The Intel SSD 750 Series Review

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AS-SSD / Anvil Storage Utilities Pro

AS-SSD

<i>AS-SSD is designed to quickly test the performance of your drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and small 4K read/write speeds as well as 4K file speed at a queue depth of 6. While its primary goal is to accurately test Solid State Drives, it does equally well on all storage mediums it just takes longer to run each test as each test reads or writes 1GB of data.</i>
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Anvil Storage Utilities Pro

<i>Much like AS-SSD, Anvil Pro was created to quickly and easily – yet accurately – test your drives. While it is still in the Beta stages it is a versatile and powerful little program. Currently it can test numerous read / write scenarios but two in particular stand out for us: 4K queue depth of 4 and 4K queue depth of 16. A queue depth of four along with 4K sectors can be equated to what most users will experience in an OS scenario while 16 depth will be encountered only by power users and the like. We have also included the 4k queue depth 1 results to help put these two other numbers in their proper perspective. All settings were left in their default states and the test size was set to 1GB.</i>

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Once again it appears that Intel has created a home consumer orientated version of their much vaunted and much in demand DC P3700 series. Yes, the DC P3700 is faster, but the differences are certainly not worth the massive increase in cost. That is impressive and we are sure that Intel have done this on purpose - as there is now another really good argument for opting for a X99 chipset based motherboard instead of Z97!

 

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IOMETER

IOMETER

<i>IOMeter is heavily weighted towards the server end of things, and since we here at HWC are more End User centric we will be setting and judging the results of IOMeter a little bit differently than most. To test each drive we ran 5 test runs per HDD (1,4,16,64,128 queue depth) each test having 8 parts, each part lasting 10 min w/ an additional 20 second ramp up. The 8 subparts were set to run 100% random, 80% read 20% write; testing 512b, 1k, 2k,4k,8k,16k,32k,64k size chunks of data. When each test is finished IOMeter spits out a report, in that reports each of the 8 subtests are given a score in I/Os per second. We then take these 8 numbers add them together and divide by 8. This gives us an average score for that particular queue depth that is heavily weighted for single user environments.</i>

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As this is right up the DC P3700's bailiwick the Intel 750 does falter somewhat, but its enterprise heritage still shines through clearly. Compared to a RAID'ed four SATA drive based PCIe solution such as the G.Skill Blade a single NVMe based 750 easily outclasses it. More impressive still is if we were to remove all the other PCIe options for this chart and just show the 750 vs the previous 730 - or any SATA drive you care to mention - the differences would be night and day. Obviously home enthusiasts interested in workstation type scenarios - such as remuxing - video will find the idea of owning a sub $1 per Gigabyte storage device that can do this very, <i>very</i> interesting.

 

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Windows 7 Start Up / Adobe CS5 Load Time

Windows 7 Start Up with Boot Time A/V Scan Performance

When it comes to hard drive performance there is one area that even the most oblivious user notices: how long it takes to load the Operating System. Where Windows 7 has become nearly ubiquitous for solid state drive enthusiasts we have chosen Windows 7 64bit Ultimate as our Operating System. In previous load time tests we would use the Anti-Virus splash screen as our finish line; this however is no longer the case. We have not only added in a secondary Anti-Virus to load on startup, but also an anti-malware program. We have set Super Anti-Spyware to initiate a quick scan on Windows start-up and the completion of the quick scan will be our new finish line.

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Adobe CS5 Load Time

Photoshop is a notoriously slow loading program under the best of circumstances, and while the latest version is actually pretty decent, when you add in a bunch of extra brushes and the such you get a really great torture test which can bring even the best of the best to their knees. Let’s see how our review unit faired in the newly updated Adobe crucible.

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Even previous PCIe based solutions like the G.Skill Blade or Plextor M6e are simply, and totally, outclassed by this new Intel 750 drive. Equally impressive is in more real world centric tests the DC P3700 does not prove to be noticeably better - and certainly not worth the massive increase in cost better. As a nice bonus enthusiasts need not worry about form-factor as both 750s definitely perform the same and minor differences between the two are just random chance.

 

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Firefox Performance / Real World Data Transfers

Firefox Portable Offline Performance

Firefox is notorious for being slow on loading tabs in offline mode once the number of pages to be opened grows larger than a dozen or so. We can think of fewer worse case scenarios than having 100 tabs set to reload in offline mode upon Firefox startup, but this is exactly what we have done here.

By having 100 pages open in Firefox portable, setting Firefox to reload the last session upon next session start and then setting it to offline mode, we are able to easily recreate a worst case scenario. Since we are using Firefox portable all files are easily positioned in one location, making it simple to repeat the test as necessary. In order to ensure repetition, before touching the Firefox portable files, we have backed them up into a .rar file and only extracted a copy of it to the test device.

Real World Data Transfers

No matter how good a synthetic benchmark like IOMeter or PCMark is, it cannot really tell you how your hard drive will perform in “real world” situations. All of us here at Hardware Canucks strive to give you the best, most complete picture of a review item’s true capabilities and to this end we will be running timed data transfers to give you a general idea of how its performance relates to real life use. To help replicate worse case scenarios we will transfer a 10.00GB contiguous file and a folder containing 400 subfolders with a total 12,000 files varying in length from 200mb to 100kb (10.00 GB total).

Testing will include transfer to and transferring from the devices, using MS RichCopy and logging the performance of the drive. Here is what we found.

Because the DC P3700 is the fastest device we have access to we were unable to provide true results of it compared to the Intel DC…err Intel 750 series. This however was necessary as anything less than the P3700 proved to be incapable of truly pushing the 750 to its limits. Let's say that again: the 750 is so mind-numbingly fast that anything less than one of the best enterprise grade devices will not be fast enough to keep bottlenecking from occurring. The only small issue that keeps the 750 from being a clean sweep is its write performance. In this one area older RAID'ed SATA controller based PCIe device can match it, but even with this taken into consideration we are sure that the 750 is about to change enthusiasts very definition of the word 'fast'.

 

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Partial and Full Drive Performance

Partial and Full Drive Performance

<i>While it is important to know how a drive will perform under optimal conditions, more realistic scenarios are just as important. Knowing if a solid state drive will behave differently when partially or even nearly full than when it is empty is very important information to know. To quickly and accurately show this crucial information we have first filled the drive to 50% capacity and re-tested using both synthetic and real world tests. After the completion of this we then re-test at 75% and 90% of full capacity. </i>

Synthetic Test Results

<i>For our synthetic testing we have opted for our standard PCMark 7 test.</i>

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Real World Results

<i>For a real world application we have opted for a modified version of our standard Windows 7 Start Up test. Unlike our standard Windows 7 image this image is based on a working system that has been upgraded numerous times of the past few years and represents an even more realistic real world test.</i>

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While yes the performance does drop off faster than either an Intel DC P3700 or RAID based G.Skill Blade, the end result is still a home user orientated drive that blows the doors off its predecessors. After all, all those devices that can offer better drop off are <i>not</i> home user drives - they are workstation / business orientated models.

 

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Conclusion; The Best Just Got Better

Conclusion; The Best Just Got Better

Intel’s SSD 750 Series represents something we haven’t seen in the SSD market for what seems like an eternity: a quantum leap forward. While this accomplishment wasn’t made without some tangible sacrifices on the compatibility front, sometimes, in order to really shake up a given segment mass appeal has to give way to innovation. Whether or not this plan will actually work remains to be seen but from where we’re standing, Intel has made such drastic strides forward that the competition will be forced to march in lock-step.

When searching for an expensive SSD, the first thing most users will look at is performance metrics and in that respect the Intel 750 does not just raise the bar but annihilates any preconceptions of what a single consumer grade storage solution can offer. Its benchmark numbers were nothing short of astonishing with both the PCI-E and 2.5” models nearly matching the DC P3700 series at a fraction of the cost. Even drives like G.Skill’s Phoenix were left in the dust during real-world testing. Granted, PCI-E SSDs that rely on an internal RAID-0 setup manage to pull ahead in some benchmarks and can provide better consistency as the drives fill up with data but the SSD 750 Series still tends to dominate where it counts.

Intel’s decision to go with two form factors is a brilliant one. The 750 Series PCI-E add-in card is perfect for larger systems with PCI-E slots available while the 2.5” version will fit perfectly into today’s small form factor mindset. Intel has been able to achieve identical performance numbers out of both these drives which is no small feat either. Now enthusiasts will be able to achieve absolutely insane storage system bandwidth without having to choose between slower speeds and adaptability.

The 750’s achievements almost defy the imagination but these drives have some very unique requirements as well. For optimal performance Intel recommends no less than four dedicated PCI-E 3.0 lanes which automatically narrows native compatibility down to X99 motherboards and a few Z97 boards. Most Z97 products that support dual graphics cards are technically compatible but installing the add in card version of Intel’s SSD 750 Series will result in the primary graphics slot “downclocking” to x8 speeds. Certain options like Gigabyte’s Z97X-Gaming G1 Black Edition will allow for parallel support of full-speed graphics and the 750-Series via PCI-E lane multipliers but those options are rare and ultimately very expensive. Even then performance may be constrained since bandwidth from the back-end into the MUX is still shared with other devices.

The 2.5” version will arguably be the more appealing drive simply because it doesn’t take up valuable motherboard space. However, actually finding a compatible platform could prove to be a lesson in frustration. It utilizes an SFF-8639 interface that is adapted to a more compact SFF-8643 connector but neither of those is currently supported on any enthusiast-grade X99 or Z97 motherboard. According to motherboard vendors we’ve spoken to, the decision to implement a 2.5” version was done at the eleventh hour so they’re currently scrambling to catch up. There’s no better example of this than the absolutely horrible M.2 x4 to SFF-8643 “Hyper” adapter placement on ASUS’ X99 Sabertooth; it prevents users from installing a second dual slot graphics card. We’re bound to see a better integration of this standard as time goes on.

With the use of SFF-8639 / SFF-8643 for the 750 Series’ 2.5” version, there will obviously be a discussion about the current state of SATA Express. The “standard” host-side connector seen on many X99 and Z97 boards has been effectively bypassed by Intel because cannot provide sufficient bandwidth for their new drives. Instead of constraining their halo products to an inefficient standard, Intel just vaulted past it and moved onto the next generation of connectivity. SFF-8643 is actually built into the SATA Express specification but it wasn’t due for implementation quite yet.

There will invariably be some consternation about Intel adopting a “new” connector but we’re quite happy they took a risk on this one rather than playing it safe. Intel is dragging the competition kicking and screaming into the future and hopefully that leads to innovation, something the SSD market has been sorely lacking as of late. While their decision means a good amount of the buying public will be left without platforms that natively support the SSD 750 Series sometimes truly shifting the goal posts requires sacrifice. Hopefully it pays off because we’d hate to see things stop here. We can’t forget that flagship products are launched in an effort to lay a solid foundation for upcoming products.

Intel’s SSD 750 Series is a tour de force from nearly every perspective and it provides a tantalizing glimmer of what’s in store for future SSDs. These drives are innovative, forward looking, well-priced on the dollar per GB front and feature the absolute best overall performance of any enthusiast SSD. A high pricing structure relative to current lower-performing alternatives and compatibility limitations will likely cause many to look the other way, but the lucky few who choose to pony up the money will be absolutely blowing away by the capabilities of Intel’s SSD 750 Series.