Intel SSD 730 (480GB) Review: Bringing Enterprise to the Consumers
by Kristian Vättö on February 27, 2014 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Intel
- Intel SSD 730
Final Words
It's great to see that Intel has not forgotten the enthusiast market. While the SSD 520 and SSD 530 weren't bad SSDs, they didn't exactly fill the shoes of X-25M—they were just another batch of SandForce drives, with more generally better validation. With the SSD 730 Intel finally provides a solution that's capable of filling the shoes that have been left empty for more than two years. However, the SSD 730 doesn't provide anything substantial in the terms of performance like the X-25M did.
The performance consistency of the SSD 730 is brilliant but nothing we've not seen from other OEMs before, and the consistency comes at the cost of peak performance. Even though consistency is an important metric regardless of the workload, I would say peak performance is still the dominant factor in most cases as client IO tends to happen in bursts, whereas in enterprises it's more of a constant flow of IO requests.
On top of that, the SSD 730 lacks some features that other high-end drives have. There is no TCG Opal 2.0 or eDrive support to enable proper hardware encryption, which is something that's slowly becoming a norm. Many companies and governments require encryption in all drives they use and that's a market the SSD 730 misses, although that was never its target market. Another weakness is the high power consumption, although neither that or the lack of encryption support plays a big role in the desktop market.
However, given that laptops and other portables cover most of the market nowadays, I feel it's not the best choice to completely rule that market out. Much like the Skulltrail platform whose logo adorns the SSD 730, this targets a very specific enthusiast niche, and the prices not surprisingly are going to be higher than "typical" consumer SSDs.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (2/25/2014) | ||||
| 240/256GB | 480/512GB | |||
| Intel SSD 730 (MSRPs) | $249 | $489 | ||
| Intel SSD DC S3500 | $300 | $605 | ||
| Intel SSD 530 | $180 | $399 | ||
| Intel SSD 335 | $200 | N/A | ||
| OCZ Vector 150 | $210 | $445 | ||
| OCZ Vertex 460 | $190 | $360 | ||
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $190 | $300 | ||
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $215 | $410 | ||
| Crucial M500 | $136 | $275 | ||
| SanDisk Extreme II | $233 | $450 | ||
| Seagate SSD 600 | $130 | $380 | ||
MSRPs are fairly high but as usual should be taken with a grain of salt. We are definitely dealing with premium pricing (though nothing close to the enterprise prices) but the SSD 730 is still rather competitive with the other high-end drives. Intel likely views the OCZ Vector 150 and SanDisk Extreme II as direct competitors and is hence pricing the SSD 730 accordingly.
All in all, the SSD 730 is a competitive option for users who seek maximum performance consistency but don't care about power consumption or encryption support. You'll have to sacrifice peak performance and the lack of an M.2 PCIe option may further limit the appeal in the long run. Given Intel's track record and the best-in-class endurance, the SSD 730 is best for the no-compromise enthusiasts and professionals who really need a reliable and consistent drive.
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CrazyElf - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Seeing that the SSD market is a low margin market, I get the feeling that Intel's strategy is to use it's existing reputation as a "reliable" vendor of SSD solutions and milk it so to speak. So that means little competition from a serious price to performance stand point, and more focus on product margins.NCM - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
I've reread the first page about 5 times and I still can't tell what controller is in this drive. There's reference to previous use of SF, but no indication of what's now in use.Did that info end up on the editing room floor?
Death666Angel - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
From the text "Adopting the platform from the DC S3500/S3700", "The controller is the same 8-channel design as in the S3500/S3700 but runs at 600MHz instead of the 400MHz of the S3500/S3700.". From the table "Controller Intel 3rd Generation (SATA 6Gbps)".NCM - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
@Death666Angel (!) Thanks for the controller parsing. A rather convoluted way for readers to arrive at an answer, but we get there in the end.In a related matter the reviewer writes: "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."
However in none of the tables are the Sandforce drives identified. Apparently we're supposed to have memorized beforehand what controllers each drive uses. This is not some a mere quibble on my part. We have a couple of dozen workstations using SSD's, and because we work with a lot of incompressible data I do not buy drives with SF controllers.
Please AnandTech: if you're going to bother making technical distinctions of this kind, make it clear where they apply.
Mr Perfect - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
That's strange, they used to label the drives in the charts with what controller was in them.Kristian Vättö - Saturday, March 1, 2014 - link
The controller is also listed in the table, although it's just "Intel 3rd gen" as to my knowledge it doesn't have any specific codename.As for the other feedback, the part you quoted it just a boilerplate that was we use in every review but I see that there's a need to update it.
Mipmap - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
"to invest in custom client-orientated silicon." oriented"There wasn't much competition and given Intel's resourced" resources
Death666Angel - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Orientated/oriented is a preference thing. Neither option is wrong.CalaverasGrande - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
the meaning is conveyed either way, but I have always taken orientated in the same way I take "moneys'. While I understand the intent, it still sounds awkward and uneducated.redmist77 - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Saying 'orientated' is as dumb as saying 'documentated' or 'adaptated.'