Intel has expanded their SandForce-based solid state drive lineup from their performance-oriented 520 series to the brand-new 330 series of SSD, with the marketing slogan, “The speed you need. The price you want.” Unlike the previous generation of Intel SSDs (510 and 320), Intel has given the buyer an option to buy a fast, SATAIII drive with the confidence of the Intel brand name at nearly $1/GB, or even less if it was purchased during a sale soon after launch ($15 off the 60GB 330, or $60 off the 180GB 330). At $0.78/GB during this sale, the 180GB drive was an attractive offer, but does the value-oriented Intel 330 SSD meet the performance promises, and more importantly, did Intel go in the right direction by choosing the SandForce controller in their SSD?
The 180GB version of the Intel 330 is advertised with the following specs:
Maximum Sequential Read: 500MB/s
Maximum Sequential Write: 450MB/s
Maximum 4K Random Read: 42,000 IOPS
Maximum 4K Random Write: 52,000 IOPS
Delivery and Packaging
The 180GB version of the Intel 330 under review was ordered from Amazon.com while on sale for $140 after mail-in rebate, but has since risen in price to $215. Using Amazon Prime’s two-day shipping, the drive arrived quickly and in good shape. It came in a bubble envelope, though it would have been nice if Amazon had included filler material to further protect the drive; being more shock-resistant than a mechanical drive shouldn’t mean that it’s better to ship without such materials. At any rate, the Intel 330 comes with a 3-year limited warranty that protects against manufacturing faults, standard among most SSDs, but two years less warranty than the previous generation Intel 320.
Besides the drive itself, the retail packaging included a 3.5” mounting bracket for desktop installations, a Foxconn SATA cable (part number G10333-001), Foxconn SATA power cord (part number E99090-001), two sets of screws for the bracket (part numbers E77026-001 and E77138-001), an installation guide and warranty (on a Mini CD), and an Intel “Speed Demon” sticker. It also includes a Quick Start guide to show the buyer how to install the drive to a desktop or laptop, as well as URLs to download data migration software and Intel’s SSD Toolbox software. For laptop installations, the only part that’s required is the drive itself.
Test System and Benchmarking Software
I will be using my Lenovo Thinkpad W520 to test the Intel 330 SSD. This workstation laptop will give a good indicator of how Intel’s solid-state drive performs in benchmarks; with these specs, the storage drive will be the only bottleneck in performance:
Processor: Intel Core i7-2720QM
Graphics: Intel HD 3000 / nVidia Quadro 2000M
Memory: 12GB DDR3-1333MHz (3x4GB)
The Intel 330 and Thinkpad W520 communicate via Microsoft’s MSACHI drivers (version 6.1.7600.16385) via the SATAIII port in the main drive bay. Software used for this review consists of Anvil’s Storage Utilities (1.0.45 RC2), AS SSD (1.6.4237.30508), ATTO Disk Benchmark (v2.46), Bootracer (version 3.8), and CrystalDiskMark (3.0.1). For all tests, I’ll have Windows 7 Professional and several other applications installed as well as some data on the drive, since the valuable benchmarking scores are those that show how the drive holds up under real-world conditions; after all, a SSD isn’t very good if it loses its performance after being partly filled. As seen in the Intel SSD Toolbox screenshot, the 330 has nearly 49GB of data on the drive (Windows and other files) out of 167GB total and the TRIM command was run on the remaining free space (SSD Optimizer).
ATTO Benchmark
Let’s start with an oldie but goodie: the ATTO Disk Benchmark. Using the standard settings, the Intel 330 SSD outputs some nice performance numbers. Write speeds max out at just under 519MB/s, with reads at 557MB/s. Smaller files degrade performance numbers as expected (HDDs and SSDs dislike working with them), and read/write speeds approach advertised numbers at file sizes of 128MB and higher.
CrystalDiskMark Benchmarks
A popular choice for benchmarking solid-state drives, CrystalDiskMark measures the read/write speeds for sequential, 512K, 4K, and 4K QD32 transfers. Two different tests were carried out by CrystalDiskMark: the 0Fill (all 0×00) test and 1Fill test (all 0xFF). While the 0Fill test results are expected (SandForce drives are typically tested using 0Fill), the 1Fill tests are surprising in that SSDs using SandForce controllers typically have performance issues while writing incompressible data to the drive. Running extra tests using this software show similar numbers to the ones in the screenshot; the unusually high write speeds were not a one-time fluke. At any rate, CrystalDiskMark shows that this SSD exceeds Intel’s advertised sequential read speeds.
0Fill CrystalDiskMark Test 
1Fill CrystalDiskMark Test
AS SSD Benchmarks
Another favorite benchmarking software title, AS SSD is one of the few benchmarks specifically made to test solid-state drives. AS SSD shows numbers more in line with other drives using the SandForce SF-2281 controller, with the Intel 330 having sequential read speeds just under advertised speeds and sequential write speeds at just under half of what Intel says they should be.
AS SSD also tests for a drive’s IOPS performance at 16MB, 4K, 4K-64Thrd, and 512B settings. The more important 4k-64Thrd scores show that the Intel 330 exceeds advertised random write scores and is in line with advertised random read scores. One more test using the AS SSD software is the Compression Benchmark, and as its name suggests it tests for read and write performance using data sets which are compressible to a certain extent. With completely incompressible data (0% on the x-axis), write speeds are similar to AS SSD’s 207.4 MB/s, though read performance is oddly low until 20% of the data is compressible, at which point read speeds stay steady between 462 MB/s to 500 MB/s at 100% compressible data. The trendline for write performance exponentially increases as we move from completely incompressible data to completely compressible data, reaching a maximum of around 470 MB/s sequential write speeds. This probably explains the unusually high write speeds for the CrystalDiskMark 1Fill test.
One final test offered by AS SSD is the Copy Benchmark, which measures real-life performance of the drive when presented with three different copy-paste scenarios: ISO files, program files, and game files. For example, if a user was transferring an ISO from their Downloads folder to their Documents folder, they should expect a transfer speed of just north of 300 MB/s.
Anvil Storage Utilities Benchmark
One of the new benchmarks on the block, this benchmarking software tests several different read and write scenarios that SSDs will face in real-world environments by using a specially-tuned SSD benchmark.
Bootracer
Last, but not least, the Bootracer benchmark measures the amount of time it takes for a computer to boot from pressing the power button to a useable Windows desktop. After installing the Intel 330 SSD and tweaking my Windows 7 install a little (no-GUI boot, some start-up programs disabled, and some services disabled), I was able to achieve a boot time of 18 seconds total, with 11 of those seconds occurring between the power button and Windows login. While I feel that pretty much any SATAIII solid-state drive could theoretically beat those times, boot times are hard-limited by how long it takes the mainboard to POST (something that a user can’t change).
Conclusion
For the first few generations of SSD, Intel was popular due to their high-quality, in-house controllers and flash chips (X-25 series, 320 series) as well as using high-quality, third-party controllers for their performance-oriented SSD (510 series, Marvell controller). While Intel has always been priced higher than competing SSDs per GB, the old reasoning behind this was because of early SandForce controller issues. However, with Intel’s initial move to SandForce in the 520 series and now the 330 series, we have to reexamine whether or not the Intel premium is worth it. When I bought a 160GB version of their 320 series SSD, I certainly thought it was worth it, and with the recent sale at $0.78/GB the 180GB version of the 330 series was worth it to me. But now that the 180GB 330 is selling for $1.19/GB, it faces strong opposition from other established SSD sellers such as Crucial and Plextor, who still use non-SandForce controllers. Since the 330 is a brand-new drive as of this writing, it’s hard to tell if the SF-2281-based 330 will be as reliable as my previous 320 and other non-SandForce drives, but with Intel reducing the warranty to three years instead of the previous five year warranty offered on the 320, it’s possible that Intel expects the 330 to be just as reliable as other SF-2281-based SSDs. With the purchase of SandForce by LSI, favorable reviews of other SF-2281-controlled drives, and Intel’s custom firmware, it’s looking as if the infamous past of SandForce is starting to be just that: the past. Even still, I’m keeping a backup of my data just in case. If Intel maintains their reliability edge against other SandForce offerings, then Intel’s main competition stays the same (Crucial, Plextor, Samsung; the first two use Marvell controllers, and Samsung makes everything in-house). If SandForce reliability has improved across the board, then there are better deals to be found when the Intel 330 is not on sale, such as Corsair’s Force GT and Force 3 offerings at 180GB, the latter being sold at $1.06/GB (compared to the 330’s $1.19/GB). Since the performance of SATAIII SandForce SSDs are pretty much the same across the board, the decision of whether or not to buy the Intel 330 mainly depends on long-term reliability and pricing. Overall, the Intel 330 180GB offers a value drive with high read/write numbers, low latency, and offers the best of both the smaller 120/128GB drives (lower price) and higher capacity 240/256GB drives (~168GB useable storage compared to 100-110GB).
Where to Buy
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