Intel SSD 730 (480GB) Review: Bringing Enterprise to the Consumers
by Kristian Vättö on February 27, 2014 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Intel
- Intel SSD 730
AnandTech Storage Bench 2013
Our Storage Bench 2013 focuses on worst-case multitasking and IO consistency. Similar to our earlier Storage Benches, the test is still application trace based—we record all IO requests made to a test system and play them back on the drive we're testing and run statistical analysis on the drive's responses. There are 49.8 million IO operations in total with 1583.0GB of reads and 875.6GB of writes. As some of you have asked, I'm not including the full description of the test for better readability, so make sure to read our Storage Bench 2013 introduction for the full details.
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2013 - The Destroyer | ||||||||||||
| Workload | Description | Applications Used | ||||||||||
| Photo Sync/Editing | Import images, edit, export | Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Dropbox | ||||||||||
| Gaming | Download/install games, play games | Steam, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Starcraft 2, BioShock Infinite | ||||||||||
| Virtualization | Run/manage VM, use general apps inside VM | VirtualBox | ||||||||||
| General Productivity | Browse the web, manage local email, copy files, encrypt/decrypt files, backup system, download content, virus/malware scan | Chrome, IE10, Outlook, Windows 8, AxCrypt, uTorrent, AdAware | ||||||||||
| Video Playback | Copy and watch movies | Windows 8 | ||||||||||
| Application Development | Compile projects, check out code, download code samples | Visual Studio 2012 | ||||||||||
We are reporting two primary metrics with the Destroyer: average data rate in MB/s and average service time in microseconds. The former gives you an idea of the throughput of the drive during the time that it was running the test workload. This can be a very good indication of overall performance. What average data rate doesn't do a good job of is taking into account response time of very bursty (read: high queue depth) IO. By reporting average service time we heavily weigh latency for queued IOs. You'll note that this is a metric we've been reporting in our enterprise benchmarks for a while now. With the client tests maturing, the time was right for a little convergence.
Even though the performance consistency on the SSD 730 is great, it's only mediocre in our Storage Bench 2013. The write performance of SSD 730 is class-leading but as our Storage Bench has more read than write operations, the SSD 730 loses to drives with better read performance. Whether the drive should focus on read or write performance is a question with no single correct answer because it's workload dependent. The heavy enterprise workloads the SSD 730 platform was designed for tend to be more aggressive in writes, so giving up some read performance makes sense there and carries over into the consumer version.
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Mr Perfect - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
Because it's edgy and cool, and what the youf are looking for in a SSD... Or at least according to the guys in marketing it is.arvivaz - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link
Not satanic. Just a skull. But its really witty. The skull is tilted like its looking at a PC screen and that looks like a smile. Skin's blown away from the power of the hardware, I suppose. Note the electrical/electronic symbols hidden in the skull. Pretty good.star-affinity - Monday, March 17, 2014 - link
What's so satanic about it? I think it resembles quite well the skull we all carry around…amddude10 - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
I bought one of these because of its wear tracking/ drive monitoring features, significantly better than crucial m500 power loss protection, high endurance, and long warranty. I didn't buy this SSD for gaming, yet I find the skull endearing. This drive certainly seems likely to live up to the "hardcore" image of the skull, at least in terms of reliability/durability.danjw - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
No support for built in encryption, kills that product in my eyes. Sure, the consistency is nice, but I don't see ever using drives that don't have encryption capabilities. That, said I am much more security conscious than most consumers. I always secure wipe drives once I retire them. I care enough to make sure my drives have the on drive encryption enabled. These are for the people that think over much of the Intel brand and think Windows Firewall and Security Essentials are actually a good security choice.PEJUman - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
I say having common sense is the best security choice, more so than any specific program/brand of firewall-antivirus.I see the market for this SSD as near workstation class desktops @ semi-pro/pro setting (think small business). you would be secured behind your IT (camera, chassis intrusion alarm, etc). Not to mention your data on the SSD will be server-backed, negating most of the benefit of encryptions.
I honestly think Intel is no longer chasing true consumer/enthusiast (or anyone with price/performance considerations).
DesktopMan - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Since this SSD isn't optimized for mobile, encryption doesn't make all that much sense due to limited ATA password support on mainstream motherboards. Also makes sense that they want to differentiate from the enterprise drive.beginner99 - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Exactly. Encryption is more relevant in laptops and this clearly isn't a laptop drive. That being said I do not see a market for this drive. It's a tiny, tiny niche. The 840 Evo is faster and way cheaper, the M500 is like half the price albeit slower it has more features and I doubt one notices much difference in normal usage scenarios.zyxtomatic - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
You can also use the whole disk encryption option in your OS (Windows Bitlocker, Mac FileVault, etc) if your drive doesn't have hardware encryption. The performance hit really isn't that bad, and it protects your data just as well as hardware encryption does. I've been using it on my work and personal laptops for years and it's never been a problem.chrnochime - Saturday, March 1, 2014 - link
And the Evo is in a long line of SSDs that have consistently have drive failures for users within the span of several months, as seen on user reviews. Who gives a shit about faster when it's like playing lottery with using the drive anyway.