Corsair P256 256GB SSD (Rebadged Samsung PB22J)

[James]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233085

Already available at $670. While high, this is one of the larger capacity SSD's, and it still offers excellent performance. It's also a lower cost per GB than the Intel solutions. It's based on 128MB of cache, and a 2nd gen Samsung controller. (NOT Jmicron.)

Review can be found here.

[James]

As a random aside, here is the cost breakdown per GB on the drives I would actually consider purchasing. All of these drives offer excellent performance, and would be worthy SSD purchases, unlike those JMicron abominations.

Drive		Size	Cost	Cost/GB
------------------------------------------------
Corsair P256	256GB	669	$2.62
OCZ Vertex 	250GB	799	$3.19
OCZ Vertex	120GB	400	$3.33
OCZ Vertex	60GB	219	$3.65
Intel X25-M 	160GB	630	$3.94
Intel X25-M 	80GB	325	$4.06
OCZ Vertex	30GB	149	$4.97
Intel X25-E 	64GB	759	$11.86
Intel X25-E 	32GB	393	$12.28

[Colossus]

You know I was looking at SSD's today to decide which two to get for raid 0 or maybe just single.

I saw the Intel X25-E and wow they are pricey but unsure why. Do I want a SLC or MLC? trying to stay away from the problem controllers and best performance with an external PCIE RAID controller.

[James]

You want SLC for absolute best performance, but they are obviously quite a bit more expensive. They are enterprise-grade hardware, and you pay a pretty penny for it.

For MLC drives, stick with drives that have either an Intel, 2nd Gen Samsung, or Indilinx Barefoot controller. Pretty much the drives I've listed above. Most of the others use some variant of JMicron controller, or worse, two of them in RAID0 internal to the drive. ::shudder::

In all honesty any of the above drives will provide excellent performance. They will all nearly saturate a SATAII controller during sequential reads, and many of them (Barring the Intel X25-M) will do the same during sequential writes. While the Intel M-series drives don't have super high sequential writes, they are still the king of the hill when it comes to random writes compared to all other MLC based flash drives. Because of that, if you can afford it, I would say go with the Intel. Just make sure to get the new firmware if your drive doesn't already have it, as it keeps the drive from degrading over time like the original firmware was prone to do.

[Nater]

I'd really like a pair of X25-Es, or even just a single, for the OS and a few slow loading programs. I wish that SLC wasn't so expensive, but it's definitely the way to go for performance and longevity.

I also wish that intel and others would make them in 3.5" sizes, it would make things a lot easier for me and a lot of other people. I know the enterprise market is going to 2.5", but I'm pretty sure STEC is grabbing up all the enterprise SSD space...not intel.