Intel X25 Good SSD?

I saw this deal on Buy.com today, wondering if this is a decent SSD. I know it may not be top of the line, but I am ok with that.

Buy.com - Intel X25-M 120GB 2.5" SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

I would choose this driver if I dont have SATA III. Reliable, stable, and pretty great performance. OCZ vertex 2 recently has so much troubles.
You can go to hardware\SSD sub-forum, there's bunch of discussion about this

 

very good and reliable drive. i would recommend it. i'm using 160gb version and love it.

 

I recommend it. Great all around performance, low power consumption, excellent tools, and doesn't require any tender loving care really.

 

Very good SSD. Reliable and very good read performance, not so good sequential write performance.

Power consumption isn't the best in class. If you're buying for maximum battery life get something else.

 

LOLWUT? Like what? I've got nothing but excellent battery life improvements from my X25-M's. Like from 6.5 hrs to 8.5 hrs on my M11x, from 6 hrs to 7.5 hrs on my Dell Mini. Can't comment on my Sager because it sucks so much power anyhow and really don't use it on battery.

It's got one of the lowest idle power consumptions which is most critical unless you plan on doing lots of reads / writes, but then that's active power consumption. Even then with heavy use on my M11x like watching movies, downloading large files, etc I get over six hours. I was lucky to get four with an HDD.

 

I would also recommned the X25. I use a 160GB version and love it. Very easy to instal and do a clean install of drivers software etc.

 

OH, does anyone who uses a X25 know how to enable DIPM???

 

I got so so batterylife with two X25's. This is confirmed by several reviews.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20087/9
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3681/oczs-vertex-2-special-sauce-sf1200-reviewed/3

If you're buying for battery life there are better choices.

 

Tom's Hardware also disagrees with those numbers too. There's no way the Momentus XT idles at less power than the Intel. Plus I used a Corsair Nova in my netbook for a while because I heard it was pretty power sipping, plus didn't need anything too powerful, then switched to an Intel 80GB and my battery life improved. So I take all those results with a grain of salt. I don't trust any of them to be honest with you. Considering I've used a Kingston V-series (worst), OCZ Vertex 2, Corsair Nova, X25-V, X25-M in my M11x just to check for best overall performance and battery life, Intel won hands down. OCZ and Corsair were close though.

Unfortunately I have no decent way to quantify the numbers otherwise I would have published them. It was primarily with basic web use, little to no flash, and running maybe some Office apps.

 

Some more interesting numbers:
OCZ Vertex 2 Review (120GB) | StorageReview.com

It seems that every techsite (including Tom's) measured that during more serious usage the Intel G2 power consumption is on the high side.

 

Doing lots of writes, sure. How much do users do lots of continuous writes? Maybe for a few minutes tops? But for general desktop use, it's great. I've stated first hand experience, take with grain of salt if you want, but it's overall power consumption is low, and splitting hairs with most of the other SSD's. We're talking minutes of battery life as opposed to an hour with a hard drive.

 

Me too. The X25-m gave me no improvement over a Seagate 5400.6 in a HP DM1. Got much better experience with a Kingston V+ and Samsung gen 2 and 470. And my usage is nothing special.

 

Then something is awry because I've seen significant improvements in three laptops: Hannsbook, M11x, Dell Mini over a stock 5400RPM HDD. Like on the order of hour or more not just a few minutes. As a matter of fact M11x went from ~ 6.5 hours to ~ 8.5 hours, Hannsbook from ~ 4 hrs to ~ 5+ hrs, Dell Mini from ~5.5 to 6.5 hrs. All basic web browsing or mundane desktop stuff, with lots of idle time but still the difference is significant. I guess if I was doing constant reads and writes it might be a different story, but not realistic for most users especially on battery. Again my point is most SSD's it's splitting hairs on the matter of minutes not dozens of minutes like between hdd and ssd.

 

The Seagate 5400.6 was quite power efficient. The second X25m I got didn't do much better.

 

My experience show about 20% improvement in my line of work over a Fujitsu.

So I would say don't be 'definitive' about this thing, it really depends on usage and I am with htwingut that I would look at all these 'reviews' with a grain of salt(well I have my own interpretation of those numbers).

 

The 5400's I had were Samsung and WD Caviar Blue.

As a matter of fact I might have to do some testing with battery eater just for consistency sake with the 5400RPM Samsung I still have.

I can test my m11x and Dell Mini.

 

If battery life is an absolute priority there are better choices than Intel G2. My own experience and all the numbers I find online, except the one review by Tomshardware, confirm that.

And I would interested in hard numbers coming from consistent testing that prove otherwise. I wouldn't use Battery eater for testing, better simulate real usage by having a webpage reload every 10 seconds in FF for example.

It could be possible that Intel improved later revisions or maybe the users in this thread haven't had the most hands on real power efficient SSDs yet.

 

Battery Eater has a "reader's test" and "idle" mode that tests more the max limits of the battery. The full classic mode is kind of irrelevant really. I guess it gives you minimum battery life, but otherwise, not a worthwhile test.

I found this to refresh a web page, anyone use it? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/reloadevery/

 

These battery benchmark is pretty useless IMO. I would need field test which unfortunately is very difficult to perform.

Give a SSD to a person and have him stick to the straight 'use it till the auto-hiberation kick in' then record the time and repeat, for a month/week or so. Then switch to another SSD and redo.

Now I can have a rough idea of the time between recharge which is what people care about battery life want to know.

 

To determine battery life difference, you need a controlled and repeatable environment.

I guess in this case, this would mimic someone using the web for basically browsing the web and how much battery life they could get. When I'm on battery, that's mostly what I'd be doing anyhow.

 

Yes that's what I use.

 

My testing has begun both Dell Mini (Intel 80GB G2 - 1 yr old), M11x (Intel 120GB G2)

I am using four tabs and variable page reload times: notebookreview.com (30 sec), engadget.com (3 mins), steampowered.com (1 min), nhl.com (3 minutes).

SSD and computer is not set to sleep, display at 20% brightness, shutdown @ 5% power.

After a couple hours, Mini is looking at ~7.5 hrs battery life, Only started M11x about an hour ago, so we'll have to see. Will charge overnight, then image the Dell Mini SSD to the Samsung HDD and run that tomorrow, followed by M11x the next day.

 

What other SSDs will you be testing?

If you can only benchmark against one Samsung HDD it doesn't seem that relevant to me, as the Samsung HDD may be a power hungry drive.

 

Consider that at best an SSD will save a watt or two over a HDD. Depending what laptop you have, typical consumption might be in the 12 to 18 watts range. Do the math. If you save a watt and go from 16 watts to 15, and your battery is 60 watt/hr, then you go from 60/16=3.75 hrs to 60/15=4 hrs, or adding 15 minutes to your battery life. Insert your own numbers, but real life differences are not going to be large unless you have a very large battery in a ULV laptop.

Of course, what HDD you're coming from makes a difference too. A Scorpio Blue is pretty efficient, for example. No doubt there are some cheap OEM HDDs that consume 3 watts more than an SSD, but I hope that no enthusiast would have one.

What's important is that you buy an SSD. Install an Intel G2 and use it for a week, then pop a mechanical HD in there (any one). You will understand the meaning of the word slow.

 

Right, battery life will only be impacted greatly by the low power consumption netbooks or subcompact notebooks. My Dell Mini only consumes about 6W when idle, so 1W is significant. The M11x only consumes about 7-7.5W actually, pretty power efficient as well. So SSD will definitely improve battery life.

And I was only planning on the Samsung because that's all I've got. Otherwise I would do another HDD. But I think I'm not going to bother because it is what it is. Let everyone decide for themselves, and save me a couple battery cycles.

 

will i really see a difference in battery life with the intel?

160gb seems to be the sweet spot (128 is ok but a little tight) for me, im looking for an SSD to chuck into my newly purchased second laptop that im going to use as a run around computer (its an ultraportable) so i dont need as much space as my main machine

 

If you use the Intel for just regular windows desktop tasks and not tons of disk activity then the Intel will do fabulously for you as far as battery life. It's done wonders for me so far.

 

In the laptop in his signature it's very unlikely to see significant improvements in battery life from any SSD, let alone the Intel G2.

 

Duh, didn't even look at his sig. Yeah for a normal notebook that consumes more than 12W or so, there are significantly diminishing returns on battery life.

 

sorry, not buying it for the laptop in my sig....i havent added the new laptop because i havent received it yet. i bought a lenovo X201 to use as a carry around machine, hence the lower storage requirements. 128 would be nice, 160gb would be ideal, and intel is pretty much the only one offering 160gb right?

im not concerned about battery life, i was just wondering if it really did make a noticable difference vs other brands or even conventional drives? im sure on an atom based unit it would....but on a "proper" laptop?

 

Oh yeah, x201 already has excellent battery life, an SSD will only help matters. But considering the NBR battery test resulted in 10.5 hours use, unless you need 11-12 hours is it really that important?

Although less battery use, less battery wear too.

 

What advantages would I get if I bought the Intel 510 series SSD's instead of this? All I would be doing is gaming, internet, watching movies, and some weak programs like Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point. Would I see any difference If I bought the 510 series over this G2 series?

 

For what you'd be doing I'd see no benefit of the 510. the G2 would be perfect. Only thing the 510 adds really is fast sequential read / write speeds, and believe the 4k read / writes are worse than the G2 which for most people is the most critical spec.

 

So what is the point of the 510 series? What are the practical advantages of the fast "sequential read/write" speeds you said?

 

Marketing. That number is usually the largest therefore advertised although it has little real world merit. Although large file copies and file transfers would benefit, but who does that a lot especially on the limited space of an SSD. 4k is more like the minimum performance and sequential is maximum for the most part. Although most of what Windows tasks utilize would benefit from faster 4k performance.

I could see if you did lots of copying or moving of movie files or large photos, etc. But for most people that's occasional, and still plenty fast.

 

The X201 has a SATA II interface so the Intel 510 would be pointless.

 

Not necessarily pointless, there'd be marginal gains, but even with SATA III little to write home about. I just wish they'd start marketing with 4k speeds instead of sequential.

 

Not pointless;

The reliabilty/support of Intel, the Intel SSD Toolbox and much better performance (overall) than the G2. I would say it's the top choice right now as it seems to be the most balanced SSD available. (And no, sequential speeds are not inconsequential to performance).

 

Same for Intel G2 of course.

The 510 on SATA II does not perform much better than the G2. It's even slower in some situations.

 

I think it's only slower in 'benchmarks', I think.

In more real world use, it essentially matches the V3.

 

The Intel SSD 510 Review - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

So on a SATA II notebook it's pretty much pointless. Other than that, for power consumption the Intel 510 is probably not a very good choice.

OP, look at Samsung 470 for a fast and reliable SATA II SSD with low power consumption.

 

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different controller, most likely different firmware so while I still have confidence in its support, I would wait a while before I am comfortable with the reliability.

The x25m line has been through 3 generation based on the same controller and most likely same firmware code base. That I would have more confidence, because it has been time proven to be reliable, not because it is by Intel.

 

dont intel make higher quality flash

 

Intel is time proven to me.

If I was to buy an SSD sight unseen (and untested), it would be only from Intel.

Of course the firmware is Intel's own brew (they 'think' things through properly) and that is why I would choose them.

 

Alright, sounds good then. I think I'll buy the x25 for the Alienware I'm purchasing then. Hopefully there should be no compatibility or installation issues. Thanks for your help!

 

Can anyone confirm this or support it with any tests?

 

Dave3,

See:
The Intel SSD 510 Review - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

What exactly though tells me that? In all honesty, I know very little about the terms, tests, and benchmarks used, so I don't really know what to make of it. Can you dumb it down slightly for me?

 

See:
The Intel SSD 510 Review - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

In the first chart above, the Intel 510 is obviously above the G2 (both Sata2 ~50% faster and Sata3 ~100% faster than the G2). And only about 5% below the V3.


You can also see the same thing (although the %'s change...) in the next page for the Light Workload.

You will also notice the same thing for the Heavy/Light Workload 2010 benchmarks too.

Why am I picking these benchmarks? Because they are traces of real live computing time periods that are played back on each system and therefore make them comparable.

In the link here, the 'Average Write MB/s' benchmark shows how much the V3 can vary in real world use: the 'lowly' Intel 510 beats it significantly. So much for OCZ's/SandForce's 'up to' speeds (550/525 r/w).

Truly, the Intel is the much more balanced (and truthful) drive.