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The last several months have seen a few
more SSD's crossing our paths. Only a
few have made the grade here for the
professional workstations and sadly the
others did not. To date the
Intel® X25-M
Extreme still maintains the roost and
our choice as the top end of choice
within top end workstations and as a
boot drive in servers, swiftly following
up in second place with Crucial's
C300 250GB in the desktop arena.
Both of these SSD’s have their
respective places and have been
difficult to beat, until now. Today we
take a look at the 250GB
Intel® Solid-State Drive 510 Series
drive
that promises a whole new remit to
the SSD market. |
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Two variants are now readily
available the important 250GB which we
are looking at today and the more cost
efficient 120GB which has many target
markets to varied to list.
Intel’s SSD’s
have been around now for a good period
being one of the few companies that have
constantly investing and rising to the
challenge to make better, faster and
more affordable SSD's to the
community. These varying types of
SSD’s have been aimed at all sectors of
the market and not forgetting pockets as
many strive still for the vogue need for
speed.
SSD's
still sadly bring with them many
stigma's and questions to those that are
unsure of moving from standard
rotational media. Many still believe
that the WD VelociRaptor still gives a
major bang for buck in many areas,
especially the 600GB 6GB/s variant.
Cost/GB is of course still being the
primary objective that the SSD
manufactures still have to overcome -
but now they are turning this around
very quickly much to the delight of
many. However, there are other old
wives tales about, though take some with
a bucket of salt others, ask the
question and possibly save you hundreds
of bucks in the long run. The key to
deployment of the SSD is knowing just
where and when it should go. A key
point of due consideration which will be
covered within the conclusions. |
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Intel’s
Marketing has sent over several good
pieces of information about these two
drives, the tools provided and a little
insight to the newcomer on the block who
has not looked at this type of drives at
all.
Moving onwards we look at the Product
Brief of the Intel® Solid-State Drive
510 Series, kindly supplied by Intel’s
Public Relations department. |
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Performance Amplified!
The Intel® Solid-State Drive 510 Series
accelerates SATA throughput for
demanding client systems by utilizing
SATA 6 gigabits per second (Gb/s)
performance and proven Intel NAND Flash
Memory based SSD technology. Available
in a 2.5 inch form factor, the Intel SSD
510 Series supports data transfers of up
to 500 megabytes per second (MB/s).
As an accelerated storage solution, the
Intel SSD 510 Series makes desktops,
workstations, and notebooks come alive
by transferring more data in less time—
expediting storage I/O and unleashing
system performance!
Outperforms HDDs
Designed to deliver outstanding
performance, the Intel SSD 510 Series
draws from decades of memory engineering
experience and compute-quality NAND
Flash memory manufacturing. The drives
feature the latest generation SATA 6Gb/s
interface with advanced architecture
employing eight (8) parallel NAND flash
channels equipped with multi-level-cell
NAND Flash Memory. The Intel SSD 510
Series delivers exceptional
throughput—dramatically outperforming
traditional hard disk drives (HDDs).
In fact, the Intel® SSD 510 Series
outperforms two SATA 6Gb/s 10,000 rpm
Raided hard disk drives! High-end game
and workstation systems benefit from
increased storage performance over
mechanical hard drive configurations.
Mobile workstations now experience
higher performance, as well as SSD
ruggedness and power savings over Raided
dual-bay HDDs.
Solid State Means Rugged, Lower Power
Unlike traditional hard disk drives,
Intel Solid-State Drives have no moving
parts, resulting in a quiet, cool,
highly rugged storage solution that also
offers faster system responsiveness.
Boot time, application launches, file
loads, sleep recovery, benchmarks; each
activity is faster with a 120GB or 250GB
Intel SSD 510 Series device. Delivering
sequential read speeds up to 500MB/s and
sequential write to 315MB/s, the Intel®
SSD 510 Series dramatically accelerates
operating systems and application
performance. Designed to satisfy the
most demanding gamers, media creators
and technology enthusiasts, the Intel
SSD 510 Series brings high performance
storage and reliability to notebook and
desktop PC systems.
Proven Support – SSD Management Tool
Suite
The Intel® SSD Toolbox with Intel® SSD
Optimizer provides a powerful set of
management, information, and diagnostic
tools to maintain the health of your
Intel SSD and optimize performance to
“fresh-out-of-the-box” levels. The FREE
Toolbox also includes the System
Configuration Tuner that will configure
your system to take full advantage of
your SSD performance. Download the
toolbox at
www.intel.com/go/ssdtoolbox
The Intel® Data Migration Software helps
you install an Intel SSD. With minimal
steps, this tool clones the operating
system and files from a hard drive or
SSD to any Intel SSD. The FREE Intel
Data Migration Software supports
Microsoft Windows* 7, Vista*, and XP and
is available for download at
www.intel.com/go/ssdinstallation |
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Capacities to Fit Your Needs
Whether you choose 120GB or 250GB
capacity, the Intel SSD 510 Series
provides an optimized SATA 6Gb/s storage
solution, accelerating performance and
making your system come alive!
Experience the hard-drive alternative
with a 6Gb/s Intel® Solid- State Drive
510 Series.
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