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
Enterprise Storage Bench - Oracle Swingbench
We begin with a popular benchmark from our server reviews: the Oracle Swingbench. This is a pretty typical OLTP workload that focuses on servers with a light to medium workload of 100 - 150 concurrent users. The database size is fairly small at 10GB, however the workload is absolutely brutal.
Swingbench consists of over 1.28 million read IOs and 3.55 million writes. The read/write GB ratio is nearly 1:1 (bigger reads than writes). Parallelism in this workload comes through aggregating IOs as 88% of the operations in this benchmark are 8KB or smaller. This test is actually something we use in our CPU reviews so its queue depth averages only 1.33. We will be following up with a version that features a much higher queue depth in the coming weeks.
The X25-E offers 25% higher performance than the SSD 710 in our first enterprise benchmark. Here the 710 is actually about the same speed as the 320, which isn't surprising given the two drives share the same controller. The 710 obviously has the endurance advantage over the 320. Note that even SandForce's SF-2281 isn't able to outperform the 710 in our Swingbench test. As we discovered in our Z-Drive R4 review, average service time is a better indicator of heavy load performance than simply looking at average data rate in this benchmark:
Here we see that the Vertex 3 manages to chew through IOs much quicker than the 710, despite lower overall throughput. SandForce's real-time data compression/dedupe likely plays a major role here. The 710 does pull ahead of the 320, likely due to firmware optimizations for server rather than client workloads. The X25-E continues to hold onto a significant performance advantage over the 710 thanks to its higher random write performance.
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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