Intel's X25-M 80GB SSD ships this week for $595

If you'll notice, HP isn't using just any SSD drive to hit 24 hours of insanity with the EliteBook 6930p -- it's all about that Intel 80GB SSD, which has new optimizations to boost speed and apparently energy usage over current flash drives. Well, Intel also picked today to get all official about the drive itself, and it's clear those improvements and Intel's brand name come at a price: the 2.5-inch 80GB "X25-M" drive will retail for $595 when it hits this week. There's also a 3.5-inch version, the X18-M, but we're less clear on infos there. PC Per put the 2.5-incher through its paces, albeit with a slightly dated firmware version, and came away impressed, calling it the "top performing storage solution" period. We want.

Read - Intel releases pricing, details on solid-state drives
Read - PC Per's Intel X25-M 80GB SSD review

[PHO @ Sep 8th 2008 3:30PM]

I cant wait until these damn things are affordable, but exciting news none-the-less!

[iEye @ Sep 8th 2008 3:32PM]

I have been running Ubuntu on a $19.99 8GB USB drive...

[PHO @ Sep 8th 2008 3:35PM]

Jeez, I was saying more affordable SSD, but man, a $19.99 usb drive?? you're a cheap ass... ;)

BTW, how does it run?

[iEye @ Sep 8th 2008 4:07PM]

It runs quite well, no lag, I also installed VLC player and all the codecs...
I built one on a $9.99 4GB usb drive... good back-up computer...

[Techie @ Sep 8th 2008 7:22PM]

I recommend getting the Patriot Xporter XT Flash Drives or the SanDisk Extreme III SD Cards (SanDisk will give you an adaptor to change your SD card into a USB Flash Drive). Both will give you 30 mb/s or more so if you install Ubuntu on one of these than you will fly through like a breeze.

[fieldcar @ Sep 8th 2008 3:33PM]

@Apple Rep.
Are you ready?

I love you!

[PHO @ Sep 8th 2008 3:37PM]

I havent seen AppleRep since you've started commenting...

Are they putting these in Apples? I remember the days when Apple wouldnt have anything to do with Intel, and MS had to pay them to stay in business... Did you have such lust for them then? Intel and MS made Apple what it is today...

[fieldcar @ Sep 8th 2008 3:47PM]

I made a comment about him laying off the pot, and he snapped and hijacked my fabio account "fieldcar". as a gamer, i dislike apples, and i care not what anyone thinks. Welp, it was fun, but i'm not coming back as fieldcar anymore.

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 8th 2008 3:55PM]

Shouldn't Engadget do something about stupid shit like duplicate names?

[kccboy2004 @ Sep 8th 2008 3:57PM]

@PHO

Listen mate... there is something that you should know; I heard it on good authority from Apple rep herself that when Lucifer in the garden of Eden, who had taken the likeness of a Serpent, gave the Apple to Eve, the action was taken as being literal. Apple rep herself told me that the the Apple in question was in fact....

Have you not noticed how close Steve Jobs eyes are together... have you also not noticed that his ageing seems to be a little slow...

Question: how else do you account for His selling so many of that disaster struck device we call the iPhone to so many ? There is a Grand Deception in place, bigger than you imagine.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke).

There are no coincidences.....

[fieldcar @ Sep 8th 2008 4:02PM]

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." ....

So what your saying is that I should fight the yipping chihuahua that continually chews on my feet with a trident and a bottle of catchup?

[kccboy2004 @ Sep 8th 2008 4:31PM]

Fieldcar,

That is quite funny actually. Nice imagery. You are a bit of a dude.

[swiss @ Sep 8th 2008 3:34PM]

I thougt this ssd will be cheap.

[Dorville @ Sep 8th 2008 4:16PM]

What do you think... is Intel....

[Hotrod @ Sep 8th 2008 3:35PM]

I know new tech is expensive, but these prices are insane. Am I the only one living paycheck to paycheck?

[PHO @ Sep 8th 2008 3:42PM]

No you're definitely not, I spend all my money as soon as I get it, but surely not on SSDs

[From My Cube @ Sep 8th 2008 3:48PM]

nope, I got my 4 year degree, just graduated in May...Sure I make a hell of a lot more money than I used too but living on your own eats your paycheck faster than that hot dog eating jap guy

Rent - $900
Car- Insruance $250 a quater
Renters Insurance - $40 mo
Food- $400 mo
Gas- All your Base
Cable, Internet, Cell phone, ect


Sure I could knock a few things outa there to save some more but all be damned at how quick things add up

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 8th 2008 3:56PM]

"Renters Insurance - $40 mo"

That is pretty high renter's insurance.

[Chad @ Sep 8th 2008 4:20PM]

Living on your own.....Try being married. At least you know where you money goes.

[CraigJ @ Sep 8th 2008 4:36PM]

@Chad: ++

[Serious @ Sep 8th 2008 3:43PM]

Still not worth it. It is amazing that you can get a 2gb microSD for around 15 bux though...

[PHO @ Sep 8th 2008 3:50PM]

haha I saw on one of those "deal-of-the-day" sites, TWO 2 gb microSDs for 6.50 plus 5 shipping...

[Juxtah @ Sep 8th 2008 3:51PM]

Which sets price pretty perfectly in line:

15/2 = 7.5
7.5x80 = $600

[v3xx @ Sep 8th 2008 3:54PM]

what are u talking about, i just got an 8gb sandisk flash drive a week ago for 14.99. 8gb sony memory sticks can cost as much as 120 bucks. it just depends on who's selling something and how much profit they make. these drive can be waaay cheaper than this.

[Serious @ Sep 8th 2008 3:55PM]

@Juxtah

good point, it doesn't follow the hard drive method of buy more-save more.

[Shinigami @ Sep 8th 2008 3:56PM]

Juxtah
If we take that "deal of the day" PHO mentioned, we have this:

6.50/4 = 1.625
1.625x80 = 130

So this SDD is $130 worth, and the rest $470 is profit for Mr.Intel xD

[Juxtah @ Sep 8th 2008 4:01PM]

@Serious

True, I still go for traditional HDD's over SSD's simply because whichever way you spin it the GB/Cost ratio is still in it's favour by a huge margin. I see the good points of SSD's but for me they're not really for consumer use until they equal or surpass HDD's which they probably will eventually, just not in the near future.

[Mr. Ford @ Sep 8th 2008 4:21PM]

@Shinigami
You obviously have no idea how manufacturing cost works. The 8 gb flash drive uses the same manufacturing techniques (probably same assembly line) that their old 64 mb brethren used. The manufacturing cost is way less due to the fact that the product isn't re-engineered every time there is a capacity update, only minor modifications are made.

When a completely new product is created, the setup costs are factored in to the initial batch. When the next round are produced, minor mods will be made and production cost drops dramatically. Immediately following that, minor mods will be made and production cost drops dramatically... (cycle continues)

So, to respond to your comment. No Intel isn't making $470 profit on each drive sold. As a matter of fact, they probably lose hundreds of dollars per device produced during the first few runs. Early adopters are the ones who provide the operating capital necessary to keep the technology progressing. That doesn't make them suckers, because they understand that cheap prices aren't the only way to add value to a product. Some people just like to be first.

This philosophy is why the drive doesn't look like 10 of those 8 gb drives plugged in to a usb hub!

[Juxtah @ Sep 8th 2008 4:28PM]

@Shinigami
True, although probably a loss leader for that price. As for SSD's I have no doubt that the makers are making a pretty good profit on them, but probably not as much as they would on traditional hard drives as SSD's have the incurred cost of more expensive controllers, more expensive flash memory for higher capacities, big speed race with everyone clamouring more.

[schmitty338 @ Sep 8th 2008 4:31PM]

All of the above repliers are morons....do you really think the memory chips in the shite USB drives that will give maybe 10MB/sec are even close to the performance as the ones in modern SSDs? No, they are not. And how did they arrive at today's extremely high performance and low power chips? R&D....and R&D costs a shitload of money and the manufacturing processes will inevitably be in its infancy, which further increases costs.

[Shinigami @ Sep 8th 2008 3:53PM]

Okay, its fast. But it costs WAY too much for 80gb. And oh-so-small CPU usage at 7% won't let you have any faster gaming either (CPU use will eat away much more than fast read speeds give, in my opinion). If its price was somewhere near $100, I'd get one or two. If it was $200-300, I'd think of one, possibly in a new PC. At this price I don't want it at all.

I think Intel's "mainstream" means people, who spend $1,000+ on a CPU.

[Rhino @ Sep 8th 2008 4:01PM]

The X18-M should be 1.8inch not 3.5

[Grandalf @ Sep 8th 2008 6:03PM]

I noticed that too. It's not logical to have something called X18 and then being a 3.5 inch drive, when you got it's partner called X25, being a 2.5 inch. It must be a typo somewhere on the interwebz.

[Coolbee8 @ Sep 8th 2008 4:01PM]

Wow, I never thought $595 for 80gb drive would be 'mainstream price'.

[Dognip @ Sep 8th 2008 4:03PM]

I so want this drive for my new Dell E6400!!!!!!

Will have to wait till the wife makes one of her "spur of the moment" purchases to be able to buy one :(

[Jarett @ Sep 8th 2008 4:04PM]

I have the 80 GB Intel SSD sitting next to me as I write this. It's an impressive drive and has been exceptional to use. Have pix on request (in focus, not fake).

[Joey @ Sep 8th 2008 4:13PM]

What a damn rip-off price.

Better deal:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10009189&prodlist=celebros

64GB for $195 (With a small rebate)

[MojoKid @ Sep 8th 2008 4:28PM]

More details and benchmarks here as well:
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Intel-X25M-80GB-SATA-Solid-State-Drive-Intel-Ups-The-Ante/

[CraigJ @ Sep 8th 2008 5:01PM]

So, is an 80GB SSD 80 "real" gigabytes, or 80 "hard drive" gigabytes?

It would be really nice to get HD manufactures to use the same definition of GB as the rest of the computer industry.

[bokuwaomar @ Sep 8th 2008 8:09PM]

Hard drive gigabytes are real gigabytes. The RAM manufacturers are the ones who have it wrong. The correct term for them would be Gibibyte (GiB). Unfortunately, many operating systems report GiB for file sizes or disk space, but label the units as GB, which often leads to confusion.

[P Sin @ Sep 8th 2008 8:39PM]

i didnt even know this was an issue anymore. OBVIOUSLY its 80 hard drive gb. The tried and tested method of ripping people off a couple of gb has worked well for companies in the past, so why stop now?

[BOGRASH @ Sep 8th 2008 5:35PM]

this is $500 too much, tell them to get their shit together

[RAQ @ Sep 8th 2008 5:55PM]

Now thats what I'm talking about higher capacity is the way foroward. Now we need the price to go down, way down.

[AlphaTeam @ Sep 8th 2008 9:29PM]

I read the Tom's Hardware article on this drive and it's pretty fast in the read. However I already have a SSD I spent a fortune on, but at least it's still kicking the Intel SSD's butt in the write department and it's SLC.

[xValentine @ Sep 8th 2008 9:45PM]

Screw SSD.

You're not welcome until you passed below the $200 mark.

[Aaron @ Sep 8th 2008 11:08PM]

double (triple?) the capacity at the same price and we'll start talking, but until then...

[mmendoza27 @ Sep 9th 2008 12:19AM]

If you read the article at Anandtech, the performance is really good, especially compared to other SSD drives, especially the ones that use the JMicron controller on the SSD, they have lagging issues. This SSD is the shit, albeit a little expensive, but watch Moore's law come into place, we should see prices start dropping. I'm sooooo going to get an SSD next year.

[JesseJames @ Sep 10th 2008 6:49AM]

This is a sweet piece of kit that will outperform high end HDs in RAID 0. Will really mark the end of the desktop, since 2.5 storage has been the mobile bottleneck for a long time.

All the people complaining about the price; don't buy one. You either don't need it or can't afford it.
High performance SSDs won't be a "mainstream" product for at least another year - this is for performance enthusiasts or people who can get real value from having fast storage on a mobile platform.

For anyone doing server development on a laptop, this thing will pay for itself in a matter of months. How many hours are wasted looking at the HD light on your machine over 6 months when your daily routine is running multiple virtual servers all hitting the disk?

As for the comparisons with cheapo flash disks - ROFL. MLC flash without an advanced controller and wear-leveling algorithms is a recipe for disaster. Not a good backup solution, and not something that is going to last long at all with high daily usage. Anyone who would trash Intel's new product, which is a real breakthrough, either doesn't understand the basics of SSD/MLC or is seriously underpaid. ( lost productivity due to inevitable failure > $600, not to mention the huge performance gap)

I've been watching SSDs for the past year waiting for a mature product. Until now Samsung has been doing the best, but with this product Intel just took the crown and I'm ready to purchase. I haven't run the numbers but 2 of these in Raid0 might saturate the SATA2 controller, which is enough to make a geek like me say "schwing!"