The Intel SSD 545s (512GB) Review: 64-Layer 3D TLC NAND Hits Retail

AnandTech 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.