The Intel Optane SSD 900p 480GB Review: Diving Deeper Into 3D XPoint
by Billy Tallis on December 15, 2017 12:15 PM ESTConclusion
As expected, the 480GB Optane SSD 900p performs about the same as the 280GB model. That makes it one of the overall fastest SSDs money can buy, but the Optane SSDs don't win in every test.
Higher performance is often an important selling point for higher capacity SSDs—and sub-par performance can be a major reason to avoid the smallest model in most product lines. This doesn't really apply to the Optane SSDs, so consumers are faced with the simpler question of how much fast storage they really want to pay for. As the most expensive "consumer" SSDs on a per-GB basis, the Optane SSDs force potential buyers to consider just how much blazing fast storage they actually need. I'm currently using an Optane SSD in one of my machines as a cache in front of a RAID array of hard drives. For this use case, even the 280GB model is larger than necessary. But as a primary storage device, the 480GB model would definitely feel less crowded.
Given the high price per GB of the Optane SSDs so far, the upcoming 960 GB and 1.5 TB models of the Optane SSD are going to be an even tougher sell: The market for $1200+ SSDs is pretty small, and very few users actually need a full TB of data within ten microsecond's reach.
Our first round of power measurements of the Optane SSD 900p showed what we expected: the Optane SSD 900p requires far more power than M.2 NVMe SSDs, and usually ends up being less efficient than a good M.2 SSD in spite of the great performance of the Optane SSD. It's hard to score well on efficiency with an idle power draw of over 3.5W. The Optane SSD 900p did score a clear efficiency win for random reads at low queue depths, where its performance advantage over flash-based SSDs is greatest.
Don't hold your breath for a M.2 version of the 900p, or anything with performance close to the 900p. Future Optane products will require different controllers in order to offer significantly different performance characteristics. Higher sequential performance to compete against the top flash-based SSDs will require a higher channel count, making for a more expensive drive with an even larger and more power-hungry controller. Lower power consumption will require serious performance compromises. In the near term, we're much more likely to see a new controller that's a step up from the Optane Memory M.2's single channel, but not large enough to rule out using the M.2 form factor. A three or four channel controller should be able to fit within a M.2 card's physical, electrical and thermal limits, but would offer much lower performance than this Optane SSD 900p.
250-280 GB | 480-512 GB | 1TB | 2TB | |
Samsung 960 EVO | $127.99 (51¢/GB) | $240.00 (48¢/GB) | $449.99 (45¢/GB) | |
Samsung 960 Pro | $289.99 (57¢/GB) | $619.00 (60¢/GB) | $1227.00 (60¢/GB) | |
Intel Optane SSD 900p AIC | $389.99 (139¢/GB) | $599.99 (125¢/GB) | ||
Intel Optane SSD 900p U.2 | $369.99 (132¢/GB) |
For the most part, the Optane SSDs are holding to their MSRPs, leaving them more than twice as expensive per GB as the fastest NAND flash based SSDs. They're a niche product in the same vein as the extreme capacity models like Samsung's 2TB 960 PRO and 4TB 850 EVO. But where the benefits of expanded capacity are easy to assess, the performance benefits of the Optane SSD are more subtle. For most ordinary and even relatively heavy desktop workloads, high-end flash storage is fast enough that further improvements are barely noticeable.
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eddman - Sunday, December 17, 2017 - link
That graph explains the situation perfectly. Even if the media's latency was somehow magically reduced to zero, the total storage latency would still be only about 6 times better.It's all pointless though; ddriver's personal hatred towards intel and "the corporations" prevents him from thinking differently. As soon as he finds a number that is different from what was mentioned in the promotional materials, the first thing he does is to start shouting "liar, liar".
P.S. I have zero love for corporations and can't stand when one takes advantage of the users. What I also can't stand is a person spreading unsubstantiated claims and spamming a technology website's comment section to offload his hate in order to feel better.
tuxRoller - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
Also z nand appears to be mlc cells operating in SLC mode, and that's still slower than first gen xpoint.hescominsoon - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
Intel has walked back the 100x bs claims. Also notice how micro(their partner in this venture) has NOT released their side of this product?https://semiaccurate.com/?s=optane
tuxRoller - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link
They walked them back? Maybe for these nvme products, though I've not seen anything about that. The real test is how well they'll do as direct addressed memory when used in the DIMM configuration.Reflex - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
SLC has no significant advantages over Optane. Optane is nearly across the board a better performer, often by a significant margin, than any commercial NAND technology. The two drawbacks that are important right now are power consumption and cost (these are also drawbacks of SLC for the record)The complaints about Intel's 'hype' are misconstrued. There is a huge difference between discussing what a technology is capable of, and what individual products derived from that technology can deliver. That some people had reading comprehension problems is not Intel's problem, they are delivering what they promised, and as the rest of the supporting infrastructure improves over time we know based on their initial statements that Optane/PCM can scale to match it.
CheapSushi - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
The industry is trying. It's called Z-NAND.ddriver - Friday, December 15, 2017 - link
Which is MLC...Samsung realized nobody is catching up in the nand market and decided to push consumer, high end and mainstream enterprise a notch down to TLC.
So now that MLC is only a "high end enterprise" thing in their portfolio, they decided to pimp it up with a new moniker - z-nand. Alas, it is just good old MLC with a barely incremental controller. And claim that it has anything to do with SLC performance - which it does as much as an a race horse harness makes an old donkey faster.
They REALLY aren't trying.
CheapSushi - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link
It's MLC & TLC 3D NAND treated exactly like SLC (1 bit per cell) with a better controller and special sauce, effectively making it as if it was SLC in the first place and a better SLC driver than previous SLC drives that came out. So what is the issue? It's not a completely separate NAND production line?ddriver - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link
Do you realize parroting nonsense you are clearly completely ignorant of doesn't win you bonus points?There is no such thing, you have to compromise one for the sake of the other. It is just more mature and a tiny bit better than previous gen MLC, but it is not even half of what can be squeezed of contemporary SLC.
"Special sauce"? It is sad to see average Joe hans't moved up a bit since the middle ages.
drajitshnew - Saturday, December 16, 2017 - link
No "ryzen" in opposition to their "core". The flash industry is in a race to see who can make the CHEAPEST PoS