The Intel SSD 545s (512GB) Review: 64-Layer 3D TLC NAND Hits Retail
by Billy Tallis on June 27, 2017 6:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The Intel 545s delivers a much faster average data rate on the Light test than the 540s, and is even slightly faster than the Crucial MX300. It isn't quite up to the level of the Samsung drives, but it's reasonably close. The ADATA SU800 takes first place here, showing that it is optimized for high peak performance at the expense of very poor performance under sustained heavy workloads.
The average latency of the Intel 545s on the Light test is nothing special, but that's still an improvement over the 540s, or the MX300 when the test is run on a full drive.
All of the TLC SSDs suffer from significantly higher read latency when the Light test is run on a full drive rather than an empty drive. The MLC-based Samsung 850 PRO is only slightly affected, and the Intel 545s is less severely affected than the Crucial MX300 or the Intel 540s. The empty-drive write latency of the 545s is significantly better than the 540s but still slightly behind the other 3D NAND SSDs. When the test is run on a full drive, the write latency of the Crucial MX300 spikes and the 545s ends up tied with the SU800 and trailing only the Samsung drives.
The Light test is easy enough that the Crucial MX300 has the best power consumption whether the test is run on a full drive or an empty drive. The Intel 540s and 545s are essentially tied for second place, with the Samsung 850 EVO right behind. The Samsung 850 PRO is the only true outlier here: it generally sacrifices some power efficiency to deliver the best performance, but the Light test doesn't stress it enough for that to matter.
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woggs - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
Once a nand factory is running on a new generation, it has to sell components. The only path out the door for nand is an SSD (for Intel). A product like this gets out quicker and starts the flow. Not a big money maker but gets the factory running in it's early stages.nevcairiel - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
I hope 64-layer TLC brings us closer to more affordable consumer "mass storage" SSDs. I would love to replace my 3TB storage spinning drive with a SSD, but I would need at least that space again - and right now thats still very expensive.MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
That is definitely needed. SSD prices need to continue to decline in order to finally finish off HDD's once and for allHomeworldFound - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
That's going to be a slow process, one the mechanical storage companies are going to want to slow down even further.mkozakewich - Wednesday, June 28, 2017 - link
Why not a 6TB HDD?Mechanical drives look like they'll keep their edge on raw capacity for the foreseeable future. You're best off with a dual system.
Drumsticks - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
The SSD 540 was a disappointing product that honestly should have pretty much never been released. It sucked. This one is much better! It's not the best, but it's certainly competitive, and that performance on the destroyer looks great. Kudos to Intel.We just need the price to go down. I bought a 512GB Crucial MX100 years ago for $163 on sale. It's crazy how high prices have gotten recently.
mkozakewich - Wednesday, June 28, 2017 - link
Ha, I remember just a few years ago when the prices were hovering around $1/GB! It kind of feels weird to hear people complaining about high prices at 30-40¢/GB.Remember the Intel X25-M in 2009 for over $500? For 60 GB? AnandTech covered that by benchmarking application start times compared to HDDs. There was this whole problem with janky SSDs, so they described the problem and ran tests on those other low-end SSDs.
We've come so far!
eddieobscurant - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
The bapco benchmark is useless. The differences are negligible . Please don't include it in the new 2017 benchmark suite.lilmoe - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
Totally disappointed. This just gets a tiny bit closer to the 850 EVO, yet it's a bit more expensive ($20 more for 512GB drives).I was hoping Samsung would be under real pressure to lower prices, but this just makes the 850 EVO seem a bit more competitive; it's a bit cheaper, proven for a while to be reliable (ie: a safer bet), and supports more features like encryption.
Seriously, are they even trying? Hoping some REAL competition is on the way shortly from the others...
I smell price fixing shenanigans.
Impulses - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
It's kind of startling how long the 850 EVO has dominated for... It launched at the end of 2014, over 2.5yrs ago now, and pricing has remained more or less constant for the last 2 years (at least for the 1TB I've bought, same today as in the summer of 2015).When has a single storage product ever had that long of a run without a serious challenger? Even Samsung decided to ride it after quickly iterating (and suffering some issues along the way) thru the 430 - 830 - 840.