Intel’s new G3 series of SSDs is long anticipated, but launched today as Intel SSD 320. Just as the name implies it is a mainstream model that sees the light of day and even if we have revealed most specifications and prices tests have finally started to appear.
As we’ve reported this is no revolutionary drive. Intel has taken the same controller used in the X25-M G2 series. This brings that the sequential write performance suffers, especially the smaller models. Also the larger models are slower than competing SSDs and this shows in the benchmarks. Intel 320 is overall slightly faster than X25-M and can in most cases measure up to last generation SandForce drives.
| Intel 320 series | Capacity | Seq. read | Seq. write | 4K Read | 4K Read |
| SSDSA2CW600G310 | 600 GB | 270 MB/s | 220 MB/s | 39 500 IOPS | 23 000 IOPS |
| SSDSA2CW300G310 | 300 GB | 270 MB/s | 205 MB/s | 39 500 IOPS | 23 000 IOPS |
| SSDSA2CW160G310 | 160 GB | 270 MB/s | 165 MB/s | 39 000 IOPS | 21 000 IOPS |
| SSDSA2CW120G310 | 120 GB | 270 MB/s | 130 MB/s | 38 000 IOPS | 14 000 IOPS |
| SSDSA2CW080G310 | 80 GB | 270 MB/s | 90 MB/s | 38 000 IOPS | 10 000 IOPS |
| SSDSA2CT040G310 | 40 GB | 200 MB/s | 45 MB/s | 30 000 IOPS | 3 700 IOPS |
The pros of the Intel 320 series is the price. The 120GB model costs atbou 170€. This will of course drop with time, but the question is if it will be enough to compete with the older SandForce drives. This is probably where Intel 320 will fight, price per gigabyte for those who don’t have SATA 6.0 Gbps.
The few news to count are storage encryption and NAND redundancy.
Unfortunately Intel has been anything but convenient in dealing with the media before the laucnh of the 320 series, as with the launch of the 510 series, which means we’re still searching for samples.
