The Intel SSD DC P3700 Review Part 2: NVMe on Client Workloads
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 10, 2014 12:07 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Intel
- Intel SSD DC P3700
- NVMe
Performance vs. Transfer Size
ATTO is a useful tool for quickly benchmarking performance across various transfer sizes. You can get the complete data set in Bench. The P3700 does a good job of scaling performance, although Samsung definitely holds an advantage at some of the smaller transfer sizes when it comes to reads.
The story changes a bit if we look at sequential writes:
Note the ultra low performance at really small transfer sizes (512B - 2KB). To better showcase what I was seeing, I cropped out the larger transfers and just focused on the first few datapoints:
The P3700's performance is really low when it comes to ultra small sequential write transfers. Once you hit 4KB the P3700's performance skyrockets, but up until that point it's substantially slower than even a high end SATA drive. As very few workloads actually care about performance down here I suspect it's something that Intel never optimized for.
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hpvd - Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - link
if OSX and Linux Boot is already possible, the Bios should already be fine !?DanNeely - Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - link
Doesn't OSX only support UEFI?xMoe - Sunday, June 15, 2014 - link
OSX on Intel supports EFI - IIRC - though Apple may have a slightly different "flavor" ... 1058 and lower support Open Firmware - if you have an old rig -if you - or anyone is interested - here is more info ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_a...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFI_System_partition
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Apple&... - last updated December 02, 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_I... <- strangly this lacks any specifics on Apple tech and/or standard (or lack there of).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table <- slightly OT - but going over drive partitions - tables MBR, GPT, etc...
althaz - Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - link
Aha, I hadn't tried it since 8.1 came out, didn't realise they'd added it :). Awesome!hpvd - Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - link
so there seem to be two differnt drivers available: one Windows included and one from Intel.Each seem to give a completly different performance for this Device:
see here: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Intel-SSD-DC-...
(at least with the tested versions)
=> the question is: can we have both already TODAY?
Great Performance AND Boot support (using the same driver)?
hpvd - Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - link
and which driver and which version is used by anandtech for reviewing P3700?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - link
The Intel driver. The latest (and currently only) version: 1016sorten - Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - link
I don't see any reference to OSX here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express#Operating...
UltraWide - Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - link
The barrier to entry is the high price. Everything else is top notch.nathanddrews - Tuesday, June 10, 2014 - link
Hence, the P3600 and P3500.