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Posts with tag x25-m

Intel SSDs RAIDed up for blinding speed


Intel's hot X25-M SSD is one of the faster drives out there, and while it's not surprising that a RAID 0 array of two of the $600 units is quick, it turns out it's actually one of the fastest RAID 0 arrays ever. At least that's the word from the crew at HotHardware, who say that two X25-Ms kicked out the fastest IOMeter numbers they've ever seen, and produced 396MB/s reads and 130MB/s writes. Yeah, damn. Anyone going to take the $1200 trip to Speedville?

PS3 + SSD = faster load times, shattered budgets

PS3 + SSD = faster load times, shattered budgets
Sitting idle while your new PS3 game installs is painful, but since it's all in the interest of reducing subsequent load times it's worth the wait, right? Not for the impatient sods at ExtremeTech, who tried to speed things up further by swapping out their original 60GB PS3's HDD with Intel's hot new 80GB X25-M SSD. The result? Sadly, those multi-minute installs from disc were largely unaffected, since the limitation here is Blu-ray drive speed and not disk speed. However, installs of downloaded demos were upwards of 30-40 percent faster, as were post-installation load times in most games. That's an impressive boost, but at a cost of about $600 for the SSD itself you'll be spending about 50 percent more than an entire PS3 of the 80GB spinning disk variety. In other words, this one's not for the frugal modders, but it is so choice if you have the means.

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

Intel announces its first SSDs, plans to ship in a month

Intel's keeping the announcements coming at this year's IDF -- today we got word that the company will launch its first SSDs in a month or so just as we expected. The 1.8-inch X-18M and 2.5-inch X-25M drives will be targeted at laptops and MIDs and come in 80GB and 160GB sizes using MLC tech, while the 32GB and 64GB SLC-based X-25E is aimed at servers and will be out in 90 days. Intel hasn't locked down pricing, but the M-series drives should cost about $8/GB, which would put the 160GB unit at a whopping $1,280 and the 80GB at $640. We're hoping those estimates are skewed a little high -- and Intel says there might be a cheaper 40GB unit on the way as well. We'll see in a month, we suppose.

[Via Electronista]

Intel's "mainstream" 80GB and 160GB SSDs ready to launch with mainstream price?


Looks like Intel, the big bad daddy of silicon, is about to unleash its first consumer oriented SSDs into the market. While Intel's 1.8- and 2.5-inch 80GB and 160GB SSD plans were pretty thoroughly detailed in those May leaks, Expreview has slapped up an honest-to-goodness slide which looks like it came straight from the Intel deck. Assuming it's authentic, then we now know that Intel's 2.5-inch X25-M and 1.8-inch X18-M SSDs top out with a 240MBps sustained read and 70MBps write. That's just a bit slower than the blazing Micron RealSSD C20 but still seriously quick and hopefully priced for the mainstream audience they are targeting. Dell, for example, sells a 128GB Samsung SSD for $450 -- surely Intel can beat that cost per Byte... right Intel? We're guessing that the enterprise-class 32GB and 64GB X25-E SSDs will feature some of that Micron co-developed "world's fastest" SLC NAND in order to achieve that ridiculous 240MBps / 170MBps read / write speed at what's expected to be an equally ridiculous price. The 80GB X25-M and X18-M are expected to launch in Q3 (so any day now) while the 160GB solid state slab should break free for consumers in Q1 (not Q4 2008) of 2009. Expect to hear more on these next week as Intel kicks off another International Developers Forum.

[Via TG Daily]



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