SSD for Visual Studio: Intel X25-m G2 or OCZ Vertex

I'm looking for laptop upgrade, and thinking about getting an SSD drive for with T9400. I was thinking about replacing the built-in 500 GB HDD on my Dell Studio XPS with some kind of SSD.

I have two choices:

OCZ Vertex Series 60 GB vs.
Intel X25-M G2 MLC 80 GB

The price is almost the same. From Anandtech Intel performs badly in sequential write, but scores very high numbers in random write and random read (good for Visual Studio?) and I get more disk space.

What do you think? OCZ Vertex or Intel X25-M G2? Purely from a Visual Studio 2008 and upcoming 2010 perspective?

meska

Posted 2009-09-26T11:23:01.857

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Answers

Another thing to consider is that SSDs can, in general, be faster the more free space there is on the drive. From AnandTech: "You should buy the largest drive you need/can afford". For example, if you have 55GB of programs/data on the SSD, the 80GB Intel drive would (probably) retain more of its performance compared to the 60GB OCZ Vertex. (This is because an SSD should add free space to its pool of spare area, which ultimately improves the write amplification ratio, as summarised here.)

And as AnandTech (and the other review sites) discuss, it's only in rare situations that the Intel drives' relatively low sequential rates are a problem; the fast random read/write performance is more important most of the time.

sblair

Posted 2009-09-26T11:23:01.857

Reputation: 12 231

I can't say about Intel because I've not tested it, but currently I have a OCZ Vertex Series 120 Go, and I don't regret it, I can use visual studio instead of notepad !

Nicolas Dorier

Posted 2009-09-26T11:23:01.857

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That is a very excellent quote. I will be converted to SSD when I can say this. I use VS all day but still prefer to fire up a simple text editor for simple thing like looking at log files etc. – Preet Sangha – 2009-09-26T13:08:24.997

In this article from AnandTech (July 22, 2009) I find different information : "Intel X25-M G2: Dissected and Performance Preview". It contains many benchmarks, on all of which Intel wins hands down, and concludes by:

The X25-M G2 appears to be everything Intel said it would be. It's anywhere from 0 - 40% faster than the 1st gen drive in these low level tests. I would expect to see a 0 - 10% improvement in the real world depending on applications.

harrymc

Posted 2009-09-26T11:23:01.857

Reputation: 306 093

I just got the OCZ Agility Series 60 GB SSD with Windows XP - my random read time went from 25 ms to .2 ms. It is currently around $125 after rebate, and it appears that everything on my lenovo T60 (just 2 gig RAM) is snappy, despite the fact that it is loaded down with Corporate software. It even makes eclipse run well with large projects.

The OCZ drives have a built-in garbage collection which does much the same thing as TRIM, which makes it possible to use on Windows XP.

I'm not that familiar with the Intel, but the OCZ drives are great.

Justin

Posted 2009-09-26T11:23:01.857

Reputation: 111

Intel doesn't perform badly in any of those tests. Both devices appear to be good enough for a workstation, differences in performance being much smaller than between a good SSD and a HDD.

Bender

Posted 2009-09-26T11:23:01.857

Reputation: 906

The second generation (G2) X25-M is about half the price of the first one... – Oskar Duveborn – 2009-09-26T19:49:50.213

The 60GB Vertex Series is the same price as the 80GB Intel X25-M G2. At least in the UK (http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=1049230 and http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/60GB-OCZ-Technology-OCZSSD2-1VTX60G-MLC-25-SATA-3Gb-s-200MB-s-Read-and-160MB-s-Write-speed).

– sblair – 2009-09-26T23:30:57.647

Ok, deleted the not quite right part. – Bender – 2009-09-27T13:31:02.783

I've upgraded an old Dell 620 with a 80gb Intel 25-M.

The results were amazing. A very notiecable improvement. This machine runs faster than a laptop that is three years younger.

I'm running Windows 7 on both but the one with the X-25 is a native boot from a vhd (virtual hard drive), which makes this even more impressive as this has a knock on performance, albeit slight.

dove

Posted 2009-09-26T11:23:01.857

Reputation: 121

This is purely anecdotal experience. I've been using the Intel 80GB Gen2 drive with Win7 in my Dell XPS M1730 for about a month now and it absolutely flies. The M1730 can actually take two internal disk drives, so I just switched the older/larger 7200rpm drive to be the secondary.

If there are issues with write speed, I haven't noticed them. That may be because the issues are too minor to notice or because I don't actually do a lot of sequential writes. As I said before, I'm running Windows 7 (Enterprise x64). I'm also running Visual Studio 2008.

I can't imaging you'll be disappointed with either choice. SSDs on developer machines are a good choice no matter how you slice it.

Ryan Bolger

Posted 2009-09-26T11:23:01.857

Reputation: 3 351

I believe Joel on Software actually did something like this and didn't find any improvement whatsoever. You may want to search their blog to see if their experiences may help you with your choice.

Blackbeagle

Posted 2009-09-26T11:23:01.857

Reputation: 6 424

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/03/27.html but that's because their compiler is more CPU-bound than IO-bound, which .net compilers are generally not – Mauricio Scheffer – 2009-10-25T16:30:53.813

Go With An Intel x25-M i've got the vertex ssd 30 Go and the 60 GO and Three X25-M 80 GO The Cream Of SSD Is Intel period being tested for the last three months no comparaison

Éric

Posted 2009-09-26T11:23:01.857

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