The Intel Optane SSD 900P 280GB Review
by Billy Tallis on October 27, 2017 9:30 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here. This test is run twice, once on a freshly erased drive and once after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The Intel Optane SSD 900P completes the Heavy test with a higher average data rate than any flash-based SSD. Curiously, it performs even better after being filled than it does right after a low-level format. Even the best flash-based SSDs lose a bit of performance when operating with minimal spare area. The Optane SSD by contrast seems to require an extra initialization phase after the format to reach full performance.
As with The Destroyer, the Optane SSD sets records for both average and 99th percentile latency on the Heavy test. The margin for the 99th percentile latency is more significant, with about a 43% improvement over the previous record.
The average write latency of the Optane SSD 900P on the Heavy test comes in as a close second place, while the average read latency sets a new record that is less than half the previous best score.
The Optane SSD's new record for 99th percentile read latency on the Heavy test is 70% lower than the fastest flash-based SSD. The record for 99th percentile write latency is a less impressive 30% improvement over the previous record.
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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