The Intel SSD 710 (200GB) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 30, 2011 8:53 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Intel
- Intel SSD 710
Final Words
When I first ran through the performance data of the 710 I came away disappointed. As a desktop user the 710 offers lower performance than the Intel SSD 320 at a significantly higher price. Thankfully, Intel's focus for this drive is on the enterprise market and here the 710 does a lot better. Our SQL tests showed the 710 offering similar performance to the outgoing X25-E. It was in our Oracle OLTP benchmark that the older SLC drive was able to offer a 25% increase in throughput over the new MLC-HET solution. No matter how you look at it, small file random write performance is just tough to beat on SLC NAND. I suspect for many enterprise workloads however, the 710 could be a drop-in replacement for the X25-E. In the cases where it isn't as fast, the margins are significant but overcomable by upping the number of drives in the RAID array. This isn't the ideal solution but the cost savings alone (compared to the X25-E) should make the move to the 710 worth it. If you don't need additional capacity however and are running a write intensive OLTP workload, the 710 will likely do nothing for you.
Intel's SSD 710 appears to be targeted squarely at existing X25-E customers or companies who needed the endurance of the X25-E but at larger capacities. In fact we have a number of X25-Es deployed in our servers that I wouldn't mind moving to 710s simply because of the capacity increase. Most of our servers don't need a ton of space, but with DB sizes in the hundreds of GBs even a large array of 64GB drives doesn't give you all that much space for growth (especially if you're replicating data across SSDs for redundancy). For these uses, the 710 appears to be a success.
The big question for enterprise customers is whether or not you need the additional cycling offered by the 710. To know for sure you'll really have to do a lot of profiling of your own workload. I suspect Intel's SSD 320 would do just fine in a number of situations, particularly if you significantly increase the spare area on the drive (e.g. to 50%).
Where the 710 leaves me wanting more is that it doesn't actually move the performance bar up at all. At best Intel is able to deliver the same performance it did nearly three years ago with the X25-E. While it is true that customers moving from spindles to SSDs will likely be just fine with the 710's level of performance, I would like to see more. To date Intel hasn't delivered a 6Gbps SATA SSD based on its own controller. I suspect that's a big part of why we're not seeing better performance out of the 710. Intel is likely unwilling to try a third party controller in the enterprise space (can't blame them) so instead we get the 710: a decent performer with Intel's reputation for reliability. Should SandForce be able to convince customers that its solutions are just as reliable however, Intel could have a real problem in the enterprise space.
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inplainview - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - link
Useless toys? Is this coming from someone that can't afford Apple's offerings or someone who hasn't figured out that Apple is in the mainstream of consumer offerings and mentioning them is this consumer space is quite appropriate considering Apple's influence. You have proven yourself to be myopic and petty.Stas - Sunday, October 2, 2011 - link
umadbro? Everything Apple sucks :Dgevorg - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - link
At least there is no Top 100 iPhone apps here. :)web2dot0 - Friday, September 30, 2011 - link
Unfortunately, that's what people want to read nowdays. Anand is just targeting the mainstream. Otherwise, how will he get all the pageviews? It's a business afterall. Let's not be naive. He doesn't choose his articles to write about by random. There's always a reason to the madness. He's just trying to stay (slightly) ahead of the curve. Too hard out, and it'll become irrelevant.Just wish the team stops writing so many editorial news reporting and focuses more on technical analysis like the ones above. The site is slowly becoming more and more corporate and with time, it will lose it's edge.
Anyways, it's not like other sites are that much better. There's always room for improvement ....
taltamir - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - link
Apple has single digit market-share. This is as far from mainstream as possible.B3an - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - link
....Yeah in computers but thats it. Apple are the largest consumer tech company on the planet, they now make more money than Microsoft. Apple pretty much have a monopoly on MP3 players and online music. They have the single best selling phone, the best selling tablet, and are gaining PC market share. For tech stuff you cant get more mainstream than Apple. There useless devices dont belong on serious sites like this IMO, they belong on dumbed down crap like Engadget.inplainview - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - link
How many of you would be willing to financially support this site so that you can get your truckload of geek? Most likely zero to none. This site is supported via page hits which means that the authors have to write about stuff that most of the basement dwellers here aren't interested in. However, as someone who actually goes out into the sun, knows what women look like, smell like, taste like (figure it out), and realize that there is a world outside of sitting in front of a keyboard and bitching about how this site is not this and that, I can appreciate the work put in. Some of you people are simply whiners and pathetic.Stas - Sunday, October 2, 2011 - link
Apple unofficially owns EngadgetKPOM - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - link
In the US, Apple has the third largest share of the PC market.http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/07/apple-no...
It's lower worldwide, but Apple is definitely a mainstream PC manufacturer.
http://osxdaily.com/2011/03/18/mac-market-share-ar...
Penti - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - link
Anandtech is far from and far more then just a gadget site. Times change and you have to keep up with that to. So of course the focus changes, it's not all about the baddest mainstream overclocking mainboards and high-end gamer gpus any more, things have changed and people come here because it's not just fluff but also digs through down in the hardware/product. You will have more smartphones, notebooks and so on the gpu wars itself won't get you a lot of readers. You will have more enterprise topics and so on. Computing has changed. It's not really about gaming any more and that market has changed.