The Intel SSD 540s (480GB) Review
by Billy Tallis on June 23, 2016 9:00 AM ESTMixed Random Read/Write Performance
The mixed random I/O benchmark starts with a pure read test and gradually increases the proportion of writes, finishing with pure writes. The queue depth is 3 for the entire test and each subtest lasts for 3 minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. As with the pure random write test, this test is restricted to a 16GB span of the drive, which is empty save for the 16GB test file.
On the mixed random I/O test the Intel 540s has a stark advantage over almost all other planar TLC drives, and is close to the low-end MLC drives and SanDisk X400.
Power consumption is middle of the road, so the Intel 540s comes out at ahead of most of the TLC drives in terms of efficiency, though the SP550 is not far behind.
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The performance of the Intel 540s never dropped as the proportion of writes in the workload increased, but it also didn't show the common big jump in performance during the final pure-write phase of the test.
Mixed Sequential Read/Write Performance
The mixed sequential access test covers the entire span of the drive and uses a queue depth of one. It starts with a pure read test and gradually increases the proportion of writes, finishing with pure writes. Each subtest lasts for 3 minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The drive is filled before the test starts.
The mixed sequential I/O performance of the Intel 540s is significantly improved over the SM2256 drives, but that still only brings it up to par for planar TLC.
The power usage of the Intel 540s is relatively high, so it doesn't have great efficiency even by TLC standards.
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The Intel 540s is both faster and more power hungry than the SP550 at every point during this test. Performance still doesn't bounce back appreciably with the pure writes phase of the test, which keeps the average down despite the good read performance at the beginning.
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Ananke - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
It is not the brand image, Intel is a government registered contractor, and it is US company, i.e. its products would be prioritized before price concerns.catavalon21 - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
Most USG computers are purchased all-up OEM systems (Dell, IBM, HP, etc.), and inclusion of a "foreign" SSD or HDD wouldn't slow down the purchase for a minute.Gigaplex - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
This barely qualifies as an Intel product. Other than firmware they didn't really build any of this.Vorl - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
So, you are defending overpriced crap because it's for government/corporate use? Wouldn't those same entities be better served with either cheaper similar performing options, or same priced better performing options?Honestly, you seem like you are defending them pretty hard and not using logic.
JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
I'm not defending it.Intel's milking their brand name, and more power to them. There isn't anything exactly evil for marking up your products because you have a global brand name (see: Apple, IBM, Beats, Bose, etc.)
Educated consumers like me and you are wiser than to buy this.
That being said, just because a smart consumer (again, you or I) shouldn't buy it, doesn't mean there's no point in releasing this SSD to the market. Let the sheeple buy them, you nor I should care about their choices in expenditures.
BurntMyBacon - Friday, June 24, 2016 - link
@JoeyJoJo123: "Let the sheeple buy them, you nor I should care about their choices in expenditures."Ideally no, we shouldn't. After all, if companies can make more money off of the "sheeple", then informed consumers can often times get a better value on another product that should by all rights be selling more if not for the "sheeple". However, letting the "sheeple" buy overpriced products from companies with a solid product line will sometimes encourage the company to overprice other products that informed consumers may have interest in. It's not always good for the informed consumer to leave the "sheeple" uninformed. Just don't get emotionally invested as it will almost certainly cause the opposite of the desired outcome.
vladx - Friday, June 24, 2016 - link
Indeed we should do our best and inform average joes about this kind of stuff whenever we can. This wat, more good products will be pushed instead of "trash" like this Intel SSD.catavalon21 - Thursday, June 23, 2016 - link
Fair enough on the corp / gov end use, though I have to wonder...who are they targeting with the 5 year warranty?euskalzabe - Friday, June 24, 2016 - link
Wait... how can you say that governments want to buy from "reputable" brands but then say that "brand image" doesn't count? If there's bad brand image, there's no reputation to talk about. They're essentially connected.JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, June 27, 2016 - link
Let me explain:Governments will make bulk purchases of resources they supposedly need. At one point the government purchases thousands of PS3s to network into a computing cluster. When the Pentium 4 came out, thousands of Pentium 4 computers were purchased by the government for government usage. Government entities seem to make these purchases primarily by brand recognition. Government entities rarely (if ever) purchase cheap Chinese PCs for official government usage, even though it would probably save them a lot of dough rather than procuring bulk workstations from HP/Dell/Lenovo, etc. Intel's a brand name and it's entirely feasibly that a Government IT sector office would procure bulk Intel SSDs to retrofit into slow/problematic workstations to prolong that workstation's lifespan, rather than purchase an entirely new workstation for that user.
On a personal level:
Never buy on brand name alone. Not every product a brand makes is great, and you shouldn't let good products that a company has made in the past cloud your judgment or decision on any particular other product. Unfortunately, Government procurements don't seem to follow this rationale.