The Intel Optane SSD 900P 280GB Review
by Billy Tallis on October 27, 2017 9:30 AM EST
Whenever Intel develops a new generation of SSDs based entirely on in-house technology, the result is usually a product that turns heads. Several times, Intel has set a new standard for SSD performance, starting with its original X25-M. Their most recent shake-up of the consumer SSD market was the Intel SSD 750, the first consumer NVMe SSD. Such significant releases don't happen every year, and in the intervening years Intel's competitors always catch up and surpass Intel.
However this year's revolution from Intel will be very hard for the competition to match anytime soon. All of Intel's previous record-setting SSDs have relied on the drive's controller to stand out from the crowd. This time, Intel's advantage comes from the storage medium: its 3D XPoint memory technology, a new nonvolatile memory that offers much higher performance than flash memory.
The Intel Optane SSD 900P
The new Intel Optane SSD 900P is a premium NVMe PCIe SSD offering the highest level of performance, with a moderate capacity. The Optane SSD 900P is intended for high-end desktop systems and workstations with very disk-heavy workloads. The Optane SSD 900P isn't for everyone and won't be displacing any existing products - it exists alone in a new product tier, with prices that are more than twice what the fastest flash memory based SSDs are selling for.
Optane is Intel's brand name for products featuring 3D XPoint memory. The Intel Optane SSD 900P is actually the third Optane product to be released, but it's the first family member to go after the high end consumer market segment. The Intel Optane Memory M.2 drives released earlier this year have capacities far too small for general-purpose storage use and instead have been marketed for use as a cache device to be paired with a mechanical hard drive. Intel's caching strategy works and can bring a hard drive's responsiveness up to the level of mainstream SSDs, but it has downsides. The Optane Memory caching requires a few extra steps to setup, and the caching software will only run on Intel platforms introduced this year: Kaby Lake or newer.
The Optane SSD DC P4800X is Intel's flagship enterprise SSD, and it is priced accordingly—putting it far out of reach of consumer budgets, and even with a price tag of over $1500 for 375GB it has been quite difficult to acquire. In the enterprise storage market, the P4800X has been highly sought after, but it isn't appropriate for all use cases and is not a threat to the many enterprise SSDs that prioritize capacity over performance and endurance.
The Optane SSD 900P will still cause some sticker shock for consumers expecting prices in line with M.2 PCIe SSDs, but it is acceptable for the kinds of machines that might be packing multiple GPUs or 10+ CPU cores. The Optane SSD 900P probably wouldn't be the only drive in such a system, but it would work well as a blazing fast primary storage device.
| Intel Optane SSD 900P Specifications | ||
| Capacity | 280 GB | 480 GB |
| Controller | Intel SLL3D | |
| Memory | Intel 128Gb 3D XPoint | |
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x4 | |
| Form Factor | HHHL Add-in card or 2.5" 15mm U.2 |
HHHL Add-in card |
| Sequential Read | 2500 MB/s | |
| Sequential Write | 2000 MB/s | |
| Random Read IOPS | 550k | |
| Random Write IOPS | 500k | |
| Power Consumption | 8W Read 13W Write 14W Burst 5W Idle |
|
| Write Endurance | 10 DWPD | |
| Warranty | 5 years | |
| Recommended Price | $389 ($1.39/GB) | $599 ($1.25/GB) |
The Intel Optane SSD 900P is initially launching with 280GB and 480GB capacities. Both sizes will be available as PCIe 3.0 x4 half-height half-length add-in cards, and the 280GB model is also available as a 2.5" U.2 drive. Higher capacities may be added later, but Intel isn't promising anything yet. The sequential transfer speeds are nothing special for a NVMe SSD these days—Samsung's 960 PRO can hit much higher read speeds and slightly higher write speeds. The random read and write IOPS are far higher than any consumer SSD has offered before.
Intel's specifications for power consumption show one big reason why the Optane SSD 900P is a desktop-only product. Laptops are not equipped to supply up to 14W to a SSD, and they usually aren't equipped to cool a drive that idles at 5W instead of 50mW. The level of performance offered by the Optane SSD 900P cannot currently fit within the power budget or space constraints of a M.2 card.
The five year warranty Intel offers is typical for a high-end SSD in today's market, but doesn't compare to the 10 year warranty that Samsung's flagship 850 PRO SATA SSD offers. On the other hand, the 10 drive writes per day write endurance rating is far higher than most consumer SSDs get; 0.3 DWPD is more typical.
The Intel Optane SSD 900P starts shipping worldwide today, and here is our review of the 280GB version.
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ddriver - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
Yeah, and now you will either get crucified for straying from the herd, or you will be labeled a fake account I made to compliment myself :)It is not really worth the trouble you know, I don't care about approval.
lmcd - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
I bet you also are advocating against future upgrades to Anandtech's comment system, with which even a crowd as small as Anandtech's would use to bury your unwanted, pointless, and untruthful comments.Reflex - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
Optane is a technology.Today's article is about a product, which happens to use Optane in combination with other technologies.
Intel's statements about Optane were about the capabilities of the technology. And indeed, for those who know much about PCM they were reasonable statements.
Actual products are not guaranteed to maximize the ultimate potential of a given technology, especially in their first revisions. In 1995 when most motherboards were transitioning from a BIOS ROM to a Flash BIOS, a company could have stated that the potential for Flash was 1000x the performance of the older ROM based technologies. And they would have been correct. Even though the earlier Flash devices achieved speeds only of a couple MB/sec.
Flash BIOS chips were a product. Flash, NAND or NOR, are technologies. Those technologies had major potential which has been largely realized over the two decades since that time. Products have gotten better as supporting technologies have improved (such as controllers and bus interfaces) and predicted improvements in Flash were made (die shrinks, power optimization, parallelization, die stacking, etc). That does not make any of the early PR about the technology inaccurate, or even misleading. It was all true and over time it was demonstrated.
Intel stated the potential of Optane. Two years later they have started releasing products based on it. None are yet capable of reaching its stated potential, after all a 1000x performance improvement would exceed the bandwidth of any connected bus, much less the controllers in their current state and likely the current manufacturing technologies. But they launched with what is undoubtedly the fastest storage device on the market by a significant margin, with reliability that is multiples of any competing technology, and a cost that is significantly lower than expected for such a halo product.
That is a very successful launch. And given what they have stated Optane is capable of (all reasonable targets for PCM), I am optimistic about the future.
And I am glad Samsung will have competition again. The market has stagnated both in price and capacity.
looncraz - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
I have a specific workload that can (at peak sustained) can read 3~4GB/s and write out about 1.5~2.0GB/s from storage (at the same time to different drives - some data to/from GPU, some to/from CPU). Optane would actually slow me down quite a bit.The 4KiB block size is simply not an issue that requires solving any more. Software adapted already.
Manch - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
Out of 6 pages of comments that idiot rambles on and on for 5 of them. I'm pleading with the UK government to reevaluate and censure the internet usage of their crazies......JTMC.....just shut up.Reflex - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
I miss the days when we had intelligent commentators on articles here.ddriver - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
You mean the days you didn't have them and still had the idyllic, innocent, ignorant garden of tech Eden, where feeling intelligent was as easy as posting a "great review, great product, me want" comment.Funny story, I evidently didn't have a point of reference until recently, when I visited the comment section at wccftech. Now, after having see that, I do also see how you could cultivate the illusion that the AT comment section may appear to be intelligent, if only relative to that random offtopic pic trolling, but I can assure you, there is no intellect in "on-topic sucking up".
You definitely have a problem with factual intelligence, and that problem has to do with realizing it is something that you do not posses. Which makes you cranky. You do have a choice thou, you can remain antagonistic to actual intelligence in order to protect your lack thereof and hold on to the much more easily attainable illusion of it, or you can take steps to acquire intelligence for real, but I warn you, it will change your world forever.
And just to let you know, you can become intelligent without becoming an ass like me. Those are two different traits, not related to each other.
lmcd - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
Honestly, if you've got so much experience in the field, you should spend more time in it. You're clearly excessively valuable and should not waste your talents talking to such unintelligent plebian commenters.Reflex - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
Yes, obviously prior to your arrival no one writing for or commenting on this site or its articles had any in depth knowledge of technology. Thank goodness you finally arrived to enlighten us all. I have no idea how the technology industry, writers and community even managed to invent the pocket calculator before you arrived.mkozakewich - Monday, October 30, 2017 - link
When you see their names, just scroll past the entire message thread. It'll save you a lot of time and sanity.(I agree, though; it was annoying scrolling through four or five pages!)