The Intel Optane SSD 800p (58GB & 118GB) Review: Almost The Right Size
by Billy Tallis on March 8, 2018 5:15 PM 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 average data rates from the Intel Optane SSD 800p on The Destroyer are comparable to some of the faster flash-based SSDs we've tested, but the 800p isn't as fast as the Samsung 960 PRO. Intel's VROC clearly doesn't help performance on this kind of test, and instead it just adds overhead.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores of the Optane SSD 800p on The Destroyer are good, but don't beat the best flash-based SSDs and are far higher than the Optane 900p. Intel VROC seems to improve latency some even though it was detrimental to the average data rate.
The average read latency of the 800p is more than twice as high as that of the 900p, and is higher than the Samsung 960 PRO. VROC RAID-0 adds a few more microseconds of read latency. The average write latency of the 800p is far worse than the 900p or high-end flash based SSDs, but VROC greatly improves the write latencies and the four-drive RAID-0 is comparable to the Optane SSD 900p.
Intel's VROC helps significantly with the 99th percentile read and write latencies, taking the 800p from not quite high-end to beating a single 900p.
The energy usage of the Optane SSD 800p over the course of The Destroyer is far lower than that of any flash-based SSD. The 800p completes the test fairly quickly, and unlike the 900p it keeps power consumption reasonably low throughout the test. The low-end flash based SSDs can take more than twice as long to complete the test while drawing more power than the 800p.
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beginner99 - Friday, March 9, 2018 - link
Exactly. Anything below 240GB is not a workable solution nowadays. I remember my first intel g2 80GB. constant micro-managing where to put files and which app gets to be on the ssd and which not. Or for my parents I back then got them a 64 gb drive. When the win 10 update came it was not possible to update because updating windows 7 to 10 requires more than 64gb.Calin - Friday, March 9, 2018 - link
I do use a 120GB SSD on my desktop, and it works good enough with a 2TB hard drive. I even use a 90% partition, as early SSDs had performance problems when close to full.sharath.naik - Thursday, March 8, 2018 - link
was rapid mode tried on Samsung drives?. not sure with a large enough ram the difference in random performance would matter that much.Billy Tallis - Thursday, March 8, 2018 - link
Half the test suite is run on Linux, so Rapid Mode isn't an option. And in general, I don't approve of third-party software that second-guesses the decisions made by core parts of the OS like the virtual memory system—especially not when those tools put user data at risk without being absolutely clear about what they're really doing.eddieobscurant - Friday, March 9, 2018 - link
Billy , do you have any news on micron's QuantX ?Dragonstongue - Thursday, March 8, 2018 - link
Intel and Micron (IM) joint venture, Intel "branded" as Optane either way is 3D XPoint..far as I understood Micron decided to "drop it" so is Intel going about it all on their own, was Unity Semiconductors who was bought out by Rambus 2012, that likely not a good thing either (they) RB seem more prevalent to sue people vs making a tangible product everyone wants (IMO)the above 3d x, optane whatever seems like another thing that "on paper" seems like would be a decent thing, but, the price factor puts it into a "there are better options available" that offer similar performance or at the very least substantially better $/gb value.
I think that is what Micron was seeing, no real way to get the "value" out of it without charging too high a price to make it market worthwhile for them and consumer, Intel is their own fish and they always (again IMO) charge substantial price for a "do we really need this" type product (like Nvidia) cut corners or cut down performance that could have been, but still want top dollar, and "next year" come out with a more full fat version (that should have been the previous year) and want more $ for the "upgrade" planned obsolescence/upgrade path.
for a loose example, Samsung 950 EVO M.2 250gb (pro faster but ofc more pricey)
I see available for ~$160 CAD
read/write 3200/1900
QD1 Thread
Random Read: 14,000 IOPS
Random Write: 50,000 IOPS
QD32 Thread
Random Read: 380,000 IOPS
Random Write: 360,000 IOPS
their "power draw" and latency do not seem to be praiseworth either, so it still leads me to the same question "why bother"...also, I really wish M.2 drives were maybe a toned down speed version so it could be "less expensive" here I thought that by going smaller and smaller node and going from SLC to MLC to 3d etc price would drop and drop while performance would go up and up, seems that the only real thing that has changed is the less on the "board" the further they crank the speed give smaller capacity and increase the price *facepalm*
Lolimaster - Friday, March 9, 2018 - link
10x less latency15x faster in QD1r
4X faster in QD1w
Adramtech - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link
Micron has no plans to drop QuantX and are providing an update at their May tech conference.shabby - Thursday, March 8, 2018 - link
Leave it to intel to artificially cripple a product on purpose, who does this?boeush - Thursday, March 8, 2018 - link
Seems to me, if you really want supper-fast, low-latency high-endurance random read/write at low QD and capacities ~128GB for a lot of $$$, then just get a bunch of RAM and a UPS (to prevent data loss in case of power failure.). No SSD technology will ever beat good ol' RAM in terms of performance. In this case, for mass storage you just need fast sequential reads and writes so you can quickly map your filesystem to/from RAM on system startup/shutdown, respectively...In light of which, until Intel comes out with their next-gen Optane at 512 GB+ capacities in M.2 package, the current product feels like a solution on search of a problem