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?
Best Answer
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.