Intel 320 Series or just wait?

Hey there folks

I am currently planning on buying a laptop in October most probably, customized from pcspecialists. It will be 2630 QM, 6990M, 8gb ram and i decided to add an ssd drive because I want it to last 4-5 years max and be able to perform great in games. The company only offers Intel SSD drives the 320 and the 510 series. a friend told me the random read times (something like that) is what counts towards gaming and as a result i should get the 320 series which is cheaper, because there is no basic difference between them. the company has the drive at around 160-180 pounds depending the upgrade which is quite decent as the company is partnering with intel and the prices are quite good.

you think i should wait and get a crucial m4 or something else that is coming out in october or something and will be much better? or the 320 will be just fine for gaming in comparison with new ssds?

 

Sager? Sounds like them, their SSD prices are reasonable, and they only do Intel.

Nothing new on the horizon for October really, the new Intel enterprise drives are due out later this year, but they will be very highly priced being made for server work and all.

The 320 is a good drive, and so is the 510. Yes random read times are important, but in real-life usage the 510 actually trainwrecks the 320, even in say game map loading.

The M4 is also a good drive, and I recommend it highly. But really you can't go wrong with Intel either, they've long been the kings in the SSD reliability world. Crucial right on their heels. Just don't get an OCZ or anything else Sandforce-based. They break a LOT.

To summarize, the 510 is actually faster, and I'm not talking sequential transfers. You think Intel would release a new drive that is SLOWER than the old one and charge way more for it? Grab either drive though, or add an M4 in yourself, and you'll be set. Up to you.

 

"I" would skip the 320 series, because.....

Intel confirms "8MB bug" in 320 Series SSDs - TechSpot News

....it could potentially have the "8mb error/bug/issue".


I would go for the 510, the M4/C300, or Samsung 470.

Reliability, as of now, in order of greatest reliability, would look something like this:

Samsung 470 > C300 > 510 or M4. The 510 and M4 are at the bottom of the "list" simply because they haven't been out nearly as long as the Samsung 470 or C300. But they seem to be the most stable platforms now, for SATAIII drives.

 

think is they dont offer the crucial m4 ones and as far as i have seen crucial m4>intel 510 in random read times so i might buy the crucial ones. by october they might drop in price as well

 

In that regards, the M4 is slightly faster in random read, yes. But you can install the SSD yourself, correct, without voiding warranty?

 

hmm dunno havent asked them that yet, but dont think it voids warranty

 

Then get the cheapest HDD and replace it with an SSD yourself.

 

You can replace the drive it comes with without voiding the warranty unless they state otherwise (if they did, I would't buy from them). In all the time I've been on this site, I have yet to hear of a warranty-related issue regarding replacing a drive in a normal notebook.

I'd keep the factory drive just in case you need to send it in for warranty, that way you don't lose your data/have to send your data off to someone else.

This is good advice - you could take the drive it comes with and put it in an external enclosure, then use it for backup.

 

yeah i just hope i can install it my self properly cause i aint really that much of hardware technicial but i heard its really easy. what do you think regarding 510 and m4 and their prices?

 

It's really not that hard.. honestly. I built a desktop not long ago, and honestly, it was like putting together a puzzle, with instructions! Easy as pie.

Are you buying now, or in two months? Prices will probably drop, but I don't except them to drop off considerably - although you may get the opportunity to pick up a M-I-R like what's offered with the Intel 510.

 

i forgot to mention that the laptop will have 2 drivs! one of them will be the ssd otherone will be normal hdd for files and movies so yeah i just have to install the one

 

Those are the best laptops! Just take out the HDD, install SSD in primary bay, install Windows, then pop the old HDD back into the second bay, format, and use as a data drive.

Installing a drive in a laptop is pretty easy. Depending on the system, you might have to do a few things to get to the drives, or, like on the XPS 17, you just have to undo ONE screw to access both bays.

 

Especially with your 2 drive bay setup, I would be ordering the system with two normal HDD's (not in RAID).

When you're ready, buy an Intel 510 250GB SSD (higher capacity; higher performance) and do a clean install of Windows7x64 to the SSD while using the following link to automatically move the 'users' and 'programdata' folders to the HDD.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...gramdata-folder-separate-drive-partition.html


With everything properly setup with the SSD/HDD combination, buy an external enclosure to put in the O/S HDD you removed to use as a backup for your (internal) D: drive.

With the above setup, this system will still be flying in 5 yrs time.

Good luck.

 

ty so much for your help and comments.

i am searching now for crucial m4s in amazon. i dont understand whats the difference between them i get so many results. look at this :

Crucial CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1 2.5-inch Solid State Drive (128GB,Real SSD,C300,SATA 6GB/S): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

and this

Crucial CT128M4Solid State Drive2 128GB M4 Solid State Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

whats the difference?

 

One is a C300, one is an M4.

The M4 is a mostly improved C300, but the LPM issues that it still has for some users is a definite turnoff for me.

 

LPM issue has been fixed for nearly everyone on the M4 with firmware 0002...

 

C300 has roughly ~8 more mbps (~30%) in the random read department. Overall, the C300 is the better drive for the average user who does a lot of "random reads", but yet holds its value so incredibly high (and even costs more than the newer M4). However, the M4 would have better resale value, if that's important to you.

 

Crucial M4 128GB on sale today on Newegg for 199.99
Newegg.com - Shell Shocker Deal. Exclusive Jaw Dropping Savings on PC Components and Electronics.

 

so for better performance in boot times and games which one is better? the c300?

 

Depends.

See:
SSD roundup: Vertex 3 vs M4 vs C300 vs 510 vs 320 vs x25-M vs F120 vs Falcon II


In practice, no synthetic benchmark can really predict what the drive will do for system specific programs or processes. Depends on the hardware/system/OS/drivers/programs installed on how fast the boot times will be and similarly it depends on the games (which one?) on how much difference you will see.

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/flash-memory-summit-nand-reliability,3004.html

In real-world use, on a specific system/configuration - not much. I would always buy the newer tech.

 

320 is good to go over here.

 

I have 2 and love them both!

 

C300 seems to be the bomb! from those benchmarks! i am just afraid to install it my self cause i am not experienced with staff like this, but it seems to be the best choice. afterall clevo laptops are the most customized laptops so how hard can it be?! ;p

 

Using a 320 and loving it very much. I'd buy a 600G if they upped the connection to SATA3

 

i might as well wait for the new samsung ssds that coming out in october i guess they are worth the wait

 

Depends.. I haven't heard anything about price, actual date (except "October"), rated specs, actual specs, etc. etc.

If you need one today, there's options. But October isn't that far away, and if there aren't any delays, or blips with firmware, it could very well be a good buy. I'd suspect in a month or so, we'll start to see some early "hands on" with the drive, and what to expect. Hopefully.

 

Supposedly Intel is validating the firmware fix for the problem.

Right now I have more faith in Intel than in Sandforce.

The upcoming Samsung drives sound juicy too.

 

Right - I just saw the post yesterday. If you check my previous posts from today, I have included that link in one or two of them.

I knew Intel would be working on a "fix" for the firmware, but wasn't sure when it would be.


I'm most interested in the new Samsung SSD's. Hopefully spec's will be decent, and we can get Intel-ish reliability too. Competition is always good.

 

whats the difference between SATA 2 and SATA 3? are the new drives gonna be sata 3?

 

Sata 3 is twice as fast as SATA 2, and SSD's can actually take advantage of that (don't believe the hype from certain Hard Drive manufacturers about how they have SATA 3 hard drives that are so much faster than the SATA 2 ones...it's marketing lies). The new Samsung is going to be SATA 3, the Crucial M4 and Intel 510 are already SATA 3.

 

What? The truth is the pudding.. Working SATAIII SSD is overall a faster drive than a SATAII drive.

So what your saying, is, SATAII SSD =/~ SATAIII SSD speeds?

 

Vaio97,

you're talking SSD madmattd is talking HDD.

 

Oh. Didn't know we were talking HDD. Thought we were discussing SSD..

 

we are discussing SSD..

 

Was answering the question about what the difference was while putting in a slightly unrelated rant against false advertising...

 

oh okay i really wanna see how good the new ssds will be an how expensive. hope they are reliable though!

 

I'm lost.. lol

Even SATAIII HDD's are going to be a bit faster than SATAII HDD's. Same goes for SSD as well. So I'm not too sure, where the "lies" lie between..

 

Which HDD can saturate a 3Gbps interface ?

 

if you look back, he was implying there isn't any sata 3 hdd that is faster than even a sata 2 sdd.

 

They aren't, at least not by a significant amount. As has been stated, no spinner can even dream of saturating SATA 2. But we digress.

 

One that is pulling from the 64MB cache.

Here's something else... it isn't "SATAIII" or "SATA 3." It is officially SATA 6 Gb/s because SATA revision II (AKA SATA II) was 3 Gb/s and thus was sometimes called SATA 3 by some people/companies, thus to avoid confusion SATA revision III will be known as SATA 6 Gb/s. Personally I like to shorten it to SATA 6G.

 

64MB/300MB => 0.2 so for about 0.2 seconds, you MAY need that > 300MB interface and that usually is not what 'saturate' means. Saturate means for a prolong period of time(1s+ is not unreasonable).

Unless of course you have written a benchmark program which repeatedly reading the same 64MB sector for 10 hours and compare the effect between SATA2 and SATA3. There you can see a gain of 200%.