 |
Review: Intel X25-M |
Intel NL was kind enough to send us their "mainstream"
solid state drive for review, the MLC based 80GB X25-M series. The X25-M series
of drives have a 2.5 inch form factor, SATA2 connection and SATA power
connector. The X25-M series can be fitted to a laptop with SATA hard drive
support, or as we have done for this review, the Intel X25-M series can also be
fitted to a desktop PC which supports SATA hard disk drives.
In this review we will test the performance and usability of
the Intel X25-M series (MLC) SSD. When Intel introduced the X25-M series of SSD
drives, Intel at a single stroke changed forever the perception of SSD, there
was simply nothing that could match the Intel X25-M series of drives in the
mainstream sector for performance. Things have changed, and the Intel X25-M now
has some serious competition in this market sector. Let's find out how the
Intel X25-M SSD performs in our tests.
Intel Company Information
I’m sure most CD Freaks members will be familiar with the
Intel brand name. Intel has been manufacturing high performance CPU's, motherboard
chipsets, and other PC related hardware for many years.
More recently, Intel ventured into the SSD market and caused
quite a stir in the process.
If you would like to find out more about Intel, you can
visit Intel's website.
Packaging
Box front
Box rear
Box inner packing
Not much can be said about the box that the Intel X25-M came
shipped in. The box is made from plain brown coloured cardboard. Inside the
main box is a further box and more robust packaging. The inner box is made from
tough cardboard with foam protection. The drive itself is housed in an anti
static bag. There should be no problem with the way the drive is packaged.
What’s inside the box
Now it’s time to take a look at the drive itself and what
the drive came shipped with.
The package contained the drive itself and instruction
booklet.
Now let’s take a look at the drive itself.
Drive top
On the top of the drive we can see a single label. The label
states the drive model number and capacity and that the drive was manufactured
in China. The label also lists the drive part number and serial number
Drive bottom
The bottom of the drive is plain, but we can also see the
drive’s SATA power and data connectors.
Drive rear
On the rear of the drive we can see the SATA power and data
connectors.
The Intel X25-M is well constructed, in a strong metal
housing.
Now let's head to the next page, where we look at the
drive’s features.
Specifications and features
We found the specifications of the drive at Intel's website.
Drive maintenance features
MLC based SSD drives have an inherent problem, in that,
after use the performance will drop off. This mainly affects writing
performance, but you can also expect reading performance to drop off slightly
as well.
Why does this happen?
Sooner or later, every single cell in the drive will be
written to. When this happens a block of cells have to be erased, and any valid
data within the block has to be moved to a new block, before any new data can
be written to the drive. A traditional spinning HDD can simply overwrite a
sector, so doesn't waste any time having to erase the existing data.
All SSD drives use "garbage collection" which as well
as taking care of drive ware levelling, also takes care of reworking the NAND
blocks to erase blocks that contain invalid (deleted) data. Some drives are
more effective at this task than others.
Intel Garbage collection
There isn't a great deal known about Intel's "garbage
collection", but from our tests, it does seem quite effective at cleaning
unused blocks.
NAND Laundering
Indilinx use a garbage collection featured called NAND
Laundering, and as we will see later in this article, it is a very effective
means of cleaning unused blocks.
ATA TRIM
ATA TRIM as an extension of the ATA command set. ATA TRIM
basically checks the file allocation table on the drive for deleted files. Then
it reorders and erases blocks on the drive. The down side to ATA TRIM is that it
is operating system dependent, and currently, only Windows 7 and the latest
distributions of Linux with the ext4 file system will support ATA TRIM.
ATA TRIM also requires the complete ATA stack to support
TRIM and SSD controller to support the TRIM command. TRIM is not supported in
the G1 series of Intel X25-M SSD.
Now let’s head to the next page where we will look at our
test PC and testing procedures...
Test machine
For this review we will be using a computer with the
following configuration:
Hardware:
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P (Intel P45 chipset)
- Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 3.4GHz
- RAM: 8 GB Crucial Balistix Tracer (red) dual channel kit DDR2 800
- GFX: ATI HD 4870 (512 Megabytes GDDR5 HDCP compliant)
- Sound: Onboard Realtek ALC889 HD audio controller
- Hard disk OS: 120GB OCZ Vertex SSD
- Hard disk storage: 1X 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 and 1X 1TB
Samsung Spinpoint F1. - Case: Antec 900
- PSU: Enermax Liberty 620W
- Display: Samsung Syncmaster 245B 24” widescreen LCD (HDCP
compliant) - Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
The Intel X25-M 80GB SSD was connected to an SATA 2 port (ICH10R)
on the motherboard of our review PC and all tests on the drive were carried out
with the drive connected to this connector.
AHCI mode was also selected for all drives in the BIOS of
our test PC, and all tests were carried out in this mode.
Test applications
To test the performance of the Intel X25-M series 120GB SSD,
we will be using the following test applications in this review.
Test procedures
We will start off our testing procedures explanation by
stating that we did not run many basic benchmarks on the Intel X25-M series
drive. You may ask why we have run so few benchmarks?
SSD technology has moved so fast in the last year, that basic
benchmarks alone are now of very limited use, and don't really tell us much
about performance and how the drive will behave in the real world. We have
therefore decided to show some basic benchmarks of the Intel X25-M drive, and
will compliment this with advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD
benchmark. We will also show how the Intel X25-M performs in the real world
with added real world testing.
We should also state that all the tests carried out on the Intel
X25-M series 80GB SSD were carried out on a fully functioning operating system
and applications installed on the Intel X25-M drive itself. So these tests are
not best case scenarios on a blank drive. These results reflect the performance
you can expect on a fully functioning Windows 7 installation when using an Intel
X25-M series SSD.
Test drives
- 120GB OCZ Vertex SSD (firmware 1.41b)
- 120GB OCZ Apex SSD
- 500GB Seagate Barracuda 10 (7200RPM)
- 1000GB Samsung SpinPoint F1 (HD103UJ)
- 64GB Traxdata Ultra S Plus SSD
- Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB
- OCZ Agility 120GB (firmware 1.3)
- Intel X25-M 80GB (series G1)
The Intel X25-M SSD came supplied with firmware version 045C8829
Reviewers note
We were only able to test with the WD Velociraptor HDD for a
very short time, in fact, only enough time to run the IOMeter tests.
Drive preparation for running the tests
All the drives used in this review were in a "used
state" with the exception of the Intel X25-M. To simulate a "used
state" on the Intel X25-M, we completely filled the drive with files then
deleted all the files, repeating this procedure five times.
The OCZ Vertex SSD had a beta firmware installed (1.41b)
which supports TRIM and garbage collection. We just allowed Windows 7 to take
care of the drive.
- All our test drives used exactly the same Windows 7 x64
install image. - Both our spinning HDD drives were defragged before the
start of each test. - All SSD drives had their partitions aligned to the Windows
7 x64 defaults. - Where a test demanded Windows Vista, all drives used the
same Vista install image.
Where we use graphs in this article to display results, we
will use the following colours to make it easier, for our readers to see the
drive which we are reviewing.
Intel X25-M series SSD
Comparison SSD
Comparison HDD
Now let's head to the next page, where we look at some
basic benchmarks...
Reading Benchmarks
HD Tune Pro
We present the graph below for comparison with other recently
tested drives.
From our limited number
of test samples, we can clearly see the Intel X25-M series 80GB SSD is very
fast, but not quite as fast as the two Indilinx based SSDs.
We present one more reading test to benchmark sustained
reading performance.
HDTach (long bench 32MB zones):
Interestingly, the HDTach reading benchmark shows the
reading speed to be higher than HD Tune Pro, with an average reading speed of
204.6 MB/s .
ATTO disk benchmark
ATTO has become a standard tool for measuring the data
throughput of SSD drives. It measures the performance of reading and writing,
using different file sizes and block sizes.
The reading speed results on the Intel X25-M are very
impressive, topping out at over 275MB/s, writing speeds are within Intel’s
claimed specifications, topping out at 81.59MB/s, but slow compared to other
SSDs in this review.
CrystalDiskMark 2.2
Crystal Disk Mark is quite a handy benchmarking application,
as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause a problem on a system drive.
As expected, reading speed is very impressive indeed.
Sequential writing speeds are not so impressive, but 4K random writing
performance is staggeringly good.
HD Tune - Basic random access read
Random access reading performance is excellent.
Summary:
The sequential reading speeds on the Intel X25-M series 80GB
SSD is excellent and one of the fastest single drives we have ever tested here
at CD Freaks. Sequential writing speeds, though while within Intel’s
specifications, are rather poor when compared to the other SSDs in this review.
The small file random writing performance is however exceptionally good.
Let's head to the next page for our IOMeter test
results.....
I/O Performance
There is little point of having an SSD drive that has
blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can't handle reading
and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new SSD drive to
store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able to cope with
the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive continually.
So we feel it is very important to test how many of these random files that a
drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 400 I/O’s per
second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade mainstream PC,
and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the more I/O's that
a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave more headroom for
those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage in.
The things that we should look closely at, are the total I/O
per second, average and max latency (response time in ms), and total MB/s.
Our first test involves creating continual 4KB files on the
target drive with IOMeter. We use a 4KB file size, as it is believed that
Windows will create and modify many of this size of file constantly in the
background during a typical Windows session.
We also tested using simulated OS boot patterns, and also a
Workstation simulation.
IOMeter 4K random (queue depth 4) write test - IOPS.
Here lies the Intel X25-M main strength (4K random writes),
it absolutely excels in this department, with around an 80% advantage in IOP’s
performance to its nearest rival.
IOMeter 4K random (queue depth 4) write test – MB/s.
Once again, the Intel X25-M is the clear winner. Of course
we expected this from the total IOP's that the Intel X25-M delivered.
IOMeter 4K random (queue depth 4) write test - Average latency
Once again, the Intel X25-M wins.
IOMeter 4K random (queue depth 4) Read test – IOP’s
Again the Intel X25-M is the clear winner; in fact, all the
tested SSD drives done well in this test.
IOMeter 4K random (queue depth 4) Read test – MB/s
Not surprisingly, the Intel X25-M is the clear winner.
IOMeter 4K random (queue depth 4) Read test – Average latency
Once again, the Intel X25-M has the lowest average latency.
IOMeter 512KB (queue depth 4) write test - IOPS.
From being the clear winner in our 4K random write tests,
the Intel X25-M is now the slowest drive, easily beaten by our other SSD drives
and even the traditional HDDs are faster.
IOMeter 512KB (queue depth 4) write test - MB/s.
There are no surprises here, the Intel X25-M is once again
the slowest.
IOMeter 512KB (queue depth 4) write test - Average latency.
With an average latency of 28.47ms, the Intel X25-M has the
highest overall latency, once again meaning that the Intel X-25-M is the
slowest drive in this test.
IOMeter 512KB (queue depth 4) read test - IOPS.
From being the slowest drive at writing 512KB files, the
Intel X25-M is now the fastest drive at reading 512KB files. Our other SSD
drives are close behind.
IOMeter 512KB (queue depth 4) read test - MB/s.
The Intel X25-M with the highest IOP’s score, naturally has
the highest average read speed in MB/s.
IOMeter 512KB (queue depth 4) read test - Average latency.
No surprises here either, the Intel X25-M also has the
lowest latency.
IOMeter - boot simulation (queue depth 64) - IOPS.
The Intel X25-M is once again out in front, by quite a
significant margin. The two Indilinx based SSDs have also done well, which just
shows how far the Intel and Indilinx drives are ahead of the rest of the pack.
IOMeter - boot simulation (queue depth 64) - MB/s.
With the Intel X25-M producing so many IOP’s, it’s hardly
surprising that it wins this test as well.
IOMeter boot simulation (queue depth 64) - Average latency
As expected, the Intel X25-M has the lowest average latency.
What this graph also illustrates well is how the generation 1 SSD with the
JMicron SSD controller really struggles.
IOMeter Workstation 1 simulation (queue depth 64) - IOPS
The Intel X25-M is way out in front, producing nearly three
times the IOP’s performance of its nearest rival. This test also shows how well
the Intel X25-M copes with an increasing queue depth and the performance of the
X25-M is quite incredible.
IOMeter Workstation 1 simulation (queue depth 64) – MB/s
As expected, the Intel X25-M is way out in front.
IOMeter Workstation 1 simulation - Average latency
Again the Intel X25-M was a good bit faster. We omitted the
OCZ Apex result from the graph as it made the graph impossible to read. For the
record, the OCZ Apex result was 2176.67ms.
Summary
The Intel X25-M in most cases has been shown to be the
fastest drive in the IOMeter test results. It is particularly strong in the
Workstation tests and the 4K random read/write tests. In the boot simulation
tests it also performed extremely well. Having said all this, you have to have a
work pattern that can actually take advantage of all this small file IOP’s
performance, and this is something we will examine a little later in this
review.
On the next page we will checkout application and games
loading performance....
These tests are very simple tests, but very important to
some users of SSD drives.
We simply started an application or game, and measured the
time taken for the application or game to fully load and start.
Application loading times
Adobe Fireworks CS3
The Intel X25-M was slightly faster than the two Indilinx
based drives. In fact, all the SSD drives performed well.
Corel PaintShop Pro 12
Again, the Intel X25-M is marginally faster than the two
Indilinx based drives.
Games loading times
FAR CRY 2
Once again, the Intel X25-M is marginally faster than the
two Indilinx drives, but they really are very close indeed.
F.E.A.R. 2
The Intel X25-M is once again the winner, but the margin is
so very close.
Summary
The Intel X25-M is the winner, but it is only marginally
faster than the two Indilinx based drives. The margin is so small that it is
unlikely to be noticed, other than by timing it yourself.
Now let's round off this article with some real world
tests on the next page....
It has become clear recently, that simply conducting endless
benchmarks on SSD drives is pointless. Real users may run a few benchmarks when
they first fit their SSD drive, but most users just want a drive that performs
well in the real world. They want their drive to work "out of the
box" and work fast and smoothly.
Most of the latest SSD drives can deliver very fast
sustained reading and writing speeds, but these alone tell you very little
about how the drive will perform in the real world.
If you intend to use your SSD as your primary system drive,
with an operating system and applications installed and running from the drive,
real world performance becomes much more important than just fast sequential
read and write speeds.
In the following section in the review, we will use a
synthetic "real world" testing application (AS SSD benchmark) so we
can directly compare some drives from pervious reviews and use these results in
future reviews, but we will also use real world user testing, later in this
section, which we will explain in more detail later.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD benchmark is a new benchmarking tool, specifically
designed to test SSD drives. The application tests sequential reading and
writing performance, 4K random reading and writing performance.
AS SSD benchmark also tests 4K threaded performance. This is
very exciting, as this test is the first available test that I am aware of,
that simulates how a PC operating system actually works. A modern PC and OS,
such as Windows Vista does not just run a single thread at a time, it runs many
threads. The AS SSD benchmark "4K 64Thrd" tests run 64 threads
simultaneously throughout the test. If this result is good, then you can be
pretty sure the drive will perform extremely well as a system drive.
After the tests complete, AS SSD benchmark derives a total
score for the drive being tested. This is based on all aspects of the test
results, and gives an indication of how the drive is performing overall.
AS SSD benchmark offers two ways of viewing the results.
- MB/s (default)
- IOP's
AS SSD benchmark -
MB/s view
AS SSD benchmark -
IOP's view
AS SSD benchmark - Total score
The Intel X25-M was beaten into third place by the two
Indilinx based drives. The Intel’s poor sequential writing performance does it
no favours in this test.
Simulated
real world tests
AS SSD Benchmark simulated copy tests
As well as doing some advanced benchmarks, AS SSD benchmark
can also perform simulated copy tests.
Let’s look at the result first from our review drive, the
Intel X25-M SSD.
Now let’s compare the results with other recently tested SSDs
and HDDs.
AS SSD benchmark - Copy ISO
The OCZ Apex is the fastest drive, closely followed by the
Vertex and Agility. This time the Intel X25-M is beaten into fourth place, but
is still some margin faster than our traditional spinning HDD.
AS SSD benchmark - Copy Program
The Intel X25-M is once again struggling to keep up with our
comparison drives. This time the OCZ Vertex is fastest, the OCZ Agility is not
far behind in second place.
AS SSD benchmark - Copy Game
Once again, the Intel X25-M is struggling, and this time the
OCZ Agility is the fastest this time, with the OCZ Vertex close behind.
Summary
Once again it is clear to see that the Intel X25-M’s poor
sequential writing performance is really hitting it hard in these tests. The
X25-M is operating within Intel’s specification, but one must ask, why Intel
has taken no steps to improve sequential writing performance.
Real world copy
tests
We will now conduct a few real world copy tests. These tests
simulate what real people do with their drives. We will be conducting writing
tests, using two large single files and a multiple file copy of various file
sizes.
We should point out that this is not a scientific way of
measuring performance. These timings were taken with a stop watch; we have
however ensured that the reading drive is well able to supply a data stream to
our writing drive, which is high enough not to be slowing down the performance
of the writing drive.
We will once again be comparing the obtained results with
our comparison drive’s results. We will present the results in the form of
graphs.
Multiple file copy writing test
For this test we copied the Nero Burning Rom install folder
from our review PC to the D: drive (OCZ Technology Core series V2 RAID 0 array)
and then copied the contents to the Intel X25-M series 80GB SSD and our other
comparison drives.
Our test copy contained 1,772 files of various sizes with a
combined capacity of 307MB.
The OCZ Vertex was the fastest drive when writing our “small
files” test, with the OCZ Agility close behind, and once again the Intel X25-M
is left for dead.
Single large file writing test (4.37GB)
For this test we used a single DVD5 ISO file which had been
copied to the D: drive of our review PC. The file was then copied to the Intel
X25-M series 80GB SSD and our other comparison drives.
The two Indilinx based rives are by far the fastest, with
the Intel X25-M once again being left far behind.
For this test we used a single DVD9 ISO file which had been
copied to the D: drive of our review PC. The file was then copied to the Intel
X25-M series 80GB SSD and our comparison drives.
The Intel X25-M is the slowest drive, with its poor
sequential writing performance really hurting it badly in this test.
Summary
While copying such large files is perhaps not a true
representation of most people’s normal work patterns, they are results that
simply can’t be ignored, and the Intel X25-M’s poor sequential writing
performance exposes the drives Achilles heel.
Vista start-up and closedown
For these tests, we simply used a stop watch and tested the
amount of time taken for a full installation of Vista to boot to the “Vista
welcome” screen, and then timed how long it took for Vista to close down by the
normal start menu method.
The timing was started once the RAID card had initialised.
We do however point out, that the RAID card has to initialise before any of our
tested drives could start to boot the operating system.
Vista boot time
Vista closedown
The Intel X25-M is the marginally the fastest drive to boot
and then close down the PC again, with the two Indilinx based drives being
close on the X25-M’s heels.
Installing applications
Installing applications is possibly something you don't do
that often. But should you replace your system disk, then you will most likely
have to re-install your applications. Most of the SSD drives I have tested up
until now are quite slow at installing applications, most likely because their
I/O performance was quite limited.
For these tests, we picked some popular applications and
copied the entire contents of the CD or DVD media to our Core V2 SSD RAID 0
array. We did this to make sure that the reading speed of our CD/DVD reader would
not hamper the performance of the target drive.
We then installed these applications onto our comparison HDD
drives, which were all running mirror image installations of our Windows Vista
Home Premium 64bit installation, and timed the amount of time taken to install
the application with a stopwatch on each of the drives.
Windows Vista service pack 1 (64bit)
For anyone who has installed this service pack, you will
know how time consuming it is. The PC has to re-start several times during the
installation. So any time savings here is a big bonus.
The Intel X25-M has performed well in this test, but is once
again beaten by the two Indilinx based drives.
MS Office 2007 Professional (full install)
MS Office is another of those applications that make you
cringe at the thought of re-installing it.
Let's find out how our drives coped with the MS Office 2007
full install.
And again the Intel X25-M has done well, but is again beaten
by the two Indilinx based drives.
Kaspersky Anti Virus 2009
Kaspersky Anti Virus 2009 is not a big application, but none
the less, it is a popular one. So let's find out how our drives dealt with
installing this application.
Our drives made short work of installing Kaspersky Anti
Virus 2009, and once again, the Intel X25-M is beaten into third place.
Adobe Fireworks CS3
Adobe Fireworks CS3 is another popular package. Let's find
out how our drives coped with installing this application.
Most drives will struggle with this application, but once
again, the Intel X25-M took the task in its stride, however, the two Indilinx
based drives were once again faster.
Summary
The Intel X25-M has once again performed well in the
application installation tests, however, once again it is also beaten by the
two Indilinx based drives.
Real user - Multitasking tests
For this test we will use a real user (the reviewer) to run
two simple multitasking tests, to check the Intel X25-M series 80GB SSD.
We would like to point out, that this is not in the least
bit scientific in its method or approach. But we would also like to point out,
that neither are most PC users, and we also feel this is more useful as a guide
to real multitasking performance, than running a benchmark.
- A light load multitasking test. All drives should be able
to pass this test. - A heavy load multitasking test. To really stress the drive
and SATA bus system.
Light load - multitasking test
The light load multitasking test consists of the following
applications all being run at the same time.
- Load an audio track list of 10 songs into Windows media
player and play the tracks. - Run a full virus scan on the SSD drive.
- Open 6 tabs on Internet Explorer and browse the Internet
- Open a large MS Word document and scroll and edit text and
graphics
We will simply carry out these tasks like any normal PC
user. We will watch and listen for any problems with system freezing or
stuttering in Internet Explorer and listen to our playing audio tracks for
glitches in the sound.
We ran the light multitasking test on the Intel X25-M SSD
for 10 minutes. No problems to report. The system remained stable and smooth,
with no hint of stuttering or freezing.
Heavy load - multitasking test
The heavy load multitasking test consists of the following
applications all being run at the same time.
- Load an audio track list of ten songs into Windows media
player and play the tracks. - Copy a 700MB AVI file to the Intel X25-M drive and encode
the file to MPEG2, writing the file back to the Intel X25-M drive. - Rip and trans-code a Video DVD from an optical drive to
the Intel X25-M drive. - Open 10 tabs in Internet Explorer and browse the Internet.
- Open MS Word with a large document, scrolling and editing
the text and graphics. - Copy our 1772 small files to and from the Intel X25-M drive,
repeatedly, throughout the test.
We will simply carry out these tasks like any normal PC
user. We will watch and listen for any problems with system freezing or
stuttering in Internet Explorer and listen to our playing audio tracks for
glitches in the sound.
Because the above test will place a heavy load on the CPU,
we would expect some slowdown in the applications we are using, however, any
freezing or stuttering whatsoever would be classed as a fail.
We ran the heavy load multitasking test for the time taken
to encode our MPEG2 file (around 25 minutes). There was some slowdown in system
performance as expected, but absolutely no hint of system freezing or
stuttering, and our track list of 10 songs played perfectly.
Single drive copy tests
These tests are to simulate a single drive in a PC or
laptop. In other words, we will copy a series of files from one folder on the
tested drive to another folder on the same drive. This means the drive is also
reading and writing in the tests. We also want to make this a realistic test.
So we have used 1 single large file, then also ran the same tests with a folder
or MP3 music files, and then repeated the test with a folder of picture files.
Single drive copy tests – 1 AVI video file (1.03GB)
The Intel X25-M SSD has performed well in this test, but no
surprises that it’s beaten by the two Indilinx based drives.
Single drive copy tests – 851 MP3 song files (3.85GB total)
Once again the Intel X25-M has performed well, but is again
beaten by the two Indilinx based drives.
Single drive copy tests – 3714 JPEG picture files (5.16GB total)
There are no surprises here, once again the Intel X25-M is
beaten by the two Indilinx based drives.
Summary
Our real world tests, although not scientific in nature, we
feel are more realistic than simply running benchmarks. What is clear from our
tests is, that the Intel X25-M is an outstanding SSD drive when used as an
operating system drive, with the storage of data left to a large traditional
spinning HDD. This we feel is how most people will use an SSD. In this scenario
the Intel is fantastic.
On the other hand, if the Intel X25-M is to be used as the
only drive in the system then things become less clear. The Intel X25-M still
feels fast and stable, but starts to feel quite slow when larger amounts of
data has to be saved or copied around the drive. In this scenario the two Indilinx
drives will prove to be the best solution.
4K random write performance Vs the rest
The Intel X25-M has 4K random write bandwidth by the truck
load, it has a vast amount of 4K random write headroom to spare, when the drive
is used in a typical mainstream PC work pattern. By mainstream work pattern we
mean what we would describe as a normal PC users work pattern. This would
include surfing the Internet, downloading some files, and email sending and
receiving, some word processing, some editing and moving picture data around,
moving and editing MP3 files around, editing and saving some video and music
files, and perhaps also playing a few games.
The problem with the above user pattern is: None of these
tasks require high 4K random writing performance, so most of this 4K random
read/write performance is left untapped. It’s not until the usage pattern
becomes more workstation like, that the Intel X25-M starts to shine, and we ask
how many mainstream PC users use their PC in this way. In fact, the Intel X25-M
SSD is aimed at the mainstream user, not the enterprise workstation market.
We know the SSD controller inside the Intel X25-M is a
powerful one, we can see this by the drive’s 4K random writing performance,
surely Intel could allow some more cycles for sequential writing performance,
as this really hurts the X25-M performance, and what is more, the slow
sequential writing performance is something that is noticeable between the
X-25M and the Indilinx drives. While the Intel X25-M does have far superior 4K
random writing performance over the Indilinx drives, it doesn’t make the Intel
drive feel faster in mainstream use, simply because 4k random writing
performance in the Intel X25-M remains largely untapped.
Adding to this, Intel just recently released the G2 series
of Intel X25-M SSD, and haven’t really improved the sequential writing
performance of this new series, in fact, they have further improved 4k random
performance, and sequential writing performance has once again been left out.
This concludes our review. To read the conclusion, click
the link below....
Conclusion
Positive:
- Silky smooth operation as a system drive and completely
stable. - Excellent reading performance.
- Outstanding 4K random I/O performance
- Excellent multitasking potential.
- Lightning fast access times.
- Completely silent operation.
- Fast operating system start-up and shutdown times.
- Fast application loading.
- 3 years warranty.
Negative:
- Expensive.
- Slow sequential writing speed.
Conclusion:
Let us summarise the most important positive and negative
points below:
The
main positive points:
The Intel X25-M series drives are good in fact, extremely
good. Reading access times are lightning fast and applications load in an
instant, making the Intel X25-M series of drives ideal as the operating system
drive with all the user’s installed applications.
4K random IOP performance is outstanding, and the drive is
completely stable. There is no hint of stuttering whatsoever.
Noise levels from the drive are null; there are no moving
parts so the drive is completely silent.
The
main negative points:
Price is still a stumbling block to purchasing an SSD drive,
and the recent rise in the cost of NAND memory isn't helping matters.
Although sequential writing performance proved to be within,
or better than Intel’s specifications for the X25-M, we feel some more SSD
controller cycles could be given over to speed up sequential writing
performance.
To sum up, this is what we
would say:
It is inevitable that the Intel X25-M will be directly
compared to Indilinx based SSD drives. While the Intel X25-M is the undisputed
champion of 4k random writes, the Indilinx drives excel in sequential writes
and have more than enough 4K random writing performance to make them feel every
bit as fast in normal use as the Intel X25-M. In fact as a single drive in a
mainstream PC, the Indilinx drives feel slightly faster. This should not
distract you from buying the Intel X25-M, it is a marvellous SSD, and it
certainly won’t disappoint you as a main system drive, where it is absolutely
outstanding.
As I write this article, the Intel X25-M (G1) is getting
hard to get hold of, as it’s being replaced by the new (G2 series). We were
however able to find it available at e-buyer for £258.21 (€295.92).
Our parting sentence is
“The king of 4K random writes and is still an outstanding
performer as an operating system drive”.
The performance and usability of the Intel X25-M series 80GB
SSD drive was so good, that we decided to award the drive our CD Freaks “Editor’s
choice” award.
You may comment on this review below.
Thanks to:
|
|
EFD Software for |
|
|
Simpli Software |
|
|
Alex |
