Conclusion, Pricing, and Final Thoughts
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Conclusion:


Intel 510 Series 250GB SATA 6G Solid State Drive Review - Storage 35

   

PROS:  

  • Good throughput
  • Excellent build quality

CONS:  

  • IOPS performance, while decent, doesn’t hold a candle to previous (3Gb/sec) generations.
  • Price (see below)
Pricing and Availability:  

In the interest of trying to gauge the intro street prices for these, here are the 1,000 unit quantity figures for the 510 Series:
  • 120GB @ $284 ($2.37 / GB)
  • 250GB @ $584 ($2.34 / GB)
For comparison, here are the initial MSRPs for the new Vertex 3 – the 510’s direct competitor:
  • 120G @ $249 ($2.07 / GB)
  • 240G @ $499 ($2.07 / GB)
OCZ has had a few weeks lead time to jump the gun on Intel here, and while I currently can’t find either the new Intel or OCZ offerings on the market, we will see how the fireworks play out soon enough. When you combine the intro pricing with the test results, Intel already has a lot of catching up to do on both price and performance.


Final Thoughts:    

While we were glad to see Intel step up and release this 6Gb/sec part, I can’t help but feel this was a bit of a rush job. While the drive performed decently and reliably, I certainly didn’t get that same feeling of performance awesomeness present with each of their previous releases. I believe this 510 was pushed out as a stop gap measure, with speedier offerings coming down the road. Sure you could argue this is meant to be a consumer drive only and should be ‘good enough’ for most people, but the competition is upgrading the definition of ‘consumer grade’ on a daily basis.


Further Reading

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