Intel SSD 750 PCIe SSD Review: NVMe for the Client
by Kristian Vättö on April 2, 2015 12:00 PM ESTFinal Words
For years Intel has been criticized for not caring about the client SSD space anymore. The X25-M and its different generations were all brilliant drives and essentially defined the standards for a good client SSD, but since then none of Intel's client SSDs have had the same "wow" effect. That's not to say that Intel's later client SSDs have been inferior, it's just that they haven't really had any competitive advantage over the other drives on the market. It's no secret that Intel changed its SSD strategy to focus on the enterprise segment and frankly it still makes a lot of sense because the profits are more lucrative and enterprise has a lot more room for innovation as the customers value more than just rock-bottom pricing.
With the release of the SSD 750, it's safe to say that any argument of Intel not caring about the client market is now invalid. Intel does care, but rather than bringing products with new complex technologies to the market at a very early stage, Intel wants to ensure that the market is ready and there's industry wide support for the product. After all, NVMe requires BIOS support and that support has only been present for a few months now, making it logical not to release the SSD 750 any sooner.
Given the enterprise background of the SSD 750, it's more optimized for consistency than raw peak performance. The SM951, on the other hand, is a more generic client drive that concentrates on peak performance to improve performance under typical client workloads. That's visible in our benchmarks because the only test where the SSD 750 is able to beat the SM951 is The Destoyer trace, which illustrates a very IO intensive workload that only applies to power users and professionals. It makes sense for Intel to focus on that very specific target group because those are the people who are willing to pay premium for higher storage performance.
With that said, I'm not sure if I fully agree with Intel's heavy random IO focus. The sequential performance isn't bad, but I think the SSD 750 as it stands today is a bit unbalanced and could use some improvements to sequential performance even if it came at the cost of random performance.
| Price Comparison (4/2/2015) | |||||
| 128GB | 256GB | 400GB | 512GB | 1.2TB | |
| Intel SSD 750 (MSRP) | - | - | $389 | $1,029 | |
| Samsung SM951 | $120 | $239 | - | $459 | - |
RamCity actually just got its first batch of SM951s this week, so I've included it in the table for comparison (note that the prices on RamCity's website are in AUD, so I've translated them into USD and also subtracted the 10% tax that is only applicable to Australian orders). The SSD 750 is fairly competitive in price, although obviously you have to fork out more money than you would for a similar capacity SATA drive. Nevertheless, going under a dollar per gigabyte is very reasonable given the performance and full power loss protection that you get with the SSD 750.
All in all, the SSD 750 is definitely a product I recommend as it's the fastest drive for IO intensive workloads by a large margin. I can't say it's perfect and for slightly lighter IO workloads the SM951 wins my recommendation due to its more client-oriented design, but the SSD 750 is really a no compromise product that is aimed for a relatively small high-end niche, and honestly it's the only considerable option in its niche. If your IO workload needs the storage performance of tomorrow, Intel and the SSD 750 have you covered today.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
132 Comments
View All Comments
oranos - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link
Insane performance, insane value. What else to say? Intel never loses a step and surprises at every turn.Peichen - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link
Sounds like there is going to be big form factor change coming to desktop computer in the next few years. Complete removal of 5.25 and 3.5" drives, M.2 and 2.5" drives taking over, CPU limted to <77W and video card to <250W.I should hold off replacing my still very good case until I am building a new computer in 3~4 years.
cjones13 - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link
how would this drive compare with a 4 drive (samsung 850 pro 512), two card Sonnet tempo ssd pro plus arrangement? this set up is about $600 more, but 800GB larger and overall ~same $/GB @.82Freakie - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link
Maybe I'm just blind, but I don't see this 750 in Bench? Did someone forget to add it to Bench or is there a reason why it's not in there?boe - Saturday, April 4, 2015 - link
Those 10TB and 32TB SSDs can't come soon enough. I just hope they come down to an affordable price very soon as standard SSDs are still way to expensive per TB for any real storage needs.gattberserk - Saturday, April 4, 2015 - link
Can I ask why is the boot time so slow? For a drive this expensive this is not something that is tolerable.Is it possible to do a boot up timing with the fast boost function enabled? I wanna see how fast will it be as compared with other SATA drives using the same fast boot function.
The boot up time will be the last factor to decide if I wanna pull trigger on this one.
Laststop311 - Saturday, April 4, 2015 - link
This drive is a beast and just raised the cost of my skylake-e build another 1000 dollars. Maybe an even better 2nd generation version will be out by then. Upgrading my gulftown to 8 core skylake-e flagship. 4.3ghz i7-980x will have lasted me 7 years by the time skylake-e comes out which is a pretty darn good service life. Convert the ole gulftown into a seedbox/personal cloud nas/htpc/living room gaming console. Kill all the oc's and undervolt cpu for the lowest voltage stable at stock and turn all the noctua fans down with ULN adapters into silence mode. It will be rough re buying a buncha parts I wouldn't of had to if I didn't keep the PC together but it's too good of a PC still to dismantle for parts. Will be nice having a beastly backup pc.My skylake-e build has really ballooned in price but this next upgrade should last a full decade with a couple gpu upgrades using the flagship skylake-e 8 core i7 + 1.2TB intel 750 boot drive + nvidia/amd flagship 16nm FF+ GPU. Basically like 3000 dollars just in 3 parts :(. Thats ok tho it brings too many features to the table pci-e 4.0 DMI 3.0 USB 3.1 built into chipset natively 10gbit ethernet natively up to 3x ultra m2 slots and the SFF connector used in this drive possibly thunderbolt 2 built in natively of course quad channel ddr4. Hopefully better overclocking with the heat producing FIVR removed guessing 4.7-5ghz will be possible on good water cooling to the 8 core.
Sorry got on a tangent. I'm just excited there are finally enough upgrades to make a new PC worth it. No applause for intel tho it took them 7 years to make a gulftown PC worth upgrading. I should see a nice IPC gain from i7-980x gulftown to skylake-e. I'll be happy with 50-60% IPC gain and 500 extra mhz on my 980x so 4.8ghz. I think 6x 140mm high static pressure noctuas in push/pull and a 420mm rad should provide enough cooling for 4.8ghz on 8 core skylake-e if the chip is capable. Goal is to push it to 5.0ghz tho and get 700mhz speed increase + additional 55% IPC gain.
gattberserk - Sunday, April 5, 2015 - link
Unfortunately Skylake e is not coming in another 2 years. There is no news of BW-E even, and that will be another year before Skylake will come in.By den, 750 would have been obsolette, esp with Samsung 3D NAND in NVMe PCIe SSD.
JatkarP - Saturday, April 4, 2015 - link
<$1/GB at 2400/1200 MBps R/W performance. What else you need !!Ethos Evoss - Saturday, April 4, 2015 - link
|I wud rather go for new Plextor which is 5 time cheaper and with same specs..