The Intel Optane SSD 900p 480GB Review: Diving Deeper Into 3D XPoint
by Billy Tallis on December 15, 2017 12:15 PM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here. This test is run twice, once on a freshly erased drive and once after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The Optane SSD 900p in either capacity delivers a much higher average data rate on the Heavy test than any flash-based SSD. As with the original review, the 280GB model is a bit faster when the drive is pre-filled than when the test is run on a freshly-erased drive; the opposite is almost always true of flash-based SSDs. The 480GB's results look more normal and fall in the same range as the 280GB's scores.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores of both Optane SSD capacities are slightly ahead of the fastest flash-based SSDs. Both models also show lower latency when the drive is filled than when it is freshly erased.
The average read latency of the Optane SSD 900p on the Heavy test is about the same for both capacities, and about half that of any flash-based SSD. The average write latencies are a bit worse than the Samsung 960 PRO but still clearly better than the 960 EVO or anything else.
The 99th percentile read latency scores for the Optane SSDs are a fraction of the latency of any other drive, and both capacities of the 900p score about the same. The 99th percentile write latency is barely faster than the Samsung 960 PRO.
The power consumption of the Optane SSDs fits their heritage as derivatives of an enterprise drive. The only other consumer SSD this power hungry is the Intel SSD 750, another enterprise derivative. Even the M.2 PCIe SSDs with relatively poor power management and low performance use much less energy over the course of the test.
The 480GB 900p uses about 10% more energy than the 280GB model while performing about the same.
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eddman - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link
That graph explains the situation perfectly. Even if the media's latency was somehow magically reduced to zero, the total storage latency would still be only about 6 times better.It's all pointless though; ddriver's personal hatred towards intel and "the corporations" prevents him from thinking differently. As soon as he finds a number that is different from what was mentioned in the promotional materials, the first thing he does is to start shouting "liar, liar".
P.S. I have zero love for corporations and can't stand when one takes advantage of the users. What I also can't stand is a person spreading unsubstantiated claims and spamming a technology website's comment section to offload his hate in order to feel better.
tuxRoller - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
Also z nand appears to be mlc cells operating in SLC mode, and that's still slower than first gen xpoint.hescominsoon - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
Intel has walked back the 100x bs claims. Also notice how micro(their partner in this venture) has NOT released their side of this product?https://semiaccurate.com/?s=optane
tuxRoller - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link
They walked them back? Maybe for these nvme products, though I've not seen anything about that. The real test is how well they'll do as direct addressed memory when used in the DIMM configuration.Reflex - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
SLC has no significant advantages over Optane. Optane is nearly across the board a better performer, often by a significant margin, than any commercial NAND technology. The two drawbacks that are important right now are power consumption and cost (these are also drawbacks of SLC for the record)The complaints about Intel's 'hype' are misconstrued. There is a huge difference between discussing what a technology is capable of, and what individual products derived from that technology can deliver. That some people had reading comprehension problems is not Intel's problem, they are delivering what they promised, and as the rest of the supporting infrastructure improves over time we know based on their initial statements that Optane/PCM can scale to match it.
CheapSushi - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
The industry is trying. It's called Z-NAND.ddriver - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
Which is MLC...Samsung realized nobody is catching up in the nand market and decided to push consumer, high end and mainstream enterprise a notch down to TLC.
So now that MLC is only a "high end enterprise" thing in their portfolio, they decided to pimp it up with a new moniker - z-nand. Alas, it is just good old MLC with a barely incremental controller. And claim that it has anything to do with SLC performance - which it does as much as an a race horse harness makes an old donkey faster.
They REALLY aren't trying.
CheapSushi - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link
It's MLC & TLC 3D NAND treated exactly like SLC (1 bit per cell) with a better controller and special sauce, effectively making it as if it was SLC in the first place and a better SLC driver than previous SLC drives that came out. So what is the issue? It's not a completely separate NAND production line?ddriver - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link
Do you realize parroting nonsense you are clearly completely ignorant of doesn't win you bonus points?There is no such thing, you have to compromise one for the sake of the other. It is just more mature and a tiny bit better than previous gen MLC, but it is not even half of what can be squeezed of contemporary SLC.
"Special sauce"? It is sad to see average Joe hans't moved up a bit since the middle ages.
drajitshnew - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link
No "ryzen" in opposition to their "core". The flash industry is in a race to see who can make the CHEAPEST PoS