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Extremely interesting to say the least.
It’s been a few good months since we
have seen an exceptional high performing
SSD's come across our path and to date
only a few have endured the arduous
tests we throw at them. Today is no
different with
Intel’s 250GB SSD 510 Series
crossing the finishing line with flying
colours. In three years these items
that started off in small capacities
have now grown both in size and
tremendous speed. In the past two
years these items have grown in maturity
with Intel trying tremendously hard to
surpass their previous generations.
Ensuring that the end-users are fully up
to date with new firmware’s, specialised
toolboxes to ensure optimal performance
to maintain the “need for speed”.
These are considerable advantages to
the end user which adds confidence in
what they are buying.
The
Intel® 250GB SSD 510 Series
arrived packaged securely in a sound
shipping box. Upon opening we found all
that every end-user could and would need
as we saw within page 3. Drive bay
converters, cables, even migration
software. Therefore even the most
novice end-user can successfully upgrade
their drive and with the bundle
supplying a migration software package,
that precious data can be safely and
securely moved from drive to drive.
Interestingly enough Intel has not gone
down the Sandforce controller route that
so many have been quick to utilise,
though they have opted for the latest
Marvell controller and firmware. The
validation of all has been completely at
Intel’s desecration and one should not
expect the 510 Series to perform as
other Marvell supported drives. Intel
has painstakingly taken to make it
abundantly clear that although a 3rd
party controller and firmware, it has
gone through Intel’s
arduous certification and testing.
This in turn will mean that the
dependability and superb build quality
will be no different to that of any
other Intel SSD.
The synthetic benchmarks showed Intel’s
250GB 510 Series SSD coming in on
their quoted figures, in some places it
surpassed their expectations. Sandra
2011, CrystalMark 3 and the PCMark
Vantage in the synthetic benchmark modes
all showed how well
Intel’s 510 Series 250GB did
perform. The documented 500MB/s
Sequential READ wasn’t far off the mark
at all and this was to be similarly
found within the Sequential Writes.
Intel’s
250GB 510 Series performance uptake
over Crucial’s C300 has been
astonishing, though awaiting in the
wings somewhere is Crucial’s new m4 SSD
which has claims to be faster than what
has been seen today. For now, we will
just have to wait and see. In this
instance, with the 250GB 510 Series this
is one serious SSD you can readily
purchase built from any good
e-tailer. Fast is good and fast is
what we want, fast is what we have
shown.
Moving up a gear to the more vogue AS
SSD and more recent release of ATTO, the
results are all too clear, that the
documented claims live up to
expectations.
With all items of this magnitude we have
to look forward to what one would expect
within real-time applications springing
to the fore with gruelling I/O tests are
that of POV-Ray and SolidWorks 2007
APC.
Looking back whence we first looked at
Sandy Bridge it went out with Crucial’s
C300 RealSSD and ATI’s V8800. What
we do see is slight increases in both
tests – and whilst some would say – not
much, others will tell you that the
increases are significant. Seven (7)
seconds shaved off POV-Ray’s recent
benchmark build is a substantial amount
of time.
SolidWorks APC sees the “Day
in the Life Scores” lower which is very
good and within the actual "APC" we see
much higher scores with much faster
times to complete each test. These are
significant and very important factors which
should be taken into due consideration
when comparing other types of SSD for
these intensive I/O applications. As a
point of note and to emphasise the
feature of today’s outing sees a slight
change in build with the ATI FirePro
V7800 which has less video memory
bandwidth than the ATI FirePro V8800 and
therefore the complete system I/O has to
work much harder to gain these final
results.
SPECviewperf® 11 we have as of yet to
see any form of results in the wild so
it was felt that to crosscheck what
SolidWorks APC had shown should be
reflective within this professional
benchmark. What was noticeable was that
of the additional professional viewsets
that rely upon the system I/O brought
out some very good scores from this very
good value for money professional
graphics card. ATI’s driver team have
maintained pushing this to the fore and
obtaining the most from its current
architecture. Therefore hopefully we
should see some sort of upgrade soon as
ATI’s Multimedia range has gone through
a major refresh, could something be upon
the horizon at all. Time will tell,
until then we have to wait patiently and
see what our out of focus crystal ball
says could possibly happen next.
Within the introduction we briefly
stated that Intel has many SSD’s to suit
many pockets and that these items can be
used within many places. Some 14
different types of SSD’s, from the
Extreme SLC and for the most the
affordable MLC variant. Extreme SLC
SSD’s to be found within many differing
boot sector scenario’s or an extreme
laptop with a mobile professional
graphics card to the X25-V variant now
found within many desktops and notebooks
to improve boot time read. Though
today’s new 510 and 320 Series SSD’s are
rapidly replacing the
X25-E Extreme. With the 320 Series the
vastly improved random read performance
up to 39,500 Input/Output Operations per
Second (IOPS). It shows just how much
emphasis Intel has placed upon SSD’s for
future generations of notebooks,
desktops and the mighty workstation.
Deviating ever so slightly the
new
Intel SSD 320 Series comes
pre-configured with Advanced Encryption
Standard (AES) 128 bit encryption
capabilities.
There
will be an enormous scrambling to get in
the orders as these facts will take
Government, Finance and Banking sectors
et al with storm. Delays in vital
encryption protocols will no longer be
the excuse with the rapid IOPS
performance of these types of SSD.
Pricing and availability. This Is where
it has got very interesting. Intel has
pitched the price of the new 250GB
510Series SSD’s directly at their
competitor’s capacity and price
structures. No longer does one have to
pay a premium for the Intel brand name,
but living up to their claims at meeting
the demands and needs of the many most
certainly has conducted a
shrewd
marketing ploy with pricing.
On-going to print e-tailers do have
these items in stock and currently are
retailing around £375.00 before VAT and
delivery.
Finally; the day fully belongs to Intel®
and their new
250GB 510 Series SSD. This has
taken us by surprise with its phenomenal
burst read, write speeds, and whilst
like all the other SSD's of this
capacity demands a premium. It is
though a premium worth paying to gain
the ultimate in read performance.
Place within the correct environment it
will bring to life many systems in many
sectors. We now find ourselves
persistently chasing and optimising the
"need for speed". Intel® have
completed a superb job here with the new
250GB 510 Series SSD and it should
be without hesitation that this SSD is at
the top of the shopping list for any new
build or upgrade where performance
demands nothing but the best. |
