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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Stas - Sunday, October 2, 2011 - link
Makes you wonder: how did Anandtech survive in the olden days?Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, September 30, 2011 - link
I didn't preview Bulldozer because it would've been a disservice to the community. The performance levels of chips we had access to prior to going under NDA with AMD just wasn't representative of anything.Don't worry, you'll get to hear about Bulldozer soon enough :) AMD said shipping in Q4...
Take care,
Anand
Voidman - Friday, September 30, 2011 - link
I actually would have agreed with this comment a lot more a year ago, or even 6 months ago. I am starting to see a few actual PC builder related reviews in recent months, and am happy about it. (Of course consumer SSD's are of interest to home builders, but that was about the only thing here that was). I was pleasntly surprised to see several reviews on cases/enclosures, something I have not seen here for a long time. And a PSU and monitor review here and there also. All of this came too late for my last build, but it is nice to see anyway.It does seem that there was a decision a couple of years ago to concentrate on smart phones and tablets and home theater gear, with SSD and enterprise IT articles filling in the gaps. I hope the recent trend of more PC builder related articles and reviews continues.
kevith - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - link
Apples products are interesting because they show the way. Tablets, phones and OS, they have the best. (And most expensive and hyped and with a congregation that's gross). But when Apple launches a product, EVERYONE else will try to copy it within months, whether you like it or not. Thats why its interesting reading.Enterprise hardware is interesting to read about because it shows what a new piece of hardware are ACTUALLY capable of. In this case it shows, that if you want a real reliable SSD, the "nickels and dimes", that a consumer-SSD costs is simply not enough.
THizzle7XU - Saturday, October 1, 2011 - link
"Apples products are interesting because they show the way."I actually feel like the media at this point puts Apple in a position to create a self fulfilling prophecy in this regard. The iPad is the greatest example of this. Before the iPad came out there were rumors for years, pretty much since the iPhone debut, that Apple was working on a tablet and how it would be the greatest thing ever. I feel like after the rumors went on for a while, Apple was like, "Ya, this thing sounds cool! Maybe we should build a tablet!". And then all the other manufactures sat on their hands while the obvious was happening waiting for Apple to release the design template when the blueprint was crystal clear for tablets (i.e. just their phone OS on a bigger screen with slight modifications to the apps to take advantage of the screen res).
It's like Apple pays its competitors not to compete with its ideas until they have released their product. And they everyone else becomes a copy cat of ideas that were so painfully obvious in the first place because they inexplicably waited until Apple released their version.
Stas - Sunday, October 2, 2011 - link
How dare you?! Steve Jobs created the universe. zOMG I'm getting wet dreaming about iPhone 5 !!!11!11!111inplainview - Sunday, October 2, 2011 - link
I must suck being you....Hulk - Friday, September 30, 2011 - link
I've been here from day one and Anand keeps getting better. In my opinion he has always been the best tech writer on the internet and now I see his thoughts are as clear an organized when doing a video review. Bravo!Kudos to all of the guys on the Anandtech site. The flavor of all of the reviews flows down to everyone here. Anand is still the best but luckily he is rubbing off on all his guys.
wxrkny - Friday, September 30, 2011 - link
"Anand is still the best but luckily he is rubbing off on all his guys."I hope not, that's gross
sorry I had to
TommyAU - Friday, September 30, 2011 - link
Haha