The beginning of the SSD price war?

[Rick_Hunter]

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=13671

It is becoming affordable, I think I might be willing to fork out 700 for the 120gb ssd if future independent reviews shows that it has good performances. Running the OS, programs, games on these drives should be awesome due to low seeks

Intel has yet to release their prices, hopefully something similar. If it is something similar then other manufacturers (samsung, etc) has to drop their prices otherwise who would pay 3x for similar performance

Which brings an interesting question of will HDD's be phased out slowly in near future? I see WD making a 20,000rpm hdd, but it would never reach seek times even close to the SSD's, will use more power, louder (I hate vibration noise). Plus with more players joining the SSD game, it will only get better, faster, larger, cheaper.

[NewKleer]

problem:

FTM20GK25H quotes read speeds of around 120MiB/s and write speeds of 40MiB/s

older ssd drives had poor write speeds and as a result tended to be not significantly better than mechanical HDD.

you dont want to spend $600 on a 40mb/s write speeds. also upping capacity and keeping the price high isnt going to help, we need lower cost drives even if it means keeping capacity around 32/64gb mark. although $600 for 120gb is good - esp if it promotes better performing drives to lower their prices.

would not hesitate to get a 32gb drive at ocz/samsung performance levels for <$250. the other thing with cheaper low capacity drives is you can raid them for higher performance.

hopefully intel's entry to market will help things also.

[Whisper]

When Seagate enter the SSD market, that's when I expect the prices to really plummet.

Unless of course another large drive maker get into the act, or Intel decide to get into storage.

[NewKleer]

SSD are storage as typical storage has been. SSD is much closer to memory manufacturers than it is anywhere near mechanical HDD manufacturers

intel is already developing SSD products, and there are plenty of memory manufacturers that are sure to jump on board, so all it needs is a bit of time.

[pippin88]

I think it will be a fairly long time till SSD replaces mechanical HDDs completely. For high frequency data (OS, games etc) it will be viable soonish. For large storage, there is no need for the low seek times and the speeds are not better at this stage. It will be a loooong time till SSD equals mechanical HDD $/gig.

[OMARK]

+1 pippin and newkleer.

it will be a long time time before ssd's reach a price point thats comparable to mechanical drives, but already they are making progress to performance levels which make SMALL capacity ssd's very desirable.

as to newkleer, your half right (imo) about manufacture being closer to ram makers than hard drive makers, in terms of the physical memory in the ssd your are correct, but the most important fector in these drives is the circuitry which controls it all, hence intel having a lot invested in this tech field....

[karl_eller]

It'll be good when we start seeing decently fast (in terms of SSD fast) SSDs in the 120-160GB capacity falling under $500 (Or even under say $250-300). They'd have an instant huge acceptance in both Laptops and as OS/Game drives in desktop. I'd love to stick a high-end 120gb SSD in a laptop

Eller

[SLATYE]

When SSDs offer the same capacity for the same price, I'll change (maybe a bit sooner for the laptop). Until then, I'm quite happy with standard HDDs and the performance they offer. I like to be able to hear when the system is doing something, which isn't possible with a SSD.

I think that pippin88 is right in saying that HDDs will rule the "high-capacity" market for a long time. They'll probably also rule 99% of the desktop market for a long time too, simply because consumers only see the capacity. You'll have a hard time persuading a customer that they should spend more to get a 128GB SSD instead of a 1TB HDD, even if the HDD is only a 5400RPM model.

[chainbolt]

Originally Posted by NewKleer

problem:

older ssd drives had poor write speeds and as a result tended to be not significantly better than mechanical HDD.

I disagree. They were always better.

- faster access time - which is for a desktop user much more important than STR
- no noise
- much lower power consumption
- running far cooler
- far more reliable

The only problem until now was the price, and the fact that SSD until some time ago were only offered in small capacities.

[NewKleer]

yep for sure, mechanica HDD will be around for a long time yet, but for the performance side of things, people in the know will start to turn to them once the price drops a bit

if you want to hear your drive, hook up a buzzer to the HDD activity LED line (with transistor if needed)! i know at work i can hear the computer with the 10k raptor in it from the next room, dont want to have to make similar sacrifices for that performance for too much longer

Originally Posted by chainbolt

I disagree. They were always better.

you have an extremely short memory

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=3133&p=1

ill leave you to google the numerous reports of poor transcend SSD drives. 3-4rs to install XP is definitely NOT faster

so i stand by what i said, older SSD drivers were horrible, and they were far far from competitive with mechanical HDD

the newer mtron, ocz/samsung, etc drives are a different story, hard to find a benchmark where they dont destroy mech HDD

[Tartarus]

I'll buy my first SSD when the price hits $1 per gigabyte. (Not for a while, I know) Since HDDs are now 15c/GB, the performance just isn't worth the price.

[chainbolt]

Originally Posted by NewKleer

you have an extremely short memory

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=3133&p=1

older SSD drivers were horrible

Doubtful. Even the outdated SSD they tested in the Anand review from last year were in no way described as "horrible". SSD were in the past years used for UMPC, notebooks etc, and for that purpose they were for obvious reason always the better choice than a mechanical solution.

- no noise
- far lower heat and power consumption
- far more reliable
- less weight
- faster access time

But why we are discussing history? The latest SSD are as fast in applications as the fastest HDD, plus they have all the other advantages I mentioned. And SSD are becoming faster and cheaper by the day, whereas the HDD concept is basically maxed out, and there is no way whatsoever to overcome its conceptual shortcomings, like reduced reliability, noise, heat, and weight. SSD are mainstream since the beginnign of this year, I can get them here in Akihabara at every vendor and they are listed now in the daily price and product monitoring.

[3stars]

what happens when a ssd shit themselves bye bye data

[feistl]

to be honest, im pretty happy with the speed of todays HDDs. Although i dont play many games or HDD intensive stuff so its not really relevant to me.

I agree with the above poster though, i dont want to see bigger SSDs, i want to see cheaper. If your really rich 128GB SSD is nice, but for the real world there is a bigger market for a cheaper 32gb version.

[karl_eller]

Originally Posted by 3stars

what happens when a ssd shit themselves bye bye data

What happens when a HDD shits itself? Unless you want to pay a lot of money for a data recover service, bye bye data. Anyway, you should be backing up anything you can't afford to lose, so it'd mostly be your fault.

And I think once we start seeing some decently priced 80-160 Gb SSDs, they will VERY quickly become the norm for laptop drives. A fraction of the power of an HDD, no moving parts (so less fragile if dropped), and no heat generated.

Eller