Intel Optane SSD 900P Review: 3D XPoint Unleashed

[USAFRet]

Can't you use their 32 GB M.2 product in that way? Admittedly, 32 GB would be quite small for a Windows install, but comfortably fits a modest Linux desktop install.

To me, 280 GB feels like a generous size for an OS drive, but not outrageous.

32GB IS too small for a current Windows OS. My little Asus Transformer has a 32GB eMMC drive, and it can't run the large semi-annual Win 10 update. Not enough free space.
Win 10 Home, with just a few small utilities on it. Everything else resides on the 64GB SD card.

I have to create a USB install, and boot from that to do the update.

 

[nebun]

interesting little card we have here....nice very nice...what is the power usage?

 

[bit_user]

interesting little card we have here....nice very nice...what is the power usage?

This is quoted for all 3 models (including both capacities; PCIe and U.2):

Power - Active 14W
Power - Idle 5W

https://ark.intel.com/products/123628/Intel-Optane-SSD-900P-Series-280GB-12-Height-PCIe-x4-20nm-3D-Xpoint

Interestingly:

Code Name - Products formerly Mansion Beach

I'm glad they didn't use that codename for their CPUs.

 

[mapesdhs]

I have to admit I get confused by what all the different tests would mean to my day to day experience. ...

Reading your questions, I would be very surprised if just a single 960 Pro didn't more than satisfy whatever I/O needs you'd have. However, do bare in mind that the rest of your platform could be holding things up, including the CPU, memory speed, etc. You can use tools such as Process Explorer, HWinfo, Core Temp, etc., to examine what the system is doing during typical workloads. If, for example, while saving a file, you see very high CPU loading but not that much happening in terms of MB/sec I/O in Process Explorer, then it's more likely the CPU is the main current bottleneck. Of course what can happen is one can upgrade to a better platform only do discover that having removed the CPU bottleneck, the storage bottleneck comes to the fore and that turned out to be not much higher up the bottleneck ladder than before. Adobe apps can be a bit weird in this regard, they're not consistent between apps as to how they behave in terms of exploiting multiple cores, GPUs, etc. This is why, for Premiere, the 4960X is still a good CPU, whereas for Photoshop or AE something like a cheap many-cores XEON would shine. Movie processing and rendering have their own behaviours. AE is sensitive to memory speed, and so on.

If you do have an older platform, it's likely you would benefit from a newer setup in more general terms, but do some research first on how the apps you use behave. That aside, so far for users such as yourself, I've not come across any rationale for using anything better than a 960 Pro atm, that'd be my default recommendation for peak sensible storage, though if the cost is an issue then you can always skimp a bit and for the SM961 (OEM version of the 960 Pro), just make sure it's a later edition so as to get a unit with a later fw.

Will need to see some more comparisons, but, I was expecting peak numbers to be much better than 2500 MB/sec reads.....; my damn 960 EVO will do 3,200 MB/sec sequential reads...

Problem with the EVO is it suffers for more complex loads, mixed loads and steady state. It's why a 950 Pro is often better than the 960 EVO. I wouldn't use an EVO for capturing long sequences of video, for example, or a cache drive for AE (950 Pro would be better).

Ian.

 

[purchin]

will this support my old pc?

 

[purchin]

I want to buy a fast ssd.

 

[USAFRet]

will this support my old pc?

No.
But since we have zero idea of what your "old PC" actually is, nothing can be recommended.

 

[CRamseyer]

Did someone say RAID?

I'm writing the 480GB and the RAID right now.

If your system supports NVMe, pretty much Z97 up, is guaranteed. Some Z87 boards also support NVMe.

 

[Llorelie]

doubled.

 

[Llorelie]

According to the pricing in the review, the 480 GB has a lower price/GB, so why does it say otherwise? The verdict also says, You get 200GB more storage, but unfortunately, you spend enough to buy an additional 280GB," but that's not the case either. Pricing that I'm talking about in the review is 389 for the 280GB and 599 for the 480GB.

 

[CRamseyer]

At one point it said nearly enough to by another 280GB.

 

[Daan Asten]

Would this SSD support with ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X HERO?

 

[ytmnic]

"doesn't mean you aren't missing out" is a double negative, you mean "doesn't mean you *are* missing out" because it still delivered the best user experience you've ever had.

Also where is the storage hierarchy page?

 

[Power94]

CMN I JUST UPGRADE TO SAMSUNG EVO 960 XD

 

[bit_user]

"doesn't mean you aren't missing out" is a double negative, you mean "doesn't mean you *are* missing out" because it still delivered the best user experience you've ever had.

Heh, I think you meant to say "does mean you are missing out".

A double-negative doesn't necessarily mean exactly the same thing as the same statement with no negatives, however. It can be used as rhetorical technique for softening a statement or adding nuance to it.

 

[bit_user]

At one point it said nearly enough to by another 280GB.

Thanks for testing VROC, but I didn't think it'd be without downsides*. IMO, definitely not worth it only for that blistering QD=4 seq_read and QD=8 seq_write.

* Ha! Did that without even thinking about it!
; )

 

[ah]

It's twice more expensive than the evo pro, but offers less than 30% performance boost.

 

[maxoptimus]

what about sdd speeds ?

 

[USAFRet]

what about sdd speeds ?

What about it?

 

[CRamseyer]

What I meant with the double negative is this. If you buy the 280GB you are not missing out on performance. The 480GB and the 280GB deliver the same performance, at least within the margin of error and for the most part.

It's the best and it's price shows that. Take it or leave it. If I was building myself a system today I would have at least one 900P in it as the boot drive.

 

[Solandri]

You will notice the increased responsiveness immediately and then gradually become accustomed to it. In our experience, you will take the performance for granted until you work on a slower PC.

Therein lies the rub. *I* certainly notice the improvement with a SSD. But the vast majority of the clients whose HDDs I've replaced with a SSD report little to no "noticeable" improvement. One of them even canceled my recommendation to upgrade all their work computers to SSDs after trying it out in one computer for a couple weeks. Their employees couldn't even tell when they were using a computer with a HDD vs the computer with the SSD.

So the improvement going from a HDD to SSD (which is massive compared to SSD to Optane) isn't that big a deal to most users.

It's obvious that once an SSD is installed in a system, the game loading times become CPU and/or RAM bottlenecked, not storage bottlenecked. That's why these fancy NVMe SSDs barely load games faster than budget SATA SSDs.

SSDs are currently constrained by 4k random read/write performance. That's why NVMe SSDs barely load faster - their 4k speeds are nearly the same as for SATA SSDs. See below.

Will need to see some more comparisons, but, I was expecting peak numbers to be much better than 2500 MB/sec reads.....; my damn 960 EVO will do 3,200 MB/sec sequential reads...

Despite it being The Metric everyone uses to compare, the sequential speeds actually aren't that important. You see, how fast a drive "feels" depends on how long you have to wait for it to process a request. That is, how many seconds you have to wait. MB/sec is the inverse of that. What you really want to compare is sec/MB. Look what happens when you compare a bunch of speed increases in sec/MB for reading 1 GB.

125 MB/s HDD = 8 seconds
250 MB/s SATA2 SSD = 4 sec
500 MB/s SATA3 SSD = 2 sec
1000 MB/s early PCIe SSD = 1 sec
2000 MB/s NVMe SSD = 0.5 sec

Notice how the reduction in wait time becomes smaller every time you double MB/s. So even though the jump from SATA3 to a NVMe SSD looks like it should be massive (+1500 MB/s), it's only a wait time reduction of 1.5 seconds. Only 25% of the wait time reduction you got upgrading from a HDD to a SATA3 SSD (6 sec reduction in wait time). So the bigger MB/s gets, the less difference it makes in perceived speed (wait time reduction).

Likewise, the sequential read/writes happen so quickly that they add only a small amount to your wait time. The biggest contributor to wait time is the slowest operation of the drive. For both HDDs and SSDs, this is the 4k random read/writes. About 1 MB/s for HDDs, and 30-70 MB/s for SSDs. Even the NVMe SSDs are struggling to break 100 MB/s at 4k writes (reads are slower). If you're writing 1 GB of sequential data and 1 GB of 4k random data, the 2000 MB/s NVMe drive will finish the sequential write in 0.5 seconds, while taking approx 20 sec to do the 4k write (QD=1).

So it's the slowest operation of the drive which matters the most, and Optane appears to deliver more than a 5x improvement in the slowest drive operation. The only question that remains is whether that difference will be enough to show up when inverted to sec/MB. According to the graph, the answer would appear to be no. If you're doing a 100 MB 4k read (QD=1):

0.94 MB/s HDD = 106 seconds
38.98 MB/s SATA SSD = 2.6 sec
44.5 MB/s NVMe SSD = 2.2 sec
251.9 MB/s Optane = 0.4 sec

So the jump from a SSD to Optane (2.2 sec) only gives you 2% additional wait time reduction compared to switching from a HDD to a SSD (103.4 sec). The casual user upgrading from a HDD isn't going to be able to tell the difference between a SATA SSD, a NVMe SSD, and Optane. OTOH an enthusiast used to running with a SSD should notice the difference switching to Optane.

 

[deestrock55]

I want to get out of being part of toms hardware. I joined by mistake. please help me to unsubscribe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[USAFRet]

I want to get out of being part of toms hardware. I joined by mistake. please help me to unsubscribe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Top right, the dropdown at your name
'Manage my Profile'
'Account Settings'

 

[Murissokah]

If Intel would have properly implemented NVMe raid, imagine what would happen if you put 8 of these in RAID 0.

Data loss faster than you can say "did I enable write cache?"

 

[emv]

The numbers do not show a measureable difference in real world gaming. If someone is running Optane vs another NVMe SSD, will they easily notice the difference?