Crucial M4 64 GB or Intel X-25M G2 80 GB?

I was planning on purchasing a 64 GB Crucial M4 yesterday. However, I have been given an opportunity to purchase a brand new 80 GB Intel X-25M G2 drive for only about $7 more.

With the Crucial, the price is lower (albeit only just a bit) and I get to take advantage of my system's SATA 6 Gb/s port. With the Intel, I get more storage space and the reliability the name promises.

With that in mind, I defer to everyone here for advice. Thank you.

 

It's unlikely you'll notice a difference in speed or reliability.

I'd say take the extra space.

 

Yup I concur with Phil, given Intel's track record and it is 25% more space for 7 bucks more...go with the Intel.

 

either or but the extra space for another $7 bucks is a good deal.

 

Intel, more space and odds are it will be better on battery without a noticeable speed difference.

Going from a spinning disk to the SSD, it won't matter which you pick, it will be faster. The M4 will likely use MORE battery than your spinner, the Intel, less. My c300 was about even with a semi-efficient spinner (some are much worse), the Intel however is much better.

 

Crucial M4 battery life is on par with low power 5400 rpm drives.

Intel X25-m battery life is better.

 

Intel X-25M G2

 

As much as I'm drawn to fancy new things, the Intel is old reliable and you won't really notice a difference. I'd take the extra space.

 

Well, I'm going to upset things here...

Go for at least a 120GB drive.

 

Actually, to really upset things here...

To get the best balance of peak and sustained performance, nand reliability/durability and overall performance that is greater than a current HDD, then 160GB is the minimum size to look for.

Also, keep in mind that Intel has done their homework properly (other manufacturers need us to be the guinea pigs), so while their products are more expensive initially - you're actually ahead of the game when you can simply use your system(s) instead of trying to get them to work as they should.

 

x25-M 80GB any day....
Those SATA III speeds are only good for marketing for now (i have used Vertex III... didn't notice any noticeable speed increase compared to my x25-M)

 

Isn't the X25-M a bit more sensitive with free space? i.e., wouldn't you need to over provision it a good deal? I certainly needed to with my X25-M 160GB version. Performance degradation was quite steep after the first week even when I OPed about 25-30%. If I'm not wrong about this, the space is a wash.

Then, it's about power draw / battery life. If it's not a pressing issue, I'd opt for the M4.

 

Note I have both the SATA 3 C300s and the X25-M.

I am an Intel fan. It is just as fast and rock solid while I have to play games (MSAHCI driver is the best I have been able to do) with the C300s to get them to work and the M4s seem to be trickier.

I gotta love the X25 over any drive available right now including the newer Intel's with outsourced controllers.

 

OP 25-30% and you can notice performance degrade ? What were you doing ?

 

It's normal when you have no garbage collection.

 

With TRIM running you shouldn't have any performance degradation.

 

Hmm. Let me clarify what I mean.

The X25-M performance is fastest when the drive has been freshly "secure erased" or factory fresh. This benchmark is useless because from that moment onward, performance will degrade. If you over provision your drive, you will essentially halt degradation. However, you will never, ever be able to maintain factory fresh speeds.

By overprovisioning, you are guaranteeing a certain minimum level of performance. And because of the way these drives are designed, you want to do this just for longevity's sake. These older Intels don't have garbage collection. I've been buying and testing a lot of SSDs lately, and while I know I'm no authority on these matters, the benchmarks that I've run show that garbage collection is superior to TRIM.

My machines are never off and they idle all through the night, so that's never a problem. Now, if the argument is that GC wears out your drives faster, then I'd agree. But as far as maintaining drive speed, GC is the best. It's best to have GC and TRIM of course.

If your drive only has TRIM and no GC, you'll need to rebench your drives in a month after your OS install.

Here are some benches from my archive of my old Intel X25-M 160GB G2:

1st pic - 10% over provision, YES secure erase, just after Win 7 install.
2nd pic - NO over provision, NO secure erase, no "readable data" (I didn't save my benches after this, but it got worse)

 

If you want to compare performance all settings should be equal.

Now one is an OS drive the other isn't. One is emtpy, the other one isn't. One is ran with 2x 50MB, the other one isn't.

I always use 3x 100MB, as with 50MB it's likely to get influenced by cache.

 

Those are all good points. That means that I haven't provided enough proof to convince you, but I actually ran many more benchmarks that I never saved as a screenshot .png.

For any Intel X25-M owners, I'd ask them to bench their drive as soon as they install Win 7 and then bench it again a month or two later. Even with OP and TRIM working perfectly, if your experience is like mine, you will see that performance is not as good as "out of the box."

Will performance degrade to the point where it matters in some "real" way? I don't know. Probably not. But either way, to maintain most of that fresh performance, it'll require more OP than the M4. That means it's similar in gigabytes.

If you don't believe that there's performance degradation, then none of what I've said matters.

 

When I see proof I will probably believe it. This doesn't come close to being proof.

I do notice the following things:
Sequential and 4K read performance seems too low on both screenshots.
On what you call the 'degraded one' the 4K write performance is up more than 25%, while the 4KQD32 is down more than 80%. I don't think any of that is caused by degradation.

I have a intel X25-M laying here but I'm not interested enough to go test it.

PS. the Intel X25-M G2 does have garbage collection.

 

I've already conceded that I haven't provided the proper proof. As far as GC is concerned, I don't believe the Intel works the way that a Kingston or Crucial or Sandforce would do GC. My Kingstons don't ever require a secure erase because if I leave them alone, it will go and clean up the crap by itself. I noticed this after re-imaging my RAID. 1st Crystal Mark benchmark was horrible. Left the drives alone and continued using like normal. No secure erase. I did create a new OP partition, but the "garbage" still remained on the unused partition. Benched the next day and performance returned.

This will not happen with the Intel drive.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that anyone who chooses the Intel drive is stupid. I'm only sharing my personal findings, and like you say, the proof I have provided isn't exactly proof. What I do suggest, however, is that if you end up buying an Intel drive, you try and bench it as soon as possible after a clean install. Then, after a month or two, re-bench it. I think you'll find that performance has degraded, but will not degrade more than that if you have OPed it.

I could be wrong, but that's why I say try it.

 

It's not that the Kingston does have GC and the Intel doesn't. Kingston has aggressive GC while the Intel GC has lazy GC. And yes it will seem like the Intel doesn't.

Now this is all very important when you're running in RAID and don't have TRIM. When you do have TRIM I don't think it matters at all.

I just looked up Techreport and Tomshardware, they found no difference between a fresh G2 and a used one.
Corsair's Force F120 solid-state drive - The Tech Report - Page 5
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-7-ssd-trim,2705-18.html

 

Assuming those tests are correct, and I do, there's another reason why my drives could have slowed down. It's possible that the X25-M just gets slower as drive space is filled by actual data in use. I believe this also occurred with my Vertex II, but for whatever reason I haven't noticed it on my Kingstons.

Ultimately, this is splitting hairs. Either drive will be good for most people. I doubt any palpable speed difference between drives without using benchmarks to test. And still, I keep buying new SSD drives. I just got my C300 in the mail 20 minutes ago.

 

Intel. Reliability Matters.

 

Oh yeah. Intel for reliability for sure. SATA III just seems like such a waste on a SATA II drive.

 

i just ordered the 80gb 310 soda creek. from what i can tell its a shrunk down G2. Will i have any problems with garbage collection/trim?

 

No it won't be any problem.

Isn't the reason you were running them in RAID and there for had no TRIM?

 

Nah. Kingston V+100 was my first RAID 0 with SSDs. I only justified doing that because it was the same price as ONE X25-M. Now when I say performance degradation, I'm talking like 10-20%. Nothing major.

There isn't supposed to be degradation from what I've read. So, it could just be variations from the benchmark software itself. Crystal Mark gives me different results depending on any number of random factors. Either way, it's not a big deal. Just for resale value alone, the OP should probably get the Intel drive. But performance wise, the M4 should be better. My C300 is really darn good. The M4 firmware issues should be fixed soon if they haven't already.