Anyone with the Intel 330 SSD?

Just wondering if this is a good buy.

Anyone have any experience with it, or opinions?

 

I bought one Friday. I should have it by Tuesday.

 

The Intel 520 and 330 use the same controller and exact same memory.

The 520 is using firmware version 400i and the 330 is using 300i.

The differences are the firmware,warranty and price.

There's performance scaling between 60GB,120GB,180GB and 240GB.

The 330 is a rocket compared to the 320.

 

Aside that i have my reserves about the SandForce controller, there is nothing inherently wrong with the drive and the chances of running into problems with a SF controllers are slim now. I got a SF drive on a deal that i couldn't pass up and it's been working perfectly fine so far.

 

It maybe a rocket, but the 320 series has a rock solid controller (it's a firmware upgrade from original G1/G2). I can't say anything for reliability for SandForce. My workplace probably easily sells 20-30 SSDs a day, and guess who has the most returns for BSOD/dead? SandForce/OCZ SSDs.

 

^^^ but I'll bet most of the SSD's you sell are sand force...

I have my doubts about the quality as well... but still I've been using my Agility 2 90GB for 1.5 years and it's be rock solid.

 

Bought one toady, and will get it Thursday. Let's see if it's any good.

 

Received my 330 in the mail. Trying to update the firmware...

Not sure if I need to, but I'm being extra careful now that it has Sandforce.

 

EDIT: My laptop is only SATA II.

 

SATAIII, though I haven't done any tweaks yet.



Considering that Max. Read and Write are suppose to be 500MB/s and 450MB/s, respectively, I wonder why I only have 200-something write...

 

Reviews of SSDs are usually on new virgin drives that have been initialized and quick formatted only.There's no data on them.They are benched from a different drive.

Sanforce drives are benched with 0-Fill(compressible data for highest results).

AS SSD uses incompressible data so Sandforce will show low writes.If non sandforce are benchmarked with 0-Fill they will show poorly.

Try benching with CrystalDiskMark or Anvil Storage Utilities using 0-Fill.

As more data is added to SSDs benchmark scores will drop.

 

Amount of NAND also has an influence, SF-2281 controller drive, not Intel's firmware, 240GB size below.

Regardless of advertised speeds, i've seen results like yours for most benchmarks using incompressible data.

 

Hmm, alright. I knew that I wouldn't get exactly 500/450, but I wasn't expecting 200-something-MB/s write lol.

Here's a CDM test with all my usual programs already installed:

 

In CrystalDiskMark click on File and choose 0-Fill instead of the default.

I like to use Anvil Storage Utilities with setting set to 0-Fill to benchmark my sandforce SSDs.
http://www.ssdaddict.com/apps/AnvilBenchmark_RC1.zip

This is my SD Extreme 240GB

 

Finalized my review of this drive. Hopefully it'll be up either tomorrow or Friday.

 

Looking forward to it. Since it has different Firmware than the other SF drives, and Intel usually sacrifices some speed for stability, it very well may be the first really good SF SSD. Since Intel has a great reliability record, for them to choose SF and then use their own FW, I have great expectations for this. Thanks in advance for the review.

 

I can say that speeds are pretty nice, but you guys will have to wait until the review is online. I'll post a link in a separate thread here on the SSD subforum when that happens.

 

Posted my review in a new thread in the SSD subforum.

 

can the 400i firmware from 520 be ported on 330 hardware? from reviews, hardware wise looks identical

 

This review says:

Since Intel is pretty conservative, I'm pretty confident that my "normal desktop usage" won't kill the NAND that quick. I've recently ordered my third Intel 330 SSD. First two worked well for several months already.