Conclusions
We had high hopes for Intel's first solid-state drive. As a master fabricator, the company has the chip-making chops to churn out fast, power-efficient memory cells. More than a decade of core-logic chipset design also gives Intel the storage controller mojo necessary to craft a wicked-fast SSD architecture. The X25-M delivers on both fronts, with low power consumption that should make notebook users swoon and truly inspiring performance with some workloads.

Solid-state drives have an inherent power consumption advantage over their mechanical counterparts, so the energy efficiency isn't much of a feat. What's more impressive is the X25-M's performance. Thanks to a 250MB/s sustained read rate and a smart Native Command Queuing implementation, Intel's first SSD sets a new standard for MLC-based solid-state drives. Unfortunately, though, Intel can't escape the relatively slow write speeds that plague MLC drives, and that results in a performance profile that's decidedly mixed.

When the X25-M is good, it's exceptional. The drive absolutely dominated our IOMeter workloads and ran away from the field in our sustained-read-speed drag race and in our real-world file read tests. The X25-M also posted speedy game level load times and a higher WorldBench overall score than any other drive—solid-state or mechanical.

Start to stress the Intel SSD's relatively slow write rate, however, and things don't look nearly as impressive. The X25-M excels with iPEAK multitasking workloads that are heavy on read requests, but not those that favor writes. Its real-world write speeds aren't all that hot, either, with the Intel drive turning in particularly poor file creation speeds in FC-Test. Flash can be very fast indeed, but the slower write speed of MLC memory is still a weak link.

Price is another problem for solid-state drives, and with the 80GB X25-M slated to sell for just under $600 in 1,000-unit quantites, Intel's first entry in the market won't be cheap. At that price, the X-25M sits between budget MLC-based models and their more expensive SLC-based cousins, which seems about right to me. After all, the X25-M was often faster than Samsung's SLC-based FlashSSD, which costs nearly $800 for only 64GB.

Obviously, SSDs still have a lousy cost per gigabyte when compared to their mechanical rivals. But there's usually a premium to be paid for performance leadership, and if you measure value in IOMeter transactions per dollar, the X25-M is an absolute bargain. This SSD's power efficiency, shock tolerance, and silent acoustic profile will probably appeal to other markets, as well. I have a feeling boutique PC builders are going to snap these up for their uber-high-end notebooks and even desktops.

Perhaps more impressive than what the X25-M offers today is what the drive fortells for the future. Intel has a very good SSD architecture on its hands right now, and we know it plans to follow up with more products based on both SLC and MLC designs. Meanwhile, the company intends to transition its flash memory to a 32nm process node. Taken together, these steps could well cement its position as a leader in solid-state storage, just as SSDs are set to carve out a larger share of the market.