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
Random Read/Write Speed
The four corners of SSD performance are as follows: random read, random write, sequential read and sequential write speed. Random accesses are generally small in size, while sequential accesses tend to be larger and thus we have the four Iometer tests we use in all of our reviews.
Our first test writes 4KB in a completely random pattern over an 8GB space of the drive to simulate the sort of random access that you'd see on an OS drive (even this is more stressful than a normal desktop user would see). I perform three concurrent IOs and run the test for 3 minutes. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire time. We use both standard pseudo randomly generated data for each write as well as fully random data to show you both the maximum and minimum performance offered by SandForce based drives in these tests. The average performance of SF drives will likely be somewhere in between the two values for each drive you see in the graphs. For an understanding of why this matters, read our original SandForce article.
Random read performance is actually a bit behind the SSD 320 and old X25-M G2, but still within the same ballpark and comparable to the X25-E. Note that random read performance has always been a strong suite of Intel's, which is very important to many database workloads.
Random write performance is in the same ballpark as the other Intel MLC SSDs, however the X25-E is noticeably faster. SLC NAND is always easier to write to, and we see that advantage clearly here. Although the 710 does ok here, newer controllers from SandForce have raised the bar for highly compressible random write performance by a significant margin.
At high queue depths the X25-E is still significantly faster. Given the random nature of many enterprise server workloads, the 710 could end up slower than the X25-E.
Sequential Read/Write Speed
To measure sequential performance I ran a 1 minute long 128KB sequential test over the entire span of the drive at a queue depth of 1. The results reported are in average MB/s over the entire test length. These results are going to be the best indicator of large file copy performance.
Sequential speed is also quite similar to other Intel drives. Note the slight drop in performance compared to the SSD 320. With the type of workloads the 710 is aimed at, I don't expect large file sequential performance to be a limiting factor. Once again we see that newer 6Gbps controllers from Marvell and SandForce offer much better performance here.
Sequential write performance is up quite a bit over the previous generation drives. The additional spare area is part of the story here, though the 6Gbps controllers still maintain their lead.
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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.