The Intel Optane SSD 900P 280GB Review
by Billy Tallis on October 27, 2017 9:30 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The Intel Optane SSD 900P sets a new record for average data rate on The Destroyer, beating the Samsung 960 PRO 2TB's score by about 10%, and beating the more similarly-priced 512GB 960 PRO by about 23%.
The average latency of the Optane SSD 900P on The Destroyer is a modest improvement over the previous record. The 99th percentile latency is a more significant 60% reduction over the previous record, putting the Optane SSD more clearly in a separate performance consistency class from high-end flash-based SSDs.
The average read latency of the Optane SSD 900P on The Destroyer is less than half that of any flash-based SSD, but the average write latency is a bit slower than the fastest flash-based SSDs.
Even though the Optane SSD didn't set a record for average write latency on the Destroyer, its 99th percentile write latency is about half the previous record. The 99th percentile read latency beats the previous record by more than 60%.
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Billy Tallis - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
The main power meter failed before the Optane drive arrived. The whole-system power meter was unaffected.lmcd - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
I can't trust your comments either anymore, @jjj. But who's counting?wookie monster - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
Why no write consistency test? I was able to experiment with a prototype Optane drive, and I found that running a long-haul randomly-ordered write test on the Optane drive was substantially faster than the fastest available flash-based SSDs.Billy Tallis - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
I plan to do a lot more to this drive, including steady-state random write comparisons against consumer and enterprise SSDs. There just wasn't time to include more tests in this article. I've only had the drive for six days.wookie monster - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
I look forward to the results, thanks!willis936 - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
I also really like the performance over time plots. An investigation into power and thermals (and potential throttling) would be interesting.takeshi7 - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
It's pretty obvious that once an SSD is installed in the system, game load times are limited by the CPU, not the storage. This is why this Optane drive won't load games significantly faster than a SATA SSD (especially when you consider the price increase). Can Anandtech please test how different CPUs affect game loading times?Scannall - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
For the vast majority out there, this seems like a solution in search of a problem. As expensive as it is, you'd be better off raiding a couple nvme drives and calling it good.ddriver - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
Nope, raid-ing will in no way improve their weak spots - random and low queue depth access. It will only boost sequential and high QD performance, which is already superior to that of hypetane.citrix13 - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
Thank you ddriver for your objective, unbiased and logical observations.Many in here cannot comprehend what you have been saying which is unfortunate.
Your core point is that Intel promised 1000x performance with Intel Optane
Intel did not deliver 1000x performance, they gave orders of magnitude less
Also, i take note that you praised the drives endurance and low queue depth performance and said you may buy it.
Commendation on being able to call a spade a spade, but still being able to see it strengths