Intel Forces OCZ's Hand: Indilinx Drives To Drop in Price
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 23, 2009 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
The SSD world waited with bated breath on Tuesday as Intel announced the specs and pricing of its next-generation X25-M drives. The performance improved, sometimes heartily, but the pricing was the real story. Once these things get out there, Intel is expecting the 80GB drive to sell for $225 and the 160GB drive to sell for $440. If you'll remember back to last September, the X25-M first debuted at $595.
This meant trouble for 3rd party SSD makers like OCZ, whose cheapest high performance drives would now be more expensive than Intel's X25-M. As you'd expect, by forcing prices down, all 3rd party SSD vendors had to react. OCZ shared its new pricing structure with us that should start taking effect in the coming weeks:
| Drive | NAND Capacity | Cost per GB | Target MSRP |
| Intel X25-M (34nm) | 80GB | $2.81 | $225 |
| Intel X25-M (34nm) | 160GB | $2.75 | $440 |
| OCZ Vertex (Indilinx) | 64GB | $2.97 | $190 |
| OCZ Vertex (Indilinx) | 128GB | $2.27 | $290 |
| OCZ Vertex (Indilinx) | 256GB | $2.34 | $600 |
| OCZ Agility (Indilinx, non-Samsung Flash) | 64GB | $2.50 | $160 |
| OCZ Agility (Indilinx, non-Samsung Flash) | 128GB | $2.11 | $270 |
Intel's new drives should settle down at around $2.80 per GB; with the new pricing structure OCZ's Indilinx MLC drives will average $2.43 per GB. The 32GB drives are now gone and the 128GB drives offer the best value. The Agility seems particularly budget friendly as it offers most of the performance of the Vertex but at a 10% lower cost per GB.
OCZ's 3.5" Colossus SSD is also going to boast very competitive pricing:
| Drive | NAND Capacity | Cost per GB | Target MSRP |
| Colossus 120 | 128GB | $2.34 | $300 |
| Colossus 250 | 256GB | $2.54 | $650 |
| Colossus 500 | 512GB | $2.34 | $1200 |
| Colossus 1TB | 1024GB | $2.15 | $2200 |
This is not just a Vertex in a 3.5" chassis, but rather multiple Vertex drives running in parallel but appearing as one large drive. OCZ is aiming square at the high end desktop user for this thing and it's priced well. The Colossus 120 provides a nice price point between Intel's 80GB and 160GB drives. The 1TB drive is pure insanity.
It's good to see OCZ responding so quickly to the price changes. I'd expect Corsair, G.Skill, Patriot and SuperTalent to all follow suit. The question now isn't how much, but rather when this will happen. I've been told a few weeks.
Update - OCZ contacted us with additional information on when the price cuts will take effect. First off, it will probably take a couple of weeks for prices to hit the suggested MSRP targets on certain product lines like the Agility due to current stock levels. However, depending on the seller, you could see prices near or at the listed MSRP shortly depending on promotion and rebate packages.
We did a quick price check at Newegg this afternoon and the 64GB Agility drive is selling for $177 and the 64GB Vertex is at $199 after a $30MIR. The 128GB Agility is still at $299 with the Vertex coming in at $339 after a $30MIR. The 256GB Vertex is still listed at $725 compared to a projected $599.99 MSRP target.
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iwodo - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link
In my previous post i made the costing below.The 64Gb 8Gx8 MLC cost average 12.5. Controller at 90nm tech cost around $15. Packaging and DRAM etc, the 80GB SSD should cost $160 to make.
That is ofcoz, Intel is already making money on both flash and controller.
I believe that current NAND price is still based on 50NM - 40NM price. So 34nm should cost less. Hopefully in a years time it will cost 50% less.
In 2010, SSD should finally take off.
Personally i would choose 80GB Intel over everything else. I would pay a little more for better performance.
I suspect main reason why Intel is so much better at Random is because Intel uses 10 Channel SSD. While Indilinx is only using 2/4 ?? Channel. I would love to know news on next generation of Indilinx Controller.
jimhsu - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link
50% YOY drops in the future may not come so easily:http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/20090709PR201_fi...">http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/20090709PR201_fi...
Drazick - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link
What About The Second Generation Of Indilinx?When can we expect it?
vol7ron - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link
So the colossals are just hidden raid-0s? And how do they perform? :) Is there any economies of scale to this?And how will these colossals perform in RAIDed systems?
--- I still think it's important to note that these prices are in lot numbers and not the resale value ---
Though, unlike your other post, I thought I read on the Intel announcement that it's the price for *up to* 1000 units (as if you could buy just one =] )
Thanks,
vol7ron
mesiah - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link
Based on the news that's out now you can expect to see random read/write performance scale just as if you had a true raid setup. Unfortunately as far as sequential reads go, just about all SSDs on the market are pushing the current sata technology to its limit. Because of that you will see no sequential read gains and very little improvement of sequential write performance. But one thing to consider is the fact that if you are buying a drive for a desktop system and are considering an indilinx drive, $10 buys you roughly 30% increased random reads. I'm gearing up to build a new system in the coming months and I can tell you now, its going to have 2 128gb colossus drives in raid 0. Although technology wise I like Intel a little better, Anand has painted OCZ as a real champion of the people in the SSD market, and I want to support that in the best way possible. With cold hard cash :Dvol7ron - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link
I think people are pushing sequential read/write too much for the home-user; workstations I could understand a little more. For me, at least, I don't copy GBs of data that often. Once a copy hits a limit, I don't much care how long it takes because I'm going to find something else to do.For instance, if a transfer still takes 1 min, then there's no additional benefit if it would have saved me 3-4mins. And I won't be running any production databases on my home computer, so again, what good is sequential read/write performance?
On the other hand random write performance seems to be very important since you're running multi-threaded applications and forking a lot of processes. I would say as the # of cores and threads increase on a system, the random-r/w performance becomes that much more important.
I've been looking at building a new system for the past year. Normally, I would just pay out a lot of money, but I still have to think, hold off. There are 3 huge technologies that are still new: Intel Core i7/i5s, DDR-III, SSDs. I believe by April of 2010 (tax time), these will be mature enough for the home-consumer. And it might be worth holding off on the SSDs until they come with the SATA 6Gb/s interface.
jesseh - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link
With the Intel news now out there, would love to see info and reviews for all the other drives that recently launched, that seem to be equal to or a bit better than the original Vertex from what I can tell.OCZ Vertex *Turbo* - OCZSSD2-1VTXT30G
Corsair Extreme Series - CMFSSD-32D1
Crucial M225 64GB - CT64M225 ... only $170 for 64GB @ http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODUL...">http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODUL...
mckirkus - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link
Why is it that OCZ is killing off the 30GB Vertex drives?They're one of the highest rated drives on Newegg and if you're building a HTPC with a separate drive for storage or if upgrading an old laptop running XP they were absolutely perfect.
We need more cheap, low capacity SLC drives. I've fixed enough friend owned computers to know that most people rarely use more than 30GB. Most of those same people do complain about slow computers though.
faxon - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link
this is a good thing for everyone. the fry's i work at already struggles to keep the patriot torqx drives based on the indilinx controller in stock in the 64gb and 128gb variants, and with prices lower our main office will probably consider purchasing more to keep in stock, since they will be an even easier sell than beforeEeqmcsq - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link
But it's kind of scary to see one company dominate like this. Intel has the lead in high end CPUs, low power CPUs, and now SSDs. Next on their list, total world domination!