Intel SSD 750 PCIe SSD Review: NVMe for the Client
by Kristian Vättö on April 2, 2015 12:00 PM ESTFinal Words
For years Intel has been criticized for not caring about the client SSD space anymore. The X25-M and its different generations were all brilliant drives and essentially defined the standards for a good client SSD, but since then none of Intel's client SSDs have had the same "wow" effect. That's not to say that Intel's later client SSDs have been inferior, it's just that they haven't really had any competitive advantage over the other drives on the market. It's no secret that Intel changed its SSD strategy to focus on the enterprise segment and frankly it still makes a lot of sense because the profits are more lucrative and enterprise has a lot more room for innovation as the customers value more than just rock-bottom pricing.
With the release of the SSD 750, it's safe to say that any argument of Intel not caring about the client market is now invalid. Intel does care, but rather than bringing products with new complex technologies to the market at a very early stage, Intel wants to ensure that the market is ready and there's industry wide support for the product. After all, NVMe requires BIOS support and that support has only been present for a few months now, making it logical not to release the SSD 750 any sooner.
Given the enterprise background of the SSD 750, it's more optimized for consistency than raw peak performance. The SM951, on the other hand, is a more generic client drive that concentrates on peak performance to improve performance under typical client workloads. That's visible in our benchmarks because the only test where the SSD 750 is able to beat the SM951 is The Destoyer trace, which illustrates a very IO intensive workload that only applies to power users and professionals. It makes sense for Intel to focus on that very specific target group because those are the people who are willing to pay premium for higher storage performance.
With that said, I'm not sure if I fully agree with Intel's heavy random IO focus. The sequential performance isn't bad, but I think the SSD 750 as it stands today is a bit unbalanced and could use some improvements to sequential performance even if it came at the cost of random performance.
| Price Comparison (4/2/2015) | |||||
| 128GB | 256GB | 400GB | 512GB | 1.2TB | |
| Intel SSD 750 (MSRP) | - | - | $389 | $1,029 | |
| Samsung SM951 | $120 | $239 | - | $459 | - |
RamCity actually just got its first batch of SM951s this week, so I've included it in the table for comparison (note that the prices on RamCity's website are in AUD, so I've translated them into USD and also subtracted the 10% tax that is only applicable to Australian orders). The SSD 750 is fairly competitive in price, although obviously you have to fork out more money than you would for a similar capacity SATA drive. Nevertheless, going under a dollar per gigabyte is very reasonable given the performance and full power loss protection that you get with the SSD 750.
All in all, the SSD 750 is definitely a product I recommend as it's the fastest drive for IO intensive workloads by a large margin. I can't say it's perfect and for slightly lighter IO workloads the SM951 wins my recommendation due to its more client-oriented design, but the SSD 750 is really a no compromise product that is aimed for a relatively small high-end niche, and honestly it's the only considerable option in its niche. If your IO workload needs the storage performance of tomorrow, Intel and the SSD 750 have you covered today.
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magreen - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link
darkgreen, are you talking about a G1 without TRIM or a G2 with TRIM support?darkgreen - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link
I had a G1 without TRIM. The Intel fix was based on some ancient shareware (FreeDOS!) that wouldn't work with many modern motherboards and in some cases left drives bricked. It was well reported at the time (see my comment above for a google search that returns articles), but lots of people wound up with X25-Ms that were useless. If you weren't an enterprise customer the Intel response was "tough luck." No refunds, no replacements, nothing. In all fairness I'm sure Intel would love to be able to support consumers, but they probably aren't set up for it in their storage area because it's just not a big area of their business bottom line.magreen - Sunday, April 5, 2015 - link
Yeah, it seems like the G1 owners got screwed. (I have a G2 and G3 and they've both been great. Sorry they screwed the early adopters.)In Anand's words from 2009 when the G2 was released:
"TRIM isn’t yet supported, but the 34nm drives will get a firmware update when Windows 7 launches enabling TRIM. XP and Vista users will get a performance enhancing utility (read: manual TRIM utility). It seems that 50nm users are SOL with regards to TRIM support. Bad form Intel, very bad form."
http://anandtech.com/show/2806
"Overall the G2 is the better drive but it's support for TRIM that will ultimately ensure that. The G1 will degrade in performance over time, the G2 will only lose performance as you fill it with real data. I wonder what else Intel has decided to add to the new firmware...
I hate to say it but this is another example of Intel only delivering what it needs to in order to succeed. There's nothing that keeps the G1 from also having TRIM other than Intel being unwilling to invest the development time to make it happen. I'd be willing to assume that Intel already has TRIM working on the G1 internally and it simply chose not to validate the firmware for public release (an admittedly long process). But from Intel's perspective, why bother?
Even the G1, in its used state, is faster than the fastest Indilinx drive. In 4KB random writes the G1 is even faster than an SLC Indilinx drive. Intel doesn't need to touch the G1, the only thing faster than it is the G2. Still, I do wish that Intel would be generous to its loyal customers that shelled out $600 for the first X25-M. It just seems like the right thing to do. Sigh."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/11
Redstorm - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link
Could you elaborate on this (although there appears to be an NVMe version too after all) of the SM951. As looking at the numbers if NVMe even slightly improves the SM951 it would make it a better choice, and the form factor being M.2 makes it much more attractive.Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link
Ganesh received an NVMe version of the SM951 inside a NUC and I've also heard from other sources that it exists. No idea of its retail availability, though, as RamCity hadn't heard about it until I told them.eddieobscurant - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link
if i'm not wrong the nvme version has p/n MZVPV256HDGL-00000 for the 256gb model while the ahci version has p/n MZHPV256HDGL-00000Redstorm - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link
Thanks looks promising , found this with verbage suposidly from RAMCity that they will ship in May.http://translate.google.co.nz/translate?hl=en&...
Redstorm - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link
So no real proof that they exist then.eddieobscurant - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link
Kristian, there is a DRAM difference between the two models. The 400gb has 1gb DRAM while the 1.2tb model has 2gb. Do you think it plays a big role in terms of performance between the two models.Also is there a way to reduce the overprovision in these drives? I would prefer 80gb more on the 400gb model over less consistency.
When will you review the kingston hyperX predator, and when will samsung release the sm951 nvme? Q3 or sooner?
KAlmquist - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link
The 400gb model shouldn't need as much DRAM because it has fewer pages to keep track of. But there's no way to know how the 400gb model will perform until Intel sends out samples for review.