The Intel SSD 540s (480GB) Review
by Billy Tallis on June 23, 2016 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage and unlike our Iometer tests, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, a few data points about its latency, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
On The Destroyer, the ADATA SP550 was able to punch above its weight and perform on par with planar TLC drives of twice the capacity, while the Crucial BX200 performed below expectations. The Intel 540s unfortunately demonstrates more of the latter, with an average data rate that is not as bad as the BX200 but is still clearly outclassed by the Phison S10 TLC drives and the SP550.
As with the average data rate, the average service time of the 540s is poor but not quite as bad as the BX200. The SP550 didn't rank much higher on this metric, but in absolute terms it was significantly faster.
The frequency of latency outliers shows similar rankings, with the Intel 540s near the bottom of the chart and between the two SM2256 drives.
Power efficiency has regressed slightly compared to the SP550, but the Intel 540s clearly doesn't have anything horribly wrong going on the way the BX200 did.
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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.