The Intel Optane SSD 900P 280GB Review
by Billy Tallis on October 27, 2017 9:30 AM ESTBAPCo SYSmark 2014 SE
BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 SE is an application-based benchmark that uses real-world applications to replay usage patterns of business users in the areas of office productivity, media creation and data/financial analysis. In addition, it also addresses the responsiveness aspect which deals with user experience as related to application and file launches, multi-tasking etc. Scores are calibrated against a reference system that is defined to score 1000 in each of the scenarios. A score of, say, 2000, would imply that the system under test is twice as fast as the reference system.
SYSmark scores are based on total application response time as seen by the user, including not only storage latency but time spent by the processor. This means there's a limit to how much a storage improvement could possibly increase scores, because the SSD is only in use for a small fraction of the total test duration. This is a significant difference from our ATSB tests where only the storage portion of the workload is replicated and disk idle times are cut short to a maximum of 25ms.
| AnandTech SYSmark SSD Testbed | |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-7400 |
| Motherboard | ASUS B250-PLUS |
| Chipset | Intel B250 |
| Memory | 2x 8GB Kingston DDR4-2400 CL17 |
| Case | In Win C583 |
| Power Supply | Cooler Master G550M |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit, version 1703 |
Our SSD testing with SYSmark uses a different test system than the rest of our SSD tests. This machine is set up to measure total system power consumption rather than just the drive's power.
SYSmark 2014 SE doesn't come close to stressing the storage system enough to show meaningful distinctions between high-end NVMe SSDs. The Responsiveness sub-test is the most sensitive to storage performance, and only shows a few percent difference between most SSDs. The overall test barely registers a difference at all. But with my primary power meter broken, SYSmark does provide a rough assessment of how power hungry the Intel Optane SSD 900P is:
The SYSmark energy usage scores measure total system power consumption, excluding the display. Our SYSmark test system idles at around 26 W and peaks at over 60 W measured at the wall during the benchmark run. SATA SSDs seldom exceed 5 W and idle at a fraction of a watt, and the SSDs spend most of the test idle.
Despite being the fastest drive in this bunch and thus the one with the shortest SYSmark run times, the Optane SSD 900P used far more energy over the course of the three SYSmark runs. With higher idle power than even the Intel SSD 750 and similar power draw under load, the Optane SSD 900P really needs its heatsink. Intel is a very long way off from being able to package this level of performance in a M.2 SSD.
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Nikijs - Monday, October 30, 2017 - link
pls anand. just kill ddriver acc. he ruins all comment section. he's maybe "smart", but lives in another dimension, where he thinks he is only one who understands something. i bet he never ever achieved something worthy in his life. thats where all hidden anger comes from.daremighty - Tuesday, October 31, 2017 - link
I don't agree that Anandtech's approach to measure random performance. QD1 random is directly reflect the latency of memory chip (NAND or 3D Xpoint). Between the queue, there should be some idle time and it didn't explain the real random performance of device. Under random workload, the device should handle multiple random requests - it means deeper QD is more natural to explain the random performance of QD. Probably, many device would require deep QD to saturate the random, but I think it is still valid metric. I think in random, random performance with deep (64 or 128?) QD is as much important as low QD (1/2/4?). Again, low QD is just shows the NAND performance, not SSD performance.rep_movsd - Tuesday, October 31, 2017 - link
Seems like the great ddriver is an expert in all things, and his opinions of "Hypetane" are based on solid fact and "decades" of experience (of bashing intel I guess).All the people who buy Intel are idiots and those who praise Intel technology are shills...
Meanwhile, Optane and similar technologies will eventually replace SSDs and ddriver will still be grumbling about how SLC would have been better if given a chance....
Get with the times - no one is forcing anyone to buy anything Intel - and if you think anandtech fudges benchmarks, put your money where your mouth is and try doing a fraction of what they do...
Don't pour cold water on others efforts just because you have some PTSD with Intel for whatever reason...
"Bullwinkle J Moose" - Tuesday, October 31, 2017 - link
"Get with the times"Thats a great comment!
Seems like ddriver might have gotten a timeout several days ago and yet a few of you can't seem to get over him
Just admit it, you loved his comments and want him back, or else you could get with the times and get over him
He's gone, but look at the bright side.....
I'M BACK!
rep_movsd - Wednesday, November 1, 2017 - link
Yes, I love him, like all trolls love other trollsmrhamdnloanoffer - Wednesday, November 1, 2017 - link
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DocNo - Saturday, November 4, 2017 - link
Intel's caching software for Optane sucks - super finicky, not easy to integrate with an existing system and most of all requires specific motherboard to work (which I happened to have, but not the right partition layout - I dunno, technical documentation for what they want is pretty nonexistent).Luckily I stumbled PrimoCache. Downloaded a trial and had it working with my m2 Optane in 5 minutes. Made a noticeable and rather dramatic difference, even when loading stuff off of my Samsung EVO SSD. For $20 it was worth the frustration of not having to figure out Intel's poorly documented and overly fussy software. And if you don't have an Intel supported board, this lets you use Optane for caching with any board with an m2 slot.
These Optane drives would be awesome for servers - based on the experience with my desktop I now use PrimoCache on a couple of my servers and even with cheap SSDs the difference is amazing. With larger Optane drives? I should be even better. And at $120 for the server version it's by far the fastest way to add SSD caching to Windows Server. I'm extremely happy with it!
weevilone - Sunday, November 5, 2017 - link
That's interesting.. wish I had known about PrimoCache when I was tinkering with the little Optane stick. Intel's software was a huge mess, and Intel was less than helpful in working through it. When I finally went to remove it and throw in the towel, neither the software nor the UEFI could remove the stuff. I wound up having to reinstall Windows.Kwarkon - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
I'm quite curious what exact issues you had, especially with disabling Optane?mattlach - Saturday, December 30, 2017 - link
Looking at that random 4k write performance, I'm thinking a pair of these would be absolutely fantastic as a mirrored SLOG/ZIL device for my massive ZFS pool. It's very tough to predict through.Question is how they would perform on the dual socket Westmere-EP Xeons powering my storage box, with only PCIe Gen2... Probably won't make a huge difference since the write speed peaks out at about 1.7GB/s and 4x PCIe Gen2 tops out at 2GB/s.
I wouldn't mind a decent boost to sync write speeds, and this 900p seems like its tailor made for the job. No cache, so there is no need for battery/capacitor backup, and very high speed, low latency random writes...