Intel recently introduced its SSD 330 family, positioned ahead of the SSD 320s and below the SSD 520s. Like the company's highest-end models, these drives employ SandForce's controller technology. We bought all three capacities and ran our tests on them.
Like the late, great comedian Rodney Dangerfield, it sometimes seems that leading SSD controller maker SandForce just "can't get no respect”. A key player in the dramatic growth of the SSD marketplace, SandForce is the controller vendor of choice for a majority of today's solid-state drive manufacturers, and it deserves credit for helping those companies boost sales while aggressively cutting costs. Despite SandForce's success, potshots from competitors aimed at the company's data compression technology have sometimes forced SandForce to duck for cover.
Drives based on SandForce's second-gen controller rely on proprietary data compression technology to achieve exemplary SATA 6Gb/s-class performance. However, the company is often criticized for using its data compression as a "gimmick" that inflates or misrepresents storage benchmarks. Some believe those accusations have merit, while others dismiss them as an example of market success triggering unjustified competitive scorn.
Much of that disparagement faded when Intel launched its SandForce-based SSD 520 series (check out Intel SSD 520 Review: Taking Back The High-End With SandForce). After all, Intel is not known for embracing "gimmicky" technology to achieve performance. Adopting SandForce-based controllers in its SSDs created a slight marketing challenge for Intel: the company's new SSD 520 delivers performance similar to OCZ's older Vertex 3 based on the same controller technology. Further, Intel's SSD 520 series typically commands a premium over the other SandForce-based drives out there. Perhaps that's why the SSD 520s include generous five-year warranties.

Most of the vendors building SSDs with SandForce controllers employ a couple of different tiers, simultaneously targeting mainstream and high-end customers. Intel is doing things a little differently, though.
The company continues to ship SSD 320 drives based on its own 3 Gb/s flash controller. Meanwhile, it also recently introduced the entry-level SSD 330. Together with the SSD 520 family, Intel is taking on a multi-tiered approach intended to address a maturing SSD segment where one model cannot satisfy everyone.

As Intel's second SandForce-based drive line-up, the SSD 330s are positioned underneath the SSD 520s as inexpensive performance-oriented alternatives offering SATA 6Gb/s-class performance more affordably. The SSD 330 series is only available at three capacity points: 60, 120, and 180 GB.
The following table allows you to contrast the specifications of Intel's SSD 520 and 330 families, both of which employ second-gen SandForce controllers.
| Intel SSD 330 / Intel SSD 520 Compressible Performance | 60 GB | 120 GB | 180 GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 KB Random Read (IOPS) | 12 000 / 15 000 | 22 500 / 25 000 | 42 000 / 50 000 |
| 4 KB Random Write (IOPS) | 20 500 / 23 000 | 33 000 / 40 000 | 52 000 / 60 000 |
| 128 KB Sequential Read (MB/s) | 500 / 550 | 500 / 550 | 500 / 550 |
| 128 KB Sequential Write (MB/s) | 400 / 475 | 450 / 500 | 450 / 520 |
The SSD 330s certainly doesn't appear to be hobbled at all, despite Intel's apparent value focus. Because they occupy a space one tier below the SSD 520s, these 330s go heads-up against mainstream SSDs like OCZ's Agility 3 and other drives that combine asynchronous flash with SandForce's tech.
In theory, drives like the Agility 3 should be just a bit faster in sequential read and write performance, if the manufacturers' own benchmarks are to be believed. If that were the case, of course, we wouldn't have to worry about doing such a thorough job. In our massive 60 GB SandForce-based SSD round-up, we saw almost-identical sequential performance from Intel's SSD 520 and OCZ's Agility 3. Random read performance was Intel's only significant advantage. We're eager to see how these less-expensive models fit into that picture.
- Intel SSD 330: SandForce At A Lower Price
- Inside The SSD 330: A Binned 520?
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: 4 KB Random Performance
- Benchmark Results: 128 KB Sequential Performance
- Benchmark Results: Incompressible Performance
- Benchmark Results: Storage Suite v1.0 And PCMark 7
- Power Consumption
- Intel SSD 330: Searching For A Segment To Satisfy
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147164
now its $275 or $1.074/GB. Better price/stability/performance than those listed above.
Crucial m4 128GB from Newegg and Amazon @ 124.99. That is less than $1/GB.
On that note, why weren't the Vertex 4s included in this review with the other drives?
I don't think that it makes much difference at SATA 3Gb/s, but the 330s are faster drives, so they might be marginally better.
Probably at least not until a cheaper memory than Flash is used in SSDs, so maybe ten to twenty years, if we're lucky.
Whether or not a part that is faster for your workloads than others and is faster enough to make a difference depends on what you are doing. If I was doing a lot of storage heavy stuff, like constantly downloading and decompressing large archives, then an SSD that can deal with in-compressible data very well would provide very noticeable gains over any SandForce drive or any lower end non-Sandforce drives.
Fair point. Mind you, if you do that much and it's that important hardly any of standard (consumer grade) SSDs would interest you. Unless you are talking of downloading software and games from questionable sites, then yes - cheap and fast is cheerful.
Well, I think that Steam would be a perfectly legal example for this. I also happen to play around with many OSs in VMs, so I'm often downloading each new version of many different Linux distributions and other operating systems (such as React OS and Haiku). I also download and test out a lot of freeware and some of them can get pretty big.
Good point. What SSD do you use if you don't mind me asking? And how long have you been using it? Any issues? I had Intel 320 80GB but that was just for few months. Getting SSD 330 120GB now, not sure how it will perform but anything that is faster than RAID 0 HDD and is quiet would be better in my book. Never mind the storage amount.
I have little money to throw around right now. I don't have an SSD yet, by I think I'll grab a Vertex 4 if I can get around to it. For now, RAID 0 hard drives has been the best that I could get. It's not great at all, but it's what I could afford and it could be worse.
One could only wish. I'm waiting for HDD prices to come down to HDD level!.
It won't be nearly as distinct of a difference. Unless you do work that makes fairly small differences in storage performance very obvious, you probably won't notice any difference. The 330s are considerably faster than the 320s, but even the 320s are orders of magnitude faster than HDDs for random accesses and a few times faster than HDDs for sequential throughput. The difference between the 320s and HDDs is far greater than the difference between the 320s and 330s.