Intel G3, when?

Just got the G2, buuuut after all it like a year old now

Myabe it was better to wait ???

Somebody there know when the g3 will come ??

 

Intel's SSD roadmap through Q1 of 2011 has been leaked. The X25-M G3 is confirmed through this document to come in 160GB, 300GB and 600GB capacities, with their new 25nm MLC NAND flash due out Q4 this year. The rest of the line is getting a refresh too, and a new small form factor SSD debuts.

 

Chances are the only way G3 will be much better than the G2 is with SATA 3.0, and since the m15x doesnt support it, G2 is still mighty good

 

like it said late 2010 and early 2011 expect to see capacities doubled and prices to drop significantly. I believe they are working on a new joint venture SSD factory to increase productions and reduce price. SSD will be more common then ever in the next coming months. Sata III or not you still get more space and a smaller silicon size. which means hopefully less power n heat

 

Excellent. I'd love to get a SSD but the prices at the moment are beyond insane.

 

Off topic, I find it annoying that you always have to put a space before "?". Just a pet peeve of mine. Dx

You probably wouldn't need/buy G3 even if you waited though, because it's probably just a slight increase in speed. And if you wanted one, you'd have a dish out a lot for it's new tech and the capacities are outrageous for SSDs.

 

G3 will come towards end of the year but personally , i'd get a 128GB Crucial C300.. the 128GB version is way cheaper per GB compared to 160GB intel.. since G3 prices will be similar to G2 , than the C300 should be better.. G3 wil most probably not better than C300.

 

I have to chuckle with everyones opinion that the G3's will not be a big upgrade. This is Intel we're talking about and I expect them to be fully competitive again - which will mean paying a premium for them initially.

What we have available now is obviously better than the G2's in a lot of scenarios, but that does not accurately predict the future offerings that Intel is getting ready to unleash on the world soon.

I hope I'm right!

 

You'll have to forgive Sean. He just dropped the coin for the C300 so in his opinion of course it's better. Heck, he even decided to ignore the myriad issues associated with the G73.

 

Looking forward to see a new topic from him with the title:

"My G73 was screwed-up. Please help "




--

 

G3 is expected in December (holiday season).

It might be a big upgrade performance wise. It could also be similar speeds as G2 for a much lower price.

 

We'll see refreshed g2's /w increased size before g3, I think.

 

what is the the highest capacity ssd that is worth to buy? i been eyeing the c300 256gb.

 

On a SATA II controller a Sandforce drive will perform better. Like Corsair Force 240 or OCZ Vertex 2.

 

Even if the G3's are only 'refreshed', the current G2's which are really a 'refresh' of the G1's are still very contemporary and competitive.

So, I still think that a (much) larger sized SSD with G2+ like performance will be a big hit with enthusiasts.

This shows just how relevant G2's are still (with technology that is over two years old...):

See:
Tom's Hardware's Summer Guide: 17 SSDs Rounded Up : Tom?s Hardware Mainstream SSD Shootout

 

Nice read. Unfortunately only synthetic benchmarks. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from it.

 

I seriously doubt the G3 prices will be similar to G2, it's a 40% reduction in process size, and will result in around 40% cost saving. Meaning that even without any performance upgrade at all, it's going to be 60-70% bigger capacity for the same price. Moreover, I doubt there won't be significant performance upgrade, SSD works more or less like raid, more flash chips = faster speed, that's why 160gb intel is faster than 80gb ones, 40% smaller flash chip size = more they can put into a ssd = more performance.

 

Agreed Phil, about the synthetic 'scores'.

However, having used 2 or 3 of the SSD's they list there, I would rate them very similarly - in 'real world use'.

When they state that the SandForce based drives are the current 'best' performers, even if they're more expensive, they are right on target with what I experienced when swapping out SSD's like mad a few months ago.

 

I mainly looked at the Vantage overall scores. Intel G2 comes out faster than Crucial C300 and all Sandforce drives.

Real world performance is the other way around in my opinion.

 

lol...

Phil, and I almost completely ignore the benchmark scores - and go by the conclusions.

 

It's a fact.. it is better than G2 although not as reliable and i calculated.. per GB , its cheaper than intel..

anyways , thank you both... i'll be waiting for ur throats if my G73 screws up.. but touch wood , problems with it should be solved.. i'm going for it because other than MSI GX660 , i don't like anything else... and i want an 17 incher...

 

seems like i'll be waiting til december. we should get pricing/performance info sooner, november most likely. that'll be when i decide between the g3 and the c300.

the price of the crucial could possibly be lower then as well.

 

Okii we just have to wait and see then

 

im also thinking that any performance gains by the g3 will be limited by the sata 2 interface, and you will only see its real benefits in sata 3 - similar to the c300

i am however not hoping for increased performance and more of a significant price/gb decrease - as most people are.

 

Until random R/W speeds get near SATA/150 speeds, majority of SSDs will not really benefit with the new interface since sequential speeds have more impact with marketing than real life usage (for majority of users).

 

i see your point. i agree.

still hoping for lower price more than performance though.

 

IMO price/gb is a lot more important than the performance for SSD. You only feel the performance difference between disk type HDD and SSD with like what? 25 times performance difference in random read? Even a 10-20% difference in performance will not matter. G3 is the next big thing for SSD because it will bring the price/gb bar of ssds crashing down.

 

Could I perhaps borrow your crystal ball? I have some stocks I'm looking at and might bet a couple college games this weekend.

Thanks!

 

For any SSD to get better than what I have experienced in the past year in over a dozen different platforms and O/S's including OS/x:

1) They need to signal the chipset/cpu that they're doing 'work' so that appropriate 'sleep states' are disabled during the time the SSD is actively working.

2) They need to lower the latency between data requests and delivery. An XT Hybrid (or previously, an Hitachi 7K500 with eBoostr) completing work faster than a current generation SSD is pathetic.

3) They need to increase the capacity - 40GB, 60GB and 100GB SSD's are so 2001.

See:
Hard Drives Reach 160GB - PCWorld

4) Last, but not least is to ship an SSD with full tools to fully clean the nand chips to a 'like new' state, ability to return the unused capacity to a 'like new' state, and finally, a reporting tool that accurately and transparently shows the health and state of the SSD's chips at a more granular level. We know they have this, we need it too.


Intel G3's may not hit all these points I state above, but what Intel has stated is that they want the SSD's to work transparently, reliably and consistently.

They already did that with the G2's.

This is why the G3 will be a success - if they continue on their stated path.


Sean473, here's your cystal ball back - Thanks!

Cheers!

 

It's true that random speeds are more important. But from the benchmarks with C300 it can be gathered that the C300 does get noticeable gains from being on a SATA III connection.

As soon as SATA III connections become available in notebooks the C300 is the fastest SSD one can get, faster than any drive connected on SATA II.

 

I'm talking about real life benefits. Going from a HDD to a "good" SSD has definite and easily observable benefits but going from that to a "better" SSD yields much less. Yes, in benchmarks, you get higher numbers but as stated before what's even more important is the price per GB factor. I'm not saying sequential speeds are unimportant but that these values are much more marketing oriented.

 

Putting a C300 on a SATA 150 connection would noticeably limit it's real world performance. Storagereview showed that going from SATA II to SATA III the C300 almost doubles it's real world performance.

 

Phil, I must have read that Storagereview.com review a few times now, but still can't figure out if they tested the SATA2 devices on the SATA3 512MB RAID Card ports also?

That would definitely let us know if the huge cache on the RAID card was responsible for the dramatic C300 scores (if the relative performance remained the same between drives).

I'm guessing that a lot of the drives would 'show' better on the cached card - although the C300 would still be faster of course.

 

You might want to ask Storagereview the details. They have a forum too.

 

We'll wait and see...