Sequential Read Performance

Our sequential tests are conducted in the same manner as our random IO tests. Each queue depth is tested for three minutes without any idle time in between the tests and the IOs are 4K aligned similar to what you would experience in a typical desktop OS.

Iometer - 128KB Sequential Read

In sequential read performance the SM951 keeps its lead. While the SSD 750 reaches up to 2.75GB/s at high queue depths, the scaling at small queue depths is very poor. I think this is an area where Intel should have put in a little more effort because it would translate to better performance in more typical workloads. 

Intel SSD 750 1.2TB (PCIe 3.0 x4 - NVMe)

 

Sequential Write Performance

Sequential write testing differs from random testing in the sense that the LBA span is not limited. That's because sequential IOs don't fragment the drive, so the performance will be at its peak regardless. 

Iometer - 128KB Sequential Write

The SSD 750 is faster in sequential writes than the SM951, but the difference isn't all that big when you take into account that the SSD 750 has more than twice the amount of NAND. The SM951 did have some throttling issues as you can see in the graph below and I bet that with a heatsink and proper cooling the two would be quite identical because at queue depth of 1 the SSD 750 is only marginally faster. It's again a bit disappointing that the SSD 750 isn't that well optimized for sequential IO because there's prcatically no scaling at all and the drive maxes out at ~1350MB/s. 

Intel SSD 750 1.2TB (PCIe 3.0 x4 - NVMe)
Random Performance Mixed Read/Write Performance
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  • Per Hansson - Saturday, April 4, 2015 - link

    It's most likely due to the poor performance of file transfers below 4KB with this drive.
  • Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    The funny thing is that the X25-M is STILL a great product. You can buy one on ebay and place it into a new build and it works just fine. And will continue to work just fine for many more years.
  • eanazag - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I have 4 X25-M 80 GB drives in RAID 0. The 750 is cheaper and faster than my setup. Price is based on what I paid several years ago for them.

    I would need a new motherboard and CPU to make this drive bootable. I do want.

    Intel's PCIe lane bottleneck is pathetic. It seems to be a constant concern. X99 and Haswell-E is not the best answer to the problem. I am really skeptical about waiting for Skylake and the associated chipset. Broadwell for desktop hasn't even been released yet. Skylake for desktop will likely be next year at this rate.
  • DanNeely - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Intel's never waivered from stating that SkyLake will launch on time and that all of the 14nm ramping delays will be absorbed by shortening broadwell's life. At this point I am wondering if desktop broadwell might end up being cut entirely in the mainstream market segment; with only the LGA2011 variant and possibly the LGA1150 celeron/pentium class chips that normally launch about a year after the rest of the product line on the desktop.
  • r3loaded - Friday, April 3, 2015 - link

    Skylake will bring 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes on the PCH, in addition to the PCIe 3.0 lanes coming off the CPU (Skylake-E CPUs will introduce PCIe 4.0) as well as support for up to three SATA Express/M.2 devices. Don't worry, Intel is well aware of the bandwidth bottleneck and they're addressing it.
  • Hung_Low - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    So is thisi 750 the long rumoured P3500?
  • Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    I'm not satisfied with the explanations of why this product is slower than the SM951. By all rights it should be faster. Why would it still get a recommendation by anandtech?
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    It's only slower in the Heavy and Light traces, which focus more on peak performance rather than consistency. In The Destroyer trace the SSD 750 has significantly lower IO latency and that's what's critical for power users and professionals since it translates to more responsive system. The Heavy and Light traces don't really illustrate the workloads where the SSD 750 is aimed for, hence the SM951 is faster in those.
  • BD2003 - Thursday, April 2, 2015 - link

    Is it really measureably more responsive though? I guess I have a hard time believing that latencies measured in microseconds are going to bare out into any real world difference. Maybe it makes a difference on the single digit millisecond scale, but I'm talking real world here. Like is there any scenario where you'd be able to measure the *actual responsiveness*, meaning the time between clicking something and it actually responding to your command is measurably better? Even if it's just something minor like notepad opens in 50ms vs 100ms while you're compiling and backing up at the same time?

    Their target market is consumers so I feel like they've got to justify it on the basis of real world usage, not theory or benchmarks. From what I'm seeing here the SM951 looks like a better buy in every single way that matters.
  • SirPerro - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link

    It's not about "clicking and responding". It's about different servers/databases handling hundreds of requests per second in a heavily multithreaded scenario.

    For UI interaction you probably cannot make the difference between this and the cheapest SSD on the market unless compared side by side.

    As the review explains, this is targeted to a very specific niche. Whether people understand the scope of that niche or not is a different thing.

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