Intel X25-E SSD tops graphs in Tech Report review

When the Tech Report reviewed Intel’s first SSD, the X25-M, they found the drive to be the fastest drive they had ever tested, with the only let down being its fairly slow write performance.  Unfortunately, there is little that Intel can do with the inherent slow write performance of MLC flash memory, so for those that need much faster write performance, Intel has released an X25-E Extreme 32GB model, which is based on SLC flash chips.  This drive retains the 250MB/s sustained read performance of the original model and 16MB of cache, but its write speed well over doubles to 170MB/s.  However, due to SLC flash memory costing triple the price of MLC flash memory per gigabyte, the Extreme model is only available with a 32GB capacity, with a 64GB model expected to be released later.

When the Tech Report carried out the review, the reviewer was expecting a significant improvement in the write performance, but this drive went well beyond its expectations to make it the new fastest drive they’ve tested now.  Unsurprisingly, the Tech Report has awarded it their Editor’s Choice award.  While the original X25-M performed quite poor at write tests even against ordinary 7200RPM hard disks, including tests with mixed read & write operations, the X25-E Extreme was the leader in nearly every test that involved write operations.  Its average sustained write speed even exceeds the VelociRaptor by around 100MB/s and also breaks its own sustained write speed rating.  In read-only tests, the drive performed a little better than the X25-M in all tests, which was helped by its 10ms latency improvement over the X25-M. 

Of course, such performance does not come without a few catches, as this drive starts at around $719 and is currently only available with 32GB capacity.  However, this SSD really gives serious bang for the buck going by the jaw-dropping results in the Tech Report review, very unlike what performance boost the hefty priced Intel Extreme CPUs give over CPUs that are just a little slower, but cost under a quarter the price!  Also, unlike enterprise SAS 10kRPM and 15kRPM hard drives, this Intel drive does not use an SAS controller, which allows it to be used in consumer PCs without also forking out on a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controller, which SAS drives require.   This drive will also work in laptops, where the additional performance, ruggedness and lower power consumption will really show off compared to existing mobile hard disks and SSDs.

The see just how well this drive performs against other SSDs and desktop hard disks, the full review can be read on the Tech Report.

For those with a desktop PC who cannot afford an SLC flash drive or would like to have to have much more capacity, our senior reviewer Wendy has recently showed how the write performance of MLC based flash drives can be vastly improved by using a RAID host controller with a large cache for write-back operations.  Even with the price of a UPS to protect the cache in the event of a power failure, these components including the MLC drive will work out much cheaper than an equivalent capacity SLC drive on its own, especially when purchasing multiple or larger SSDs for additional capacity.