Intel X25-M 80GB SATA Solid State Drive Review

• Anandtech: Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives:
  
  

  “This thing is fast, and I want one in my system...actually, two. It's the only SSD that I would actually go out, buy and stick in my desktop machine at this point. I think that's the first time I've ever said something like that in a review, but I'm absolutely convinced. I've been using SSDs in my systems for a few months now and I'm hooked.
  
  What Intel did with the X25-M is show the world what is possible with MLC flash. You get better than SLC performance, at lower than SLC prices. Despite that, the absolute only thing that bothers me about Intel's X25-M is the price. Although Intel is totally justified in pricing the X25-M at $595, I was hoping for pricing inline with the JMicron based MLC SSDs. At $300 - $400 this would be a no brainer for any enthusiast, and honestly even at $595 it's worth considering if you have other drives for data storage.”

  
  Click here to read the full review.
  
  
  
• Boot Daily: Intel X25-M SSD Drive:
  
  

  “There’s no denying that Intel has paved the way for ultra-high-performance in the SSD realm with the launch of its X25-M – it completely smashes the data output of conventional drives (even under RAID 0 loads in more circumstances), doesn’t have the heat and uses far less power. All of this means a huge win for the consumer looking for the best in today’s storage technology – the only caveat right now, however, is the somewhat limited capacities when compared to conventional drives and its price rag of $600 in 1k quantities – you’ll be lucky to find it cheaper than $700 or so at most leading retailers. That said, it is the performance leader compared to any other SSD drive out right now and is priced well to its competition from companies like Samsung and OCZ.”

  
  Click here to read the full review.
  
  
  
• HotHardware: Intel X25-M 80GB SATA Solid State Drive, Intel Ups The Ante:
  

  “A quick run-through of our benchmark data showed us that this new Intel Solid State Disk, in terms of standard synthetic benchmarks, offered exactly what its specifications claimed it would. Read bandwidth of 225MB/sec and Write bandwidth of 74MB/sec on average was measured in a number of tests and the Intel SSD showed itself to be roughly twice as fast in terms of read performance and about on par with other MLC-based SSDs, in terms of write performance. However, when it came to specific application usage models within our PCMark Vantage testing, the Intel X25-M SSD showed a performance lead well in excess of its specifications and what we saw in our synthetic benchmark testing. In many cases the Intel SSD was two to three times faster than the fastest competitive SSDs in our test group.”

  
  Click here to read the full review.
  
  
  
• Legit Reviews: Intel X25-M SATA Solid State Drive Review:
  
  

  “The X25-M performance is out of this world thanks to the 250MB/s sustained read rates that many of the benchmarks highlighted so well. With read speeds like that and 0.1 ms access times one would think that the drive would be perfect, but there is one area that can use some improvement and that would be the write speeds. The Intel X25-M didn’t look too hot on the write speeds and got creamed by the Western Digital VelociRaptors in RAID 0 when it came to write performance at roughly the same price point. Part of this is due to the MLC design that the drive uses and remember Intel has an Extreme series of Solid State Drives coming out that are use SLC and have a 100MB/s faster write speed. This means that the Extreme drives will be able to write at 170 MB/s, which would put it close to the VelociRaptors in many of the benchmarks. The only other area that showed weak performance was when the drive was nearly full. This could have been due to the wear leveling that Intel has designed for this drive or something else all together.”

  
  Click here to read the full review.
  
  
  
• PC Perspective: Intel X25-M 80GB Solid State Hard Drive Review:
  
  

  “Intel boasted quite a bit about the performance of its entry into the solid state drive market and as it turns out all the hype was justified - the Intel X25-M 80GB SSD is screaming fast and blows away all of previous best storage options! The benefits of solid state drives, including incredibly low random access times and consistent random and sequential read speeds, are all apparent with Intel's drives but in many areas the performance of the X25-M was well above even our previously tested SSDs. Anything that involved reads from the drive, such as burst rates and sustained read tests, saw a big performance advantage for Intel.”

  
  Click here to read the full review.
  
  
  
• The Tech Report: Intel's X25-M solid-state drive:
  

  “Solid-state drives have an inherent power consumption advantage over their mechanical counterparts, so the energy efficiency isn't much of a feat. What's more impressive is the X25-M's performance. Thanks to a 250MB/s sustained read rate and a smart Native Command Queuing implementation, Intel's first SSD sets a new standard for MLC-based solid-state drives. Unfortunately, though, Intel can't escape the relatively slow write speeds that plague MLC drives, and that results in a performance profile that's decidedly mixed.
  
  When the X25-M is good, it's exceptional. The drive absolutely dominated our IOMeter workloads and ran away from the field in our sustained-read-speed drag race and in our real-world file read tests. The X25-M also posted speedy game level load times and a higher WorldBench overall score than any other drive—solid-state or mechanical.”

  
  Click here to read the full review.