New Intel Solid State Drives - 320 and 510 Series

[Sam_Dabs]

Good afternoon Forumites,

Next week we will have somebody from Intel on the forum (again!) to discuss any questions you might have regarding the new Intel SSDs!

Start posting any questions in this thread, or just start thinking of some ready for when he is online, and he will begin answering on Monday.

For more infor on the new SSDs, check out these links...

http://www.dabs.com/learn-more/compo...ries-9863.html

http://www.dabs.com/learn-more/compo...afe--9831.html

Have a good weekend!

[Dunc]

Great opportunity to quiz Intel guys and get any questions answered!

[Redsfan]

Are SSD's as reliable as normal HDD's?

Heard a while back they don't tend to live as long as you only have a limited number of read's and writes to each bit of storage space, is this still true?

[JarJar]

Do you have any videos showing the speed of the new 510s now they are using SATA-600?

The quoted speeds seem amazingly quick, but would be good to see this visualised in real terms

[Lungeatthepope]

This could be a stupid question, but what exactly is the different between the 320 series and 510 series? Looking at the linked info pages the 320 is cheaper but seems to have more features. Am I missing something?

[DMS]

3GB/s vs 6GB/s amongst other things. So speed although it would not be right to say that one is twice as fast as the other.

[Mr.Intel]

Wow looks like you guys are quick out of the blocks today, so i will do my best to give you your answers

Redsfan - reliability is absolutely one of the key features of Solid State Drives, there are no moving parts like HDDs so failure rates are much lower, many companies are buying them as standard in laptops simply for that reliability, Intel SSD's have a 1 million MTBF (mean time between failures) which is a very high level of reliability but even if HDDs reported that kind of rate it is so high that it would probably bear no relevance to you. Essentially SSDs are incredibly reliable and have many other upsides versus HDDs, which include a Faster Boot Time, Faster Application Response, Lower TCO, More Rugged & Reliable, Consumes Less Power. They are clearly regarded as better than HDDs in every way except one and that is cost per capacity, HDDs are much cheaper in cost per GB

JarJar - there are of course lots of corporate videos but i think the best way to look at things is to see how the public view these products, if you do a search on Intel SSD 510 or Intel SSD 320 on youtube you will find both Intel's benchmarking actions eg on Starcraft 2 load and independent evaluations which are often more credible with consumers. I would have posted a link but i don't think you can in the forum

Lungeatthepope - these 2 are very different products, the 510 series is on 32nm flash but operates on 6GB SATA-600 so there is a lot of bandwidth hence the very high IOPS scores, the 320 series has some addtional features but is on 25nm flash and SATA-300 3GB, which is more cost effective to produce and so will enable a better £/GB ratio for the buyer. In summary 510 series is a real enthusiast product where speed/bandwidth is the priority for the buyer, the 320 series is a mainstream part which is on balance for the more cost per GB oriented customer, or someone whose motherboard has no 6GB capability. It still performs very well but the speed is limited by the SATA bandwidth so it really depends on how your system is/will be configured and what you want to use it for

Thanks for the questions guys, hope i answered well enough but if not just come back to me

[Redsfan]

Okay here's another Q, would there be much of a performance benefit to putting two of these drives into a RAID0 array? Or are we now getting close to maxing out the sata chip's in our motherboards?

[G60AL]

Intel DH67CF mini ITX motherboard - Any news???
Hi,

I & problably many others are still waiting for this amazing motherboard.
Months back i bought the Antec 300 & a 10V - 30V Input DC - DC ATX power board (linitx) for external power supply to keep the heat out the case!

Is there any news on the mini ITX H67 chipset Boards??

Cheers,

[curbydeath]

Okay here's another Q, would there be much of a performance benefit to putting two of these drives into a RAID0 array? Or are we now getting close to maxing out the sata chip's in our motherboards?

good question @Redsfan

Mr Intel??

(im a good year away from my next rig but was thinking of looking for 2 64Gb SSDs in RAID0)

2pence... I also know that different SSDs have different control chips enabling faster speeds - take OCZ or Crucial (I have a Crucial C300) as you increase capacity and cost the transfer speeds also tend to increase, is this to be expected across the market or is it the individual compaies marketing to encourage higher end sales?

could 2 lower end SSDs in RAID0 'beat' in terms of read/write speed 1 high end SSD?