Review-Intel 510 Series SSD: Reaching Extraordinary Speed with SATA III!

Conclusions

The SATA-III interface offers a lot of potential that cannot be harnessed by ordinary hard drives due to their mechanical limitations, which prevent these devices from fully utilizing the 6 Gbps bandwidth. That is about to change now with the arrival of SATA-III SSDs. Intel’s Series 510 SSD is one of the first, and it sure looks promising.
Judging from our test results, it seems that Intel’s claim of the transfer speed is not exaggerated, at least in certain scenarios where the Series 510 SSD truly leaves the competition in the dust. We have once managed to reach similar performance level by combining two SATA-II SSDs I RAID-0 configuration. With the Series 510, you don’t need to do that, as this drive is already very fast in its own, reaching transfer speeds as high as 500 Megabytes per second. We wonder if there would be a further revision of the SATA interface in the near future to accommodate the ever-increasing speed of next-gen SSDs.
As for the price, despite its higher speed, the new Series 510 would actually cost you less than previous Intel SSDs. For a comparison, a 160 GB Intel X25-M now sells for up to US$ 400, while a Series 510 SSD (120GB) can be bought for less than US$ 300. The price gets higher as you move up the capacity ladder though, with the 250 GB version costing around US$ 590. But, you get both the capacity and speed.
If you can afford the price, this SSD will be a perfect companion for professionals demanding high performance from their computers. Enthusiast gamers could also benefit from its super-fast transfer speed, which would surely cut the application loading time considerably.
Pros:

• Uses SATA-III Interface
• Very high performance

Cons:

• TRIM is only supported in Windows 7 and the latest versions of MacOS and Linux kernels

Technical Data

Manufacturer	Intel
Info	http://www.intel.com
Price	–
Indonesian Distributor	–
Phone	–
Memory Type	Multi Level Cell
Capacity	250 GB
Interface	SATA 6 Gbps