Friday, June 4, 2010

IT News HeadLines (Elite Bastards) 04/06/2010


Elite Bastards
2010 value SSD round up

Seeing as we had a query in our forum just the other day about relatively low-cost (and therefore low capacity, of course) SSDs, this seems like an ideal article to help with the decision-making process if you're looking to buy a cheap solid state drive as a boot device.

Two years ago the best SSD you could buy was made by Intel and it cost $7.44 per GB of MLC NAND. Today Intel is actually the value leader. The 80GB X25-M G2 will set you back $205 at Newegg, or $2.56 per GB. The performance crown now belongs to companies like Micron and SandForce. Although Intel hopes to have performance leadership once more with its 25nm SSDs due out in Q4, the priorities have shifted. Intel’s focus is on bringing SSDs to the mainstream; it wants a bigger slice of the HDD pie. At the end of the day, that’s where the money is.

At just over $200 that’s affordable enough for high end notebooks and desktops but what about more mainstream price points? For many the $99 mark is key. Luckily as SSDs have gotten faster, a new breed of small, affordable SSDs have emerged right around the $100 mark. Today we’re going to take a look at three of those devices.

Check out Anandtech for a complete look at devices from Intel, Kingston and OCZ.

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