Specification and Test Methodology
| Intel 320 Series SSD technical specification | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity | 40GB (£80), 80GB (£145), 120GB (£185), 160GB (£250), 300GB (£440) and 600GB (£925) | ||||||||||
| NAND flash components | 25nm Intel NAND Flash Memory Multi-Level Cell Compute-Quality Components | ||||||||||
| Bandwidth | Sustained sequential reads | ||||||||||
| 40GB up to 200 MB/s 80GB up to 270 MB/s 120GB up to 270 MB/s |
160GB up to 270 MB/s 300GB up to 270 MB/s 600GB up to 270 MB/s |
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| Sustained sequential writes | |||||||||||
| 40GB up to 45 MB/s 80GB up to 90 MB/s 120GB up to 130 MB/s |
160GB up to 165 MB/s 300Gb up to 205 MB/s 600GB up to 220 MB/s |
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| Read latency | 75 microseconds | ||||||||||
| Write latency | 90 microseconds | ||||||||||
| Random I/O Operations per Second | Random 4KB Reads | ||||||||||
| 40GB up to 30,000 IOPS 80GB up to 38,000 IOPS 120GB up to 38,000 IOPS |
160GB up to 39,000 IOPS 300GB up to 39,500 IOPS 600GB up to 39,500 IOPS |
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| Random 4KB Writes | |||||||||||
| 40GB up to 3,700 IOPS 80GB up to 10,000 IOPS 120GB up to 14,000 IOPS |
160GB up to 21,000 IOPS 300GB up to 23,000 IOPS 600GB up to 23,000 IOPS |
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| Interface | SATA 3Gbps | ||||||||||
| Form Factor, Height and Weight |
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| Life expectancy | 1.2 million hours Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) | ||||||||||
| Power consumption | Active: 150 mW Typical Idle: 100 mW Typical |
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| Operating shock | 1,500G/0.5 ms | ||||||||||
| Operating temperature | 0°C to 70°C | ||||||||||
| Product health monitoring | Intel Data Migration Software Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) commands |
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Comparison drives |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity | Controller | Firmware | Interface | RAID mode | TRIM support | Cost* | Cost per GB | |
| G.Skill Phoenix Pro | 40GB | SandForce SF-1222 | 2.1 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | £80** | £2.0 |
| Crucial Real SSD C300 | 64GB | Marvell 88SS9174-BJP2 | 002 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | £85 | £1.3 |
| Crucial Real SSD C300 | 64GB | Marvell 88SS9174-BJP2 | 002 | SATA 6Gbps | - | Yes | £85 | £1.3 |
| Corsair Force Series F80 | 80GB | SandForce SF-1222 | 1.1 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | £145** | £1.8 |
| G.Skill Phoenix Pro (x2) | 80GB | SandForce SF-1222 | 2.1 | SATA 3Gbps | RAID 0 | Yes | £160** | £2.0 |
| OCZ Vertex 2 | 120GB | SandForce SF-1222 | 1.11 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | £160 | £1.3 |
| Patriot Inferno | 120GB | SandForce SF-1222 | 320A13F0 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | £160 | £1.3 |
| Intel 510 Series | 120GB | Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2 | PPG2 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | £220 | £1.8 |
| Intel 510 Series | 120GB | Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2 | PPG2 | SATA 6Gbps | - | Yes | £220 | £1.8 |
| OCZ RevoDrive | 120GB | SandForce SF-1222 (x2) | 1.20 | PCIe x4 | RAID 0 (internal) | No | £225 | £1.9 |
| Intel X25-M | 160GB | Intel PC29AS21BA0 | 2CV102M3 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | £300 | £1.8 |
| Corsair Force Series F80 (x2) | 160GB | SandForce SF-1222 | 1.1 | SATA 3Gbps | RAID 0 | Yes | £290** | £1.8 |
| OCZ Vertex 3 | 240GB | SandForce SF-2281 | 1.11 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | £430 | £1.8 |
| OCZ Vertex 3 | 240GB | SandForce SF-2281 | 1.11 | SATA 6Gbps | - | Yes | £430 | £1.8 |
| OCZ RevoDrive X2 | 240GB | SandForce SF-1222 (x4) | 1.20 | PCIe x4 | RAID 0 (internal) | No | £480 | £2.0 |
| Crucial RealSSD C300 | 256GB | Marvell 88SS9174-BJP2 | 0006 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | £372 | £1.4 |
| Crucial RealSSD C400 m4 | 256GB | Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 | 0001 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | TBC | TBC |
| Crucial RealSSD C400 m4 | 256GB | Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 | 0001 | SATA 6Gbps | - | Yes | TBC | TBC |
| Intel 320 Series | 300GB | Intel PC29AS21BA0 | 4PC10302 | SATA 3Gbps | - | Yes | £440 | £1.5 |
| Samsung HD103SJ HDD | 1TB | N/A, hard-disk | 1AJ100E4 | SATA 3Gbps | - | N/A | £40 | £0.04 |
| Samsung HD103SJ HDD (x2) | 2TB | N/A, hard-disk | 1AJ100E4 | SATA 3Gbps | RAID 0 | N/A | £80 | £0.04 |
| *Approximate price, correct at time of writing **Discontinued model, no longer available |
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Test bench |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5 2500K (3.3GHz, 6MB L3 cache, quad-core, LGA1155) | ||||||||
| Motherboard | Intel DP67BG | ||||||||
| Memory | 8GB Corsair Vengeance (9-9-9-24-2T @ 1,600MHz) | ||||||||
| Host hard drive | Crucial 256GB RealSSD C300 (SATA 6Gbps) | ||||||||
| Storage controllers | Intel P67 PCH (SATA 6Gbps, AHCI) | ||||||||
| Graphics card | AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB | ||||||||
| Power supply | Corsair AX750 | ||||||||
| Operating system | Windows 7 Ultimate SP1, 64-bit | ||||||||
Benchmarks |
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|---|---|
| ATTO Disk Benchmark | The freeware ATTO benchmark provides basic sequential speed results for both read and write operations. Using the default queue depth of four, we record read and write speeds during 1MB transfers. |
| CrystalDiskMark | CrystalDiskMark provides various storage benchmarks, but we're interested in the returned 32-thread 4K performance numbers to see how well the drives fare when tasked with numerous small transfers. |
| AS SSD | Another freeware benchmark, AS SSD is designed primarily for testing solid-state storage. We run the benchmark and record the drive's overall read and write scores. The final numbers take into account sequential speeds, input/output performance and access time. |
| Iometer | Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement tool originally developed by Intel. To measure a drive's I/O performance, we set the benchmark to utilise 4KB transfers in a random spread. Read and write distribution is set to 50 per cent, and queue depth at 32. The test is run for two minutes and we record the total I/Os per second. |
| PCMark Vantage | Emulating real-world use, PCMark Vantage spits out a bunch of data on the relative speed of the drives when undertaking common tasks. We record Windows startup, application load time and gaming performance. |
