The Intel Optane SSD 900P 280GB Review
by Billy Tallis on October 27, 2017 9:30 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, 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. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The Intel Optane SSD 900P sets a new record for average data rate on The Destroyer, beating the Samsung 960 PRO 2TB's score by about 10%, and beating the more similarly-priced 512GB 960 PRO by about 23%.
The average latency of the Optane SSD 900P on The Destroyer is a modest improvement over the previous record. The 99th percentile latency is a more significant 60% reduction over the previous record, putting the Optane SSD more clearly in a separate performance consistency class from high-end flash-based SSDs.
The average read latency of the Optane SSD 900P on The Destroyer is less than half that of any flash-based SSD, but the average write latency is a bit slower than the fastest flash-based SSDs.
Even though the Optane SSD didn't set a record for average write latency on the Destroyer, its 99th percentile write latency is about half the previous record. The 99th percentile read latency beats the previous record by more than 60%.
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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...