s
    Sequential Write:170MB/s
    read IOPS: 50K
    write IOPS:40K
    Security: AES-128

    Sandforce 2000:
    Sequential Read: 500MB/s
    Sequential Write:500MB/s
    read IOPS: 60K
    write IOPS:60K
    Security: AES-256


    Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3971/sandforce-announces-nextgen-ssd-controller-sf2000-capable-of-500mbs-and-60k-iops
  • 1
    Emperus , November 1, 2010 3:24 PM
    Could've posted some more particulars on the drive the guy bought.. Pricing, capacity for example..
  • 0
    Emperus , November 1, 2010 3:29 PM
    LOL..!! My bad.. Failed to see the source link.. The pricing looks decent considering the current gen SSD's.. Now only if it brings a helthy performance leap and/or few more features (negating some of the SSD's shortcomings)..
  • -1
    martel80 , November 1, 2010 3:33 PM
    I have a Vertex II in my PC (C2D E7200) and from what I can tell, the real bottleneck is the CPU. When a program/game is loading, for example, decompression of its data and realtime virus scan become the bottleneck. You can tell by looking at the HDD activity indicator LED, it's far from being full-on (indication that the PC was waiting for the drive).
    Then I have a new laptop with a comparable CPU (i5 540M) and Intel G2 drive and the real world performance difference between the two systems is virtually nonexistent.
  • 0
    Scott2010au , November 1, 2010 3:34 PM
    Yes, but the price is the goal. It's better for performance ***and price*** to have two of these in RAID-0 (or more in RAID-5 or RAID-6).

    That's why most sane people go for the well priced Intel X25 series SSD's.

    I've been waiting on the 3rd Generation, although sadly it may be some time until I can justify the purchase...
  • 0
    icecreampop3 , November 1, 2010 3:43 PM
    i'd like to see random write/read performance, or maybe even drive endurance. Sequential performance doesn't matter a whole lot for the typical consumer
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