As of today, Intel's new X25-M (80GB) solid state disk (SSD) is officially launched, some six months after the company first announced its intention to enter the SSD market. We've kept an eye on Intel through the entire run up to today, and discussed the reasons why the company is interested in flash storage to begin with. The company's focus, at least with this first mainstream generation of products, is on boosting the performance and reliability of multi level cell (MLC) drives rather than lowering their cost—don't expect any sudden drops in SSD prices as a result of this introduction.

As previously mentioned, Intel's SSD is built on MLC technology instead of a single level cell (SLC) design. The difference between the two can be summarized adequately as a price/performance tradeoff. SLC drives are generally faster, consume less power, and are considered to be more reliable than MLC drives (though drive manufacturers are closing this gap). MLC drives aren't as fast as their SLC counterparts (particularly when writing) and consume more power, but are much, much, cheaper, as we'll see in a moment.



Intel's X25-M, exterior view.

Intel claims the X25-M offers a number of significant improvements over other SSDs currently on the market, including vastly improved wear-leveling efficiency, better power efficiency, and higher number of IOPS (Input/Output operations per second) then its competitors. We now know that these 80GB drives will cost $595 in 1,000 unit quantities, and should appear in both OEM system designs and the retail market in the near future. Here's how price breaks down compared to various SSD options already on the market:



SSD vs. HDD.

The current SSD market

The flash market is currently something of a mess, and drive prices can vary significantly from manufacturer to manufacturer or OEM to OEM. Adding a 64GB SSD to Apple's Macbook Air, for example, costs $599 ($9.37/GB), while Dell will drop a 128GB SSD into its XPS M1730 for just $425 ($3.32/GB). Surf over to Dell's business products, however, and you'll find a 64GB SSD option on the Dell Precision M4400 with a price of $554 ($8.66/GB). I also checked HP, but that company doesn't seem to offer any SSD options by default—all of the higher-end machines I checked in both Home/Home Office and Business carried standard hard drives.

The retail market also shows considerable variation, as detailed in the following graph.

Retail SSD price-per-gigabyte varies dramatically—far more than we'd expect to see if we compared various HDD manufacturers. These different costs underline an extremely important point: Not all SSDs offer the same level of performance. The performance and power consumption of any SSD is a function of the manufacturing process and technology that drive is built upon. Relevant factors include whether the drive is built using SLC or MLC (as we covered), as well as how good the manufacturer is at squeezing maximum performance out of their own design. At $7.44/GB, Intel's new SSD is significantly more expensive than its MLC competitors; only Samsung's SLC 64GB drive is more expensive.

As for the hard drives, the VelociRaptor is generally considered to be the fastest traditional HDD on the market (and carries a premium as a result), while the WD Caviar stands in as a basic hard drive. The $0.14/GB price on the 500GB drive is not abnormal; 750GB drives are now available for just $0.15/GB, and even 1TB drives, which once carried a significant price premium, are as low as $0.17/GB.

Performance, power consumption, and market positioning

Now that we've talked a bit on where the drive stands in the SSD market, let's have a short look at its performance and power consumption. Originally, I'd planned to test this drive in my brand-new Macbook Pro (my desktop is still Windows, so don't fret). Several screws in the MBP, however, defeated my most ardent attempts to remove them, despite the fact that I had appropriately-sized screwdrivers. I now have several ruined screwdrivers and a number of circular bruises on my right hand, and the Macbook sits on my desk, mocking me.

End result: I tested the SSD on my standard Intel X38-based desktop with 4GB of RAM at 1066MHz, a Q6600 (quad-core, 2.4GHz), and an EVGA 9800 GTX. Idle power consumption was measured at the wall after Vista had been installed. The benchmark I chose, in this case, was rather simple: How long did it take to install Vista to a clean drive? I used a stopwatch, and started it when the actual installation process began, as opposed to when the OS install disc first booted. Whenever I had to enter any information, I stopped the clock, resuming the timer only after I finished. The numbers below also include the automatic performance test Vista performs when first installed.

It's a very simple test, but the results actually track quite well with what I've seen elsewhere. Any OS installation is a mixture of both reads and writes and, while we can't see the percentage breakdowns for the two categories, there's a noticeable performance difference between Intel's X25-M on the one hand, and the two mechanical drives on the other. The WD VelociRaptor is 51s behind the X25-M, or about 6.5 percent slower, while installation on the 7200.2 Momentus takes about three minutes (23 percent) longer than installing to the X25-M.

As for power consumption, the WD VelociRaptor clearly "wins", at 140W in Idle mode. While the Seagate technically edges out the Intel, realistically, given the inherent margin of error in such measurements, the two drives probably tie. I would have vastly preferred to test both power consumption and battery life in the MBP, but that proved impossible. Shipping versions of the X25-M may draw less power but, even at the moment, the drive doesn't seem as if it'll hurt battery life in any way, even if we didn't see an improvement. As a final note, the Seagate Momentus 7200.2 drive we tested is $99.99 at NewEgg, or approximately $0.50/GB.

Conclusion

Intel's X25-M isn't going to directly drive the cost of SSDs downward, and the company clearly feels the advantages it claims (some of which are apparent in specific benchmarks) are enough to justify a price point midway between standard MLC drives and Seagate's 64GB SLC. Indirectly, however, the drive could have some impact. No other company, not even Samsung, can match Intel's extensive partner network. If OEMs begin shipping more SSDs (both from Intel and other manufacturers), manufacturing capacity must rise to meet that demand. This creates economies of scale and, while Intel obviously intends to leverage its own massive fabrication capacity, we'll undoubtedly see demand for other manufacturers' solutions rising as well.

We've actually known for some time that this year's new SSDs would focus primarily on increasing performance and capacity over driving down the cost of the technology. Current test results indicate this may well have been the right choice, particularly given MLC's weak write performance. Intel's new drive is an impressive piece of work, particularly for an MLC device, but there's still a huge gap between HDD and SSD pricing that will eventually have to be addressed.

Those of you wanting an Intel SLC solution won't have long to wait; the company plans to introduce enterprise-class SLC drives later this year. Expect these to carry a significant price premium, even over the mainstream counterparts.

If you're looking for high-end performance without completely blowing your budget, however, Intel's X25-M is a new option to consider. While it's more expensive than any other MLC SSD on the market, it's also larger and cheaper than Samsung's 64GB SLC drive. For buyers at the high end of the market, Intel's new SSD may ultimately be a more attractive option than competing solutions, and this launch, taken as a whole, is a definite success.

Further reading

Tech Report: "X25-M solid-state drive"

Legit Reviews: "The Intel X25-M 80GB Solid State Drive Review" LR tests the WD VelociRaptor in a RAID 0 configuration, (matching the X25-M's ~$600 price point) and notes significant performance differences when Intel's SSD is ~80 percent full.