Even though Intel hasn't been particularly chatty about its third generation X25-M SSDs, we already have quite a few details, including complete specs. However, we aren't supposed to get our hands on them until sometime at the start of next year.
It looks like someone in China has managed to get a few samples a little early, though, as online auction site Taobao has listings for what appear to be several of the third generation SSDs. Obviously these sorts of listings can be faked quite easily, but EXPReview has obtained photos of the drive clearly showing accurate looking model numbers.
The site has also managed to get a hold of screenshots of HD Tune that show the performance of the drives, though it isn't clear if they actually managed to get one of the SSDs to test internally. The results show Intel's latest performing about on par with what we expected, though read performance peaked at 218MB/s - about 87 per cent of the advertised speed. However, it's possible that this will be improved with more mature firmware if these are early samples.
For those in need of a refresher, the third generation 'Postville Refresh' drives will be based on brand new 25nm IMFT MLC NAND flash and a new controller. The combination should be capable of read and write performance of around 250MB/s and 170MB/s, respectively, with random 4k writes measuring about 40,000 IOPS. The lifespan of the drives has also been greatly improved, approximately quadrupling the total number of random writes before failure.
The listings for the 160GB, 300GB and 600GB models are still online, and the drives are retailing for 2,600, 3,900 and 7,500 yuan, or about £225, £366 and £705, respectively. More importantly, though, with hardware appearing to be final a full retail release could be closer than we thought.
