2010 SSD pricing (for drives >= barefoot controller perf)

[Eunos]

Is the Sandforce behaviour with compressed data a reliability issue or a performance degradation? I can't help but notice that it seems the majority of SSD makers are now using Sandforce, which shows tremendous industry confidence.

Combined with Intel's lack of either significant price reductions or performance improvements, I think the low-end choice is now between the C300 and small-capacity Sandforce drives personally.

[dhanson865]

Is the Sandforce behavior with compressed data a reliability issue or a performance degradation? I can't help but notice that it seems the majority of SSD makers are now using Sandforce, which shows tremendous industry confidence.

Combined with Intel's lack of either significant price reductions or performance improvements, I think the low-end choice is now between the C300 and small-capacity Sandforce drives personally.

Sandforce drives have a performance degradation when dealing with highly compressed or random data. It isn't enough of an issue to make the drive unusable but it could steer you toward Intel or Marvell(C300) controllers.

Intel hasn't dropped prices* as they are the one to beat. Their drives are the most reliable and perform consistently no matter how you use them. They even provide the Toolbox that lets XP/Vista users manually trim the drive.

The C300 is the value choice assuming you have a light usage scenario (in regards to writes) or you have Windows 7 (so that Trim is automatic). It's the fastest drive on reads and it is significantly cheaper than the Sandforce equivalents.

Now that pesky *. Intel hasn't dropped prices YET. Their 3rd generation drives will come and will shake up the pricing structure of the entire SSD market. It's just a waiting game at this point.

[atmartens]

My guess is that the G3 drives will be priced the same as G2 drives are now, and they will drop prices on G2. Then maybe 3 months later prices on G3 drives will begin to fall.

[dhanson865]

My guess is that the G3 drives will be priced the same as G2 drives are now, and they will drop prices on G2. Then maybe 3 months later prices on G3 drives will begin to fall.

I guess that depends on the performance of the G3 drives.

G2 drives and Sandforce drives are hanging around $2.75/GB if they can make it for half the cost they are going to undercut Sandforce and C300 drives both.

We know that the flash used in the Crucial C300 comes from the same factory as the flash from the Intel G2 drives so there is no reason for Intel to not drop the price on the G2 drives to $2.25/GB at the most.

If the G3 flash is cheap enough to be sold at $1.50/GB but the G3 drives are faster than sandforce and C300 by a chunk I could see them holding $2/GB temporarily until competition comes knocking.

It looks like the Indilinx Jetstream is still MIA until 2011 at least.

I don't know how they'll do it but I'm looking forward to serious price drops as new products are available in quantity.

[dhanson865]

Current prices are viewable at http://silentpcreview.pricegrabber.com/ ... &viewmod=2

Please use the pricegrabber link above if you plan to purchase a drive as following the link all the way to a purchase helps to support SPCR.

August 2010 SSD pricing update:

The list sorted by Gross Price is:

Code: Select all

Intel X25-V 40GB       ~$115   ~$2.88/GB
Crucial C300 64GB      ~$150   ~$2.34/GB
Corsair Nova 64GB      ~$171   ~$2.67/GB
Crucial M225 64GB      ~$180   ~$2.81/GB
Intel X25-M 80GB       ~$220   ~$2.75/GB
Crucial M225 128GB     ~$260   ~$2.03/GB
Crucial C300 128GB     ~$270   ~$2.11/GB
Corsair Nova 128GB     ~$306   ~$2.39/GB
Intel X25-M 160GB      ~$430   ~$2.69/GB
Crucial C300 256GB     ~$574   ~$2.25/GB

Standouts from that based price per/GB are
Crucial C300 64GB ~$150 ~$2.34/GB
Crucial M225 128GB ~$260 ~$2.03/GB
Crucial C300 128GB ~$270 ~$2.11/GB

with the C300 being the value drive of choice for Win7 users and the M225 being an option for XP diehards. Though the Intel G2 drives are still the overall safe choice no matter what OS you run.

I still don't recommend sandforce drives due to their behavior with compressed data and the lack of a manual trim utility for XP use but for those that want to live on the edge the current pricing is similar to the price/GB of the 2nd Generation Intel drives.

Code: Select all

Corsair Force 120GB    ~$310   ~$2.58/GB
OCZ Agility 2 120GB    ~$315   ~$2.63/GB
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB     ~$335   ~$2.79/GB

[Captain Spaulding]

Evaluating a SSD on the basis of $/GB is like evaluating a sports car based on $/cubic foot. It seems to make salient the only significant downside of the device, the relative lack of storage space. In reality, the raison d'etre is for both is speed. The type of people who frequent this site also appreciate the lack of noise, heat and vibration. There is some argument to be made in the case of a 1-bay laptop, but even this is somewhat strained.

Enough room for your OS, and apps. Over and above that, additional space becomes increasingly irrelevant. The most relevant statistic is $ per unit of increase in system performance (pick your favorite). No computer part that I have ever purchase beats an SSD in that respect.

[Eunos]

Relative speed could also be likened to comparing the performance of sports cars when stuck in traffic. There are many other bottlenecks in a PC with the result that using one SSD over another is a law of diminishing returns.

What counts is having a respectable SSD over an HDD in the first place, and here GB/$ is relevant as different people have different minimal acceptable SSD capacities and budgets.

I feel, for example, that the 40 GB OCZ Vertex 2 is good enough to warrant the extra cash over the Intel X25-V. Sustained write speed is up to 200 MB/s compared to only 35 for the Intel! This would be noticable, though I still couldn't justify upgrading my existing Intel drive that does everything I need.

But the next step with the likes of the PCIe RevoDrive (up to 400 MB/s sustained write) would not likely be very noticable in the real world. When a certain line is crossed, the only benefit is bragging rights amongst nerds. Improved GB/$ (taking for granted incremental improvements in performance) is what will bring the benefits of SSD to the masses.

Cheers.

[bradc]

Price is by far the most important reason why ssd's aren't in every pc. If the price was the same per gb as mechanical disks, noone would be using mechanical disks.

However the reality is that SSD's will be too expensive to replace mechanical disks for a few generations yet.

I think the real question is:

'At what point will SSD's be cheap enough to use them as the boot drive on every PC in the world, and the sole drive in a system that requires less than 500gb of storage'

A subset of that question is:

'when will all enthusiasts (ie the people that post on this forum and frequent anand, tech report, etc) be able to justify buying an SSD to boot from and to play games on without having to stretch their budgets.'


For me personally, I need about 80gb for my boot drive, but I'd like to have a 256gb drive to have all of my MP3's and frequently accessed files and games on with ample room to spare so that the SSD is able to keep itself reasonably trim'ed. At the moment I think that if I wandered onto Newegg and saw a Sandforce, C300 or similar top end drive for $200 to $250, I would buy it. However I think I will probably buy a 128gb drive when they are available for around $200, and then buy a larger drive later on when the prices have dropped again.

[dhanson865]

Evaluating a SSD on the basis of $/GB is like evaluating a sports car based on $/cubic foot.

Agreed. You may not have noticed but the thing that drove me to start watching price per GB was the incessant rants by others in the nature of what I mentioned in the first post:

On another site someone made the usual comment about how they won't buy an SSD until they get to $1/GB. I've seen this statement with many numbers attached on many sites, by many various authors.

At the time I started the thread the going rate was over $3/GB. Now there is a drive worth buying at just over $2/GB.

The challenge is to guess or predict when $1/GB will occur and enjoy the progression of lower prices or rail at the lack of progress depending on what happens.

recap:

steelykeneely says "silicon will have to be at least 20nm to crack the magical $1/GB at ORP." http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... meline.png shows that being late 2011. So I'm going to say unless he comes back to clarify that he is going for Christmas buying season ~Nov 2011.

Anandtech.com said 80GB drive around $120 which is $1.50/GB by Early 2011. I'll call that ~Mar 2011?

Seeing how Crucial is pricing the M225 and C300 now I'm going to guess $1/GB on a M225 by Summer 2011 but I'm not sure how many will pay attention if its leaps and bounds slower than a G3 Intel drive. The "I won't buy until" crowd will just adjust their statements to say it doesn't count if a 2 year old design is that cheap. They'll kvetch about it until the C300/Sandforce 1200/Intel G2 or G3 are down to $1/GB.

atmartens made the prediction that Intel G3 drives will be priced the same as the G2 drives are now. I'm not sure if he means G3 80GB priced like the G2 40GB or G3 80GB priced like the G2 80GB. That one could use a clarification. He then makes a couple of statements about G2 and G3 prices dropping but both are vague.

Bring on your best prediction and let me know if you see the price drop, feel free to make fun of my predictions or any one elses but only if you make a prediction of your own

[atmartens]

I mean G3 80GB will be priced the same as G2 80GB prices today. That's based on the assumption that they operate at higher speeds, possibly the next SATA revision. The reasoning is that higher speeds will provide value over the older generation, and Intel wants to keep its margins high. So they'll drop prices on G2 drives to start clearing them out. Once that happens, they might need to drop prices on G3 drives to keep pace with the competition. The general trend is still going to be falling prices on SSDs, and the G3 drives will be a part of that trend, just not immediately.

[dhanson865]

I mean G3 80GB will be priced the same as G2 80GB prices today. That's based on the assumption that they operate at higher speeds, possibly the next SATA revision. The reasoning is that higher speeds will provide value over the older generation, and Intel wants to keep its margins high. So they'll drop prices on G2 drives to start clearing them out. Once that happens, they might need to drop prices on G3 drives to keep pace with the competition. The general trend is still going to be falling prices on SSDs, and the G3 drives will be a part of that trend, just not immediately.

The scuttlebutt is that the G3 drives will cost half as much to make so if they keep the price the same they are getting a serious increase in the profit per drive.

I can't see them doing that (remember the new process will also double the quantity they are trying to sell) but I can see them keeping it more expensive than the G2 drives at least until those sell out. Maybe price G3 equal to Sandforce drives say around $2.5/GB or so and lower the price on the G2 down below $2/GB to sell out of them.

I'd also expect them to try to get the 80GB drive below the $200 mark retail for psychological reasons.

[atmartens]

If the G3 drives start out at the same price as current G2, that's still cheaper than the introductory G2 prices. I stand by my predictions

[Eunos]

the G3 drives will cost half as much to make

Correction, the NAND memory component alone will cost about half as much once the company's investments in the 25nm technology have been recouped. They are likely to reduce prices incrementally as they always do.

[dhanson865]

Intel 40GB has dropped to $110 $2.75/GB
C300 64GB is back to $143 $2.23/GB

That is the cheapest I've seen the 40GB drive without rebate gimmicks and it's nice to see the C300 supply increase enough to erase prior price increases.

OH, also P300 SSD announced (SLC version of the C300) with expected prices in the $8 to $10 per GB range. At $8/GB we get

50GB $400
100GB $800
200GB $1600

and estimates are that it will be priced higher than that.

[dhanson865]

If the G3 drives start out at the same price as current G2, that's still cheaper than the introductory G2 prices. I stand by my predictions

and your prediction has no numbers in it. Leaves a lot to interpretation.

One of the advantages of my posts in this thread is a specific quoted price on the day/date I posted the price. Real world hard numbers.

[Eunos]

Slightly off topic, but in Australia there is a company pushing the Vertex 2 for prices cheaper than the X25 drives at the moment. And they've stopped selling the X25 too. I notice it's a very different story on Newegg.

Vertex 2 40G - A$169, 60G $199 on special. For anyone here buying today, this is truly hard to top. Many places still sell the X25-V for closer to $200...

Link

[dhanson865]

fwiw I don't think of Australian or any other pricing as off topic. Just because I think in US dollars doesn't make your pricing data irrelevant.

I haven't been paying attention to 40GB, 50GB and 60GB sandforce drives but US prices I see right now for Vertex 2 are

40GB $149
50GB $184
60GB $160

It's interesting to note the performance specs are the same for the 50 and 60 but slightly slower for the 40.

The speed difference is not enough to worry about but if the price difference between the 40GB and 60GB is that small I'd be hard pressed to find a reason not to buy the higher capacity drive.

I see pccasegear.com doesn't offer the 50GB drive and has a more noticeable premium on the 60GB than I'm seeing in the US.

[Eunos]

60 is indeed the sweet spot. PC Case Gear are selective in what they offer, as it's a much smaller market. But looks like they are Sandforce fans.

I take it you've seen the latest review of the 40G Corsair Force?

http://www.storagereview.com/corsair_fo ... eview_40gb

For some reason Newegg are selling it for above the $130 MSRP, supposedly it's sub$100 with rebate currently.

The new low-capacity 40GB Corsair Force F40 is a stunner. Compared to other boot-only drives it blows the competition out of the water by retaining the high read and write speeds of its higher capacity brothers. In our real-world benchmarks the difference is amazing when you compare this drive against the Intel X25-V, which is in the same price category, but limited in write speed. It speeds ahead in our Productivity trace and soars in the HTPC trace, thanks to the 240MB/s write speeds compared to the Intel’s 40MB/s.

[dhanson865]

Nope, I hadn't read that one yet. I'll have to let Brian know he got the specs wrong on the 40GB version.

It'd also be nice if he put the 64GB C300 in next to the 40GB sandforce as they have similar pricing.

Both make the 40GB Intel look bad on the write speeds.

[atmartens]

If the G3 drives start out at the same price as current G2, that's still cheaper than the introductory G2 prices. I stand by my predictions

and your prediction has no numbers in it. Leaves a lot to interpretation.

One of the advantages of my posts in this thread is a specific quoted price on the day/date I posted the price. Real world hard numbers.

OK here we go. On Newegg I see the 80GB G2 Intel drive at $220. I predict that this price will remain there until they launch the next generation of drives, at which point it will drop to around $190-$200. The G3 drives will launch at $220-$230. Once they clear out G2 stock, the price will start dropping slowly.

[dhanson865]

Per my August Pricing update the Intel G2 160GB is $430.

Rumor has it that the price point on the 160GB X25-M G3 is being targeted at $400. ($2.50/GB) Which puts the 80GB at $200.

That's higher than I predicted but lower than current G2 prices.

[CTT]

The fact that the new generation will be introduced at about the same price point as the last one is understandable and quiet predictable.
Unfortunately the G2 didn't really go down in price during its life cycle as it happened with G1.

[dhanson865]

The Intel 40GB SSD is down to $99 including S&H at amazon right now. That's a drop of $15 since I looked at it earlier today.

[Eunos]

For an extra 99 cents, Newegg include a free game, or something.

Another emerging technology is the 3-bit cell. Though one can expect some performance compromises, I suppose this has the potential to slash a further 30% off the cost of NAND flash.

[dhanson865]

3 bit MLC is more suitable for USB drives. I don't expect PCIe or SATA drives to move away from 2 bit MLC.

The pros and cons for 3 bit vs 2 bit are the same as those for MLC vs SLC

Pro * cheaper price per capacity
Pro * higher density (good for getting the same data in a smaller package)

Con * significantly slower write/erase speeds (Read speeds are slower but as a practical manner can be treated as though they are unaffected)
Con * cells wear out faster (less writes before they die)
Con * more susceptible to failures in high temperature environments.
Con * use more power


If you like the sandforce controller and you know you'll avoid lots of writes you could go to 3 bit MLC and lower the cost of the SSD but it will also be slower, use more power, and be less durable. To me it isn't worth the performance, power, durability trade offs.

I guess we'll see how that works out over the next few years.

[dhanson865]

The Intel 40GB SSD is down to $99 including S&H at amazon right now. That's a drop of $15 since I looked at it earlier today.

Intel 80 GB SSD is down to $199 now.

Intel 160 GB SSD is down to $410 now.

looks like the price will drop before the G3 release to clear out old stock.

[nicko]

Does someone know when will G3 arrive? Also, as I noticed, it won't be 80Gb X25-M anymore, just 160Gb and 320Gb? X25-V will have 80Gb capacity?

[Tephras]

The first G3 drives will be out sometime during the fourth quarter of this year. There will be two G3 X25-V drives; one 80GB, as you wrote, and one 40GB. At least according to the most recently "leaked" roadmap (below), but things might of course change in the coming months.

[bradc]

If the ambiguous spacing on that page are close to realistic, it looks like the new 160gb will be priced about half way between the current 80gb and 160gb, possibly slightly closer to the current 80gb price. The new 300gb will be more than the current 160gb, I'm guessing it will be twice the price of the new 160gb though

Pity the X25-E's are getting replaced, just as I've received one!

[Cryoburner]

Techspot posted their Budget SSD Roundup just the other day, benchmarking SSDs in the sub-$150 price range. The highest priced drive was $135, and the least expensive was $83. Their three most recommended drives in this range were the Kingston SNV425-S2 64GB, OCZ Vertex 2 40GB, and Intel X25-V 40GB.

The 64GB Kingston's performance surprised me a bit. I was expecting lower performance due to the low prices I've seen it on sale for. It actually looks to be quite a nice drive though, and it performed good to excellent in all real-world tests they performed. The best part is its price, which at $125 is just $1.95 per Gigabyte. What's more, there's currently a rebate being offered at Newegg to bring its final price down to $100, making the cost per Gigabyte $1.56. A desktop bundle version is also available, which includes mounting brackets, cables and software for $5 more, but it also works out to the same $100 price point after rebate. That's the same price as the Intel drive, but with 60% more storage, and comparable to better performance in most usage scenarios.

As far as performance goes, it seems to take a different approach than Intel. Where Intel's drive offers mediocre read/write speeds with excellent access times, the Kingston drive offers excellent read/write speeds with mediocre random accesses. For tiny files, the Intel performs a lot better, while for larger files the Kingston does. Both seem to offer good overall performance though, despite taking different paths to get there. The Newegg reviews for the Kingston drive are quite positive as well, and appear to be nearly on par with Intel's. It seems like a drive that could be added to the list here, as even at its normal $125 price point it appears to offer great performance and capacity for its price range.