Reviews - Pro-Clockers! PC Reviews One MegaHertz At A Time

As it has been rumored for a little while, Intel has today returned to the spotlight to introduce to the world its newest solid state drives, the first ones to feature 34nm-made NAND flash memory chips. Still coming in a 2.5-inch form factor, the 'new and improved' 80 and 160GB X25-M drives are halogen-free and feature a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, a MTBF of 1.2 million hours, and the same read/write speeds as their 50nm predecessors - 250/70 MB/s.

The more subtle improvement of the 34nm SSDs over the 50nm models are the lower read and write latencies - 65/85 microseconds as opposed to 85/115, and higher IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) for random 4K writes - up to 6,600/8,600 IOPS (80/160GB drives) compared to 3,300. TC Magazine