Newsbyte – Intel today announced a new “Value” product in its solid state disk drive (SSD) portfolio. The X25-V 40 GB is likely the first member of a new series that will complement the M (mainstream) and X (high performance) version of Intel’s SSD offering.
The 2.5” 40 GB drive is priced at $125 in 1000-unit quantities and will be, according to Intel, targeted at netbooks and dual-drive (SSD/HDD) desktop computers “at an affordable price.” Interestingly, this new drive has been available in retail for some time, according to data provided by Pricegrabber.com. The drive entered U.S. retail in mid-January and has sold between $128 and $131 since then.
Intel X25-V SSD
The V’s more expensive M siblings (which also come in 1.8” and 2.5” form factors) currently sell for an average of $229 (80 GB) and $469 (160 GB) in online retail stores. Prices are declining rapidly: The 160 GB drive sold for more than $550 just six months ago, while the 80 GB version had price spikes into the $320 neighborhood until recently, Pricegrabber.com data states.
Consumers who choose the V drive not only compromise on capacity, but on performance as well. The V drive is rated at a read rate of 170 MB/s and a write rate of 35 MB/s. Read latency is 65 microseconds, write latency is 110 microseconds. The 80 GB M drive delivers a read rate of up to 250 MB/s, and a write rate of up to 70 MB/s. Read latency is 65 microseconds, write latency is 85 microseconds. The M drive is also superior in IOPS performance; both drives are rated a power consumption of 150 mWatts.
The good news here is that NAND flash SSDs are getting much more affordable, which, in this case, is because of Intel’s aggressive pricing that is enabled by the mass production of 34 nm MLC flash chips. Affordable, however, is a relative term. Consumers who focus on affordability and cost, are likely to stick, for now, with a traditional hard drive. For example, Seagate’s 2.5” Momentus 500 GB drive currently sells for about $100.
High performance desktop drives remain an option as well: WD’s Velociraptor 300 GB desktop HDD is currently priced around $200.
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