Intel's Latest SSDs Compliment Core Processor Performance

While The VAR Guy is galavanting around fabulous Las Vegas for Intel Solutions Summit 2011, us blogger plebeians are enjoying things from the sidelines. And some Intel news our resident blogger left to us is the company’s new lineup of solid state drives. Built to compliment the speed of Intel’s new Core processors, the SSD 510 series has some features worth looking at if you’re interested in increasing your productivity …

I’ve been a fan of SSDs ever since I purchased my MacBook Air. I didn’t really appreciate the speed until I had it, but now that I do, I don’t want to go back. Intel’s new SSD 510 series is something worth looking at if you’re itching for that extra speed and productivity even if your RAM is maxed out.

The new SSDs feature 6Gbps SATA throughput that Intel claims currently outperforms existing 10K RPM hard drives by 50 percent. The SSDs were designed not just with the new Core CPUs in mind, but also for performance-intensive workstations, media editing and, of course, gamers.

Intel’s SSD 510 series also offers 34-nanometer NAND flash memory and comes with a three-year warranty. However, those holding out for the drop in density/price ratio might want to wait a little longer — 250GB is going for $584 and 120GB is going for $284, and those are the prices for 1,000-unit quantities. That’s a bummer, though of the two options the 120GB option seems like the best deal for a dual-drive system, where important applications and the OS live on an SSD and the rest of the data exists on a standard HDD.

Still, if you absolutely must have one of the drives, Intel will also throw in the SSD Toolbox, which helps users optimize their SSD (on Windows only, sorry). SSD optimization is somewhat important, since a fragmented SSD can have some effect on overall speed. (As an aside, Apple introduced TRIM support in OS X Lion to maintain SSDs automatically.)

ISVs and VARs looking to get their hands on them can do their buying from Amazon.com, NewEgg.com and other e-tailers worldwide.

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