Intel X25-M G2: Previews & Reviews

[kgk]

I doubt you will

G1's run great with the new firmware

I just noticed that there was new firmware for it.

The release notes say there's only changes for the X-25E

[Zero]

as far as i can see, neither august update is.. an update :p

[lemonlime]

Anyone have any information on the performance improvements with the new G1 firmware? I'm seeing quite a few being sold for a reasonable amount, and wondering if its worth picking one up on discount, or if I should wait for the G2

[Levish]

the G1's won't disappoint for sure, the G2's are faster but if you deal with IO latency sensitive apps and are coming from rotational drives you'll be very happy (if you can get them at a discount compared to the G2's of course).

[lemonlime]

the G1's won't disappoint for sure, the G2's are faster but if you deal with IO latency sensitive apps and are coming from rotational drives you'll be very happy (if you can get them at a discount compared to the G2's of course).

Do you think that the lack of TRIM support on the G1 is anything to be concerned about? I'm not sure why Intel wouldn't offer it as a future firmware upgrade for the G1 along with the G2. I'd be sold on one in a heartbeat if that were the case.

[mk_dir]

I'm really interested in that question too. Somebody knows anything about changes/enhances on that new G1 FW?

[Peakr]

AnandTech Has a pretty good summation about what the differences are. Basically until Windows 7 rolls out not a whole lot.

[mrcape]

I have bothe versions for a while and see no difference in real world (well, my real world lol) use. I do a lot of graphics and interface design - photoshop, illustrator, IDE, lots of browsers... it's basically the bomb with either one and I can't tell a difference. Most recently i switched from G1 with Win7 RC running since April to G2 with Win7 RTM. Couldn't tell at all that I'd switched. I did update the G1 firmware back in April and prior to that ran a wipe with HDDerase. With the 80gb models I left about 30gb of headroom on purpose so I can't say what would happen with a full drive.

[Peakr]

Looks like the Sata 3.0 models are starting to show up. Colamco $233.07 incl. shipping.

[Lu(ky]

I have bothe versions for a while and see no difference in real world (well, my real world lol) use. I do a lot of graphics and interface design - photoshop, illustrator, IDE, lots of browsers... it's basically the bomb with either one and I can't tell a difference. Most recently i switched from G1 with Win7 RC running since April to G2 with Win7 RTM. Couldn't tell at all that I'd switched. I did update the G1 firmware back in April and prior to that ran a wipe with HDDerase. With the 80gb models I left about 30gb of headroom on purpose so I can't say what would happen with a full drive.

So all you did is run the FW update tool to newer version, with a fresh Win 7 anything else I should know about? I plan on redoing mine from a WD Vel Raptor to a fresh install of Win 7 with new FW on my new G2 80GB as well. Any links or special things you need to do. Turn certain things off etc.. Thanks

[kgk]

Anyone have any information on the performance improvements with the new G1 firmware? I'm seeing quite a few being sold for a reasonable amount, and wondering if its worth picking one up on discount, or if I should wait for the G2

WTF are you people talking about "new" firmware for the G1 X-25M?

The there hasn't been a firmware update since April.

[Peakr]

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...&DwnldID=17485

[antiacid]

In Canada, you still can't get a G2 as of sept 15th 2009. What a stupid launch they did

[kgk]

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...&DwnldID=17485

Again. Perhaps you missed the giant JPEG I posted earlier of the release notes to that link.



There has not been a firmware update for the G1 X-25M since April. They simply release one firmware updater for all models as it saves time.

The two August firmware updates contained NO UPDATES for the G1 X-25M.

How much clearer can that be?

In Canada, you still can't get a G2 as of sept 15th 2009. What a stupid launch they did

One of the worst product launches in recent memory.

[deathman20]

Man really thinking of skipping the Intel Drives and going with something else. Firmware updates minimal, lack of product availability...

Only reason really looking at them still is if the price point is still "ok" its right in the price range I was looking for to get at least 150Gigs worth of storage.

[shawmanus]

I wish OCZ,Patroit etc lowered their 250GB SSD prices close to 160GB x25-m. In the past the prices were fairly in the same ballpark. Now they are too expensive.

I am sure we will see a killer deal for 160GB x25-M around $400 within a month. I would prefer to buy a 250GB indilinix based drive for around $500.

[mk_dir]

Again. Perhaps you missed the giant JPEG I posted earlier of the release notes to that link.

You're right, the firmware version still being the same released in April, C8820. Intel say it clear in the description.

In Canada, you still can't get a G2 as of sept 15th 2009. What a stupid launch they did

Here in Spain situation it's the same, it's really hard to find a Postville SSD.
And weeks ago Intel claims that the firmware issues (BIOS password bug) was fixed....

[Levish]

Man really thinking of skipping the Intel Drives and going with something else. Firmware updates minimal, lack of product availability...

Only reason really looking at them still is if the price point is still "ok" its right in the price range I was looking for to get at least 150Gigs worth of storage.

what hard drive manufacturers release firmware updates on a whim?

the G1s have garbage collection, they don't support trim but they also don't suffer from degradation.

[mrcape]

So all you did is run the FW update tool to newer version, with a fresh Win 7 anything else I should know about? I plan on redoing mine from a WD Vel Raptor to a fresh install of Win 7 with new FW on my new G2 80GB as well. Any links or special things you need to do. Turn certain things off etc.. Thanks

Nothing special you need to do as long as you have at least the 8820 FW. Win7 will disable scheduled defrag automatically. I only know this because I forgot to check and disable with one install (I have three of these drives in use on diff systems), and when I checked, it had never been run. It isn't all that clear that it's turned off if you look at the scheduled events though.

Anyway, no just fresh install is all you need and enjoy.

[jchamlin]

Any chance that roadmap names a X25-E G2 part with possible dates?

Okay, I've been patiently waiting for news on a G2 version of the X25-E for some months now too, and nothing. Anyone have the inside scoop?

I'm hoping for two things from the X25-E G2:
1) The same kind of performance boost for the "E" that the "M" got going from 50nm to 34nm flash (and whatever other hardware optimizations were made)
2) TRIM support to keep cells pre-erased and keep the drive performing like its newly low-level formatted performance (currently, the X25-E slows down by 20-30% on our real-life write speeds after all the pre-erased cells are used up)

-J.C.

[Biker]

oooooh!

Necro thread

X25-E G2 = not going to happen any time soon...

(and when it does happen it is rumored to be using MLC nand)...

[Johnny87au]

these vs the c300's, Im still choosing the c300's, any others think different?

[Levish]

Okay, I've been patiently waiting for news on a G2 version of the X25-E for some months now too, and nothing. Anyone have the inside scoop?

I'm hoping for two things from the X25-E G2:
1) The same kind of performance boost for the "E" that the "M" got going from 50nm to 34nm flash (and whatever other hardware optimizations were made)
2) TRIM support to keep cells pre-erased and keep the drive performing like its newly low-level formatted performance (currently, the X25-E slows down by 20-30% on our real-life write speeds after all the pre-erased cells are used up)

-J.C.

If its trim you are worried about, go ahead and buy the G1 X25-E, SLC drives don't take anywhere near the performance hit.

[jchamlin]

oooooh!

Necro thread

X25-E G2 = not going to happen any time soon...

(and when it does happen it is rumored to be using MLC nand)...

If its trim you are worried about, go ahead and buy the G1 X25-E, SLC drives don't take anywhere near the performance hit.

Oops, sorry for the necro posting. Didn't notice the dates.

Anyway, yes it is TRIM we are worried about. And yes, the X25-E does take a tremendous performance hit as it runs out of pre-erased cells. Anyone that says it doesn't, has not seen our real-life use case (see below). Both MLC and SLC need to first erase, and then write, in order to store data. Just because SLC's block size is typically half that of MLC and that it does it a bit faster, doesn't mean it doesn't take that much of a hit. Pre-erased cells are a giant win for write performance, this having TRIM purge out unused cells and make them pre-erased as a background activity when there's nothing else going on is a big performance win.

I guess it also depends on your use case though. We're software engineers. We work on an enterprise application in MyEclipse with 10000s of source files compiled, and deployed to Tomcat. We can burn through 100G of writes in a week (tested on an ioXtreme which has a meter which shows us how much read/write we do per hour/day/week). We have prototyped the X25-M G1, G2, X25-E, Fusion-io's ioXtreme and ioDrive (the big dog), a few OCZ Vertex drives, software-based RAM drives, and some DDR based SSDs like the i-RAM, HyperDrive5 (the ANS-9010). Our current configuration is 4x 10K WDs in RAID10 (shipped from Dell preconfigured that way in a T3400 chasis). So, I've seen lots of solutions.

The DDR based RAM drive solutions are the fastest. The X25-E and the ioXtreme are the only SSD that are even close. Both start out ALMOST as fast as (but not quite) as the DDR based SSD solutions. But both fall off dramatically as they run out of pre-erased cells. I give Intel and Fusion-io both great credit for their IO controller/driver/hardware architecture for pulling that one off (the i-RAM and ANS-9010 must have some average IO controller logic, I'd like to see an Intel DDR based SSD to see what Intel's controller and DDR's speed could do). Anyway, the X25-E actually slows down, and during a compile and deploy becomes substantially slower than factory new. Depending on the operation, stuff with a lot of small file random reads and writes (i.e. compile and deploy) are about 25-50% slower. That makes it about comparable with our RAID10 mechanical drive solution for build speed. The worse offender was the OCZ, it actually slowed down to be 70-100% slower, and at its worst was way slower than the RAID10 solution.

Anyway, so we've already prototyped every SSD solution we can think of to speed up our enterprise software development. I have high hopes that the next generation of X25-E will be what we're looking for. But I do not think we can wait, so we'll probably go with the DDR-based solution (the 16GB ANS-9010). Unless of course, someone here can propose something we haven't tried yet to get the best compile/build speed out of our development environemnt. Anyone have any bright ideas on what we could try next? (also sorry, don't mean to hijack a necro thread, I'll behave and post a new thread about our use case and ideas, and and post a link to the new thread from here).

Thanks!

-J.C.

[Mech0z]

Any news about when G3 will be released and performance estimates other than Q4 release