Intel Unleashes NVMe SSD 750 Series For Consumer PCs

[Guest]

Intel dropped the the fastest consumer-oriented SSD in the world, the NVMe Intel SSD 750 Series.

Intel Unleashes NVMe SSD 750 Series For Consumer PCs : Read more

 

[dave_trimble]

Now I'm kicking myself for buying a 512 GB 850 Pro two months ago

 

[Larry Litmanen]

Don't motherboards have only one PCIE 3.0 that is used mostly for GPU.

 

[firefoxx04]

I have yet to buy an SSD for my desktop. Laptop has 840 pro. I guess the wait has come to an end

 

[josejones]

Intel really needed to also release the 240g version too as these 400G and 1.2T versions are still out of the price range of most consumers. But, hopefully other NVMe SSD makers will fill that gap. C'mon Samsung.

 

[BulkZerker]

Otacon... I mean larrylitman, it shouldn't matter long as you aren't running a multi GPU setup.

 

[buzzrattie]

And so it begins.......

 

[sea monkey]

The performance increase is commendable but not worth the premium over a SATA SSD for most users. Given the tiny size of the actual chips, I wish prices would drop and capacities would increase enough to abandon mechanical storage altogether. Give me a 100TB slab of 3D NAND that I can chuck in my backpack and take with me.

 

[Haravikk]

Could this article be more gushy? There is hardware already on the market, just take a look at some of the built-in SSDs newer laptops (Apple's especially) or even the current Mac Pro.

The only difference with this is that it can go into standard desktops, which is great, but it's bound to be followed by similar products shortly so it doesn't seem worthy of the rave-review.

 

[tical2399]

Give it to me in m.2 form for my x99 sli plus

 

[crystaldragon141]

Don't motherboards have only one PCIE 3.0 that is used mostly for GPU.

No they have a pool of lanes that they divy up between the actual slots. Graphics cards are designed for x16 (read as: by 16, it means 16 lanes) this SSD only requires x4 or 4 lanes. Many motherboard chipsets provide between 28 and 40 lanes. So even if you are rocking crossfirex at a cost of 32 lanes (in crossfirex cards are usually limited to x8 this is a chipset limitation) you should still have room for two of these bad boys assuming you have a high end chipset with 40 lanes. I believe that x99 does. I'm to lazy to look it up

 

[PaulAlcorn]

Could this article be more gushy? There is hardware already on the market, just take a look at some of the built-in SSDs newer laptops (Apple's especially) or even the current Mac Pro.

The only difference with this is that it can go into standard desktops, which is great, but it's bound to be followed by similar products shortly so it doesn't seem worthy of the rave-review.

Sorry, I tend to be passionate about storage. There are no other NVMe devices on the market, anywhere. This is it. Also, according to timelines from manufacturers that we are aware of (the big ones) it will be a long while yet before we see any other NVMe offerings

 

[Sakkura]

I like how they're leapfrogging the SATA Express interface. Looks like it's going to be the most useless port ever.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

I concur, SATAe appears to be DOA. Intel singly handedly killed it (maybe)

 

[PaulBags]

This.. makes a lot more sense for a desktop to me than chucking an m.2 card with no heat sink in a tiny slot under a graphics card. Did anything ever happen about the ultra high temp of the samsung pcie 3.0 4x m.2 cards controller?

 

[neaton14]

Just a minor correction (unless if I'm reading the sentence wrong) -- DRAM is volatile.

I'm definitely impressed with the pricing!

 

[PaulAlcorn]

Just a minor correction (unless if I'm reading the sentence wrong) -- DRAM is volatile.

I'm definitely impressed with the pricing!

You are correct, of course! I was speaking more to battery-backed DIMM units (onboard DRAM) that preserve the data in case of power loss. Some units have NAND chips they flush to as well to persist data to NV mediums. Actually, they used many of these types of solutions to develop and test NVMe, simply because NAND wasn't fast enough to simulate speeds of the future tech.

 

[neaton14]

Just a minor correction (unless if I'm reading the sentence wrong) -- DRAM is volatile.

I'm definitely impressed with the pricing!

You are correct, of course! I was speaking more to battery-backed DIMM units (onboard DRAM) that preserve the data in case of power loss. Some units have NAND chips they flush to as well to persist data to NV mediums. Actually, they used many of these types of solutions to develop and test NVMe, simply because NAND wasn't fast enough to simulate speeds of the future tech.

I had a feeling, thanks for the clarification.

I definitely like where this is going -- I've read about "ultracapacitors" or "supercapacitors" that are used to flush DRAM data to SSDs. Integrating SSDs in DIMM form factor and DDR standard will help narrow the gap in the data hierarchy. Really neat stuff!

 

[josejones]

These will probably not reach their full potential until SkyLake comes out. PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes is good but these 750 SSD's with NVMe are only hitting between 900M/ps write and up to 2,400 M/ps read.

When Skylake comes out they should be hitting 4000 M/ps so ...

 

[nitrium]

Is UEFI BIOS essential to have any chance of booting from PCIe? I have an old Gigabyte board with the old Award BIOS that could really use a faster SSD drive (since it only has SATA 2). Is booting from PCIe on something like that out of the question?

 

[tom10167]

This is very impressive, and not TERRIBLY expensive, but it is still high. Still, I would like to see more of an emphasis from the industry on driving prices down than a race to speeds that will only exist on paper for most.

 

[epobirs]

Too expensive for anything I'd build this year but it's offers a nice preview of what will be affordable in two or three years.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

I had a feeling, thanks for the clarification.

I definitely like where this is going -- I've read about "ultracapacitors" or "supercapacitors" that are used to flush DRAM data to SSDs. Integrating SSDs in DIMM form factor and DDR standard will help narrow the gap in the data hierarchy. Really neat stuff!

Right now it is relegated to the enterprise space with companies like Viking Technology, Netlist, and SMART Modular, and the NVDIMM SIG promoting the technology. There are also hybrids, such as the PMC Flashtec, that merge the best of DRAM with the NVMe spec, right on the PCIe slot. Lots of options in that space, not to mention the emergence of ULLtraDIMM, which just skips all of it and uses NAND on the memory bus. Exciting times! Its good to see most have moved on from li-ion to supercapacitors and discrete capacitors.

 

[unityole]

i want hardware raid 0 bootable support from intel IRST driver.. two or 3 of these on a x99 or x101 mobo, if its called x101 in 2 years

 

[ramon zarat]

I wonder what 4 X SSD in RAID0 could do against that thing. I'm already doing 950MB/s sequential read with my 2 old Crucial M4 128GB...

Also, is there a way to RAID0 2 of those SSD PCIe cards? The speed would be crazy, unless it would choke the PCIe bus at some point, let's say with 2 X GTX 980 in SLI on top of everything else?

I would like a test to see this card in a PCIe 4X 2.0 slot. At 500MB/s per lane, that makes 2GB/s bandwidth with the Intel SSD pushing 2.2GB. But all those numbers are theoretical.

And there is the question of the DMI 2.0 interface if using PCIe lanes from the PCH that could also cause some sort of bottleneck. At 20Gb/s (2.5GB/s), it SHOULD not be a problem.

Many people who would prefer not, or just can't afford to use some of the 3.0 PCIe lanes from the CPU will be stuck using this SSD on a 4X 2.0 slot.