The Intel SSD 760p 512GB Review: Mainstream NVMe Done Right
by Billy Tallis on January 23, 2018 11:30 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 SSD 760p falls on the good side of a big gap in average data rate scores on The Destroyer. Scoring far below the 760p are SATA drives and most earlier entry-level NVMe SSDs. The 760p is a bit slower than some of the drives using planar MLC NAND or 3D TLC NAND, but it is clear that the 760p is capable of handling The Destroyer better than any previous SSD in its price range.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores don't provide the clear separation that the average data rate shows, so the Intel 760p simply looks a bit below average for a NVMe SSD. Given the relative pricing and the poor performance of the Intel 600p, that's a good result for the 760p.
Breaking down the average latency by reads and writes, the Intel SSD 760p ranks about the same either way. It is roughly on par with the slower (read: not Samsung) MLC NVMe SSDs.
The 99th percentile read latency of the Intel SSD 760p on The Destroyer is rather poor, and the 99th percentile write latency isn't great either. The 760p doesn't seem to have serious problems with garbage collection pauses, but The Destroyer definitely does stress the 760p.
The energy consumption of the Intel SSD 760p during The Destroyer is almost as low as Samsung's best NVMe SSDs, but nowhere near the SATA-like efficiency of the Toshiba XG5. Overall, the 760p is much more efficient than Intel's previous NVMe SSDs, but there's still room for improvement.
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HStewart - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Make sense especially with their own fab, they no longer need Micron to supply, but these chips are older generation, so they probably realize that future generations are not necessaryilt24 - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Intel converted a factory in China from making chipsets to making 3D-NAND a couple of years ago, then a couple of weeks ago Intel and Micron announced they would stop working together on 3DNAND once their 3rd generation was released ~2019. They said they would continue to collaborate on their 3DXpoint memory.Currently it isn't clear if all of Intel's supply comes from the Intel factory or if they are still getting any from the Micron fabs. Independent of where the flash comes from, it will have the Intel logo since they just get wafers from Micron and package it themselves.
rawcode - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Your pricing for the the Samsung 960 PRO are way off. You have prices for the 512GB in the 256GB column. 1TB for the 512GB, and 2Tb for the 1TB.Billy Tallis - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Fixed. Thanks!lux44 - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
I guess post-Meltdown/Spectre benchmarking is in the pipeline, as IO-benchmarks should show a large drop... It definitely will make Core8 benchmarks a lot more interesting. I wish you all good luck in getting to the bottom of the things regarding performance impact, we count on you!tuxRoller - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Not as bad as was once thought.https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&...
Ignoring the XFS results (just that they are using cfq means the fs is starting the fight with one arm, and most of a leg, disabled) it looks like 5% or less (except for the compile benchmark which caused one fs to drop 15%)
lux44 - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Given recent news about Intel microcode update recall and Linus's rants about unacceptable kernel updates, I think the actual Spectre mitigation impact is unknown, at least under Linux. I doubt it's larger than 15%, but we'll see.Jhlot - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Bummer, still significantly outpaced by the 960 EVO which was released more than a year ago.msabercr - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Dang it, this VW Beetle is nowhere near as fast as my 911 turbo.shabby - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Price is close enough that it should be.