Intel SSD 730 (480GB) Review: Bringing Enterprise to the Consumers
by Kristian Vättö on February 27, 2014 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Intel
- Intel SSD 730
AnandTech Storage Bench 2013
Our Storage Bench 2013 focuses on worst-case multitasking and IO consistency. Similar to our earlier Storage Benches, the test is still application trace based—we record all IO requests made to a test system and play them back on the drive we're testing and run statistical analysis on the drive's responses. There are 49.8 million IO operations in total with 1583.0GB of reads and 875.6GB of writes. As some of you have asked, I'm not including the full description of the test for better readability, so make sure to read our Storage Bench 2013 introduction for the full details.
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2013 - The Destroyer | ||||||||||||
| Workload | Description | Applications Used | ||||||||||
| Photo Sync/Editing | Import images, edit, export | Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Dropbox | ||||||||||
| Gaming | Download/install games, play games | Steam, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Starcraft 2, BioShock Infinite | ||||||||||
| Virtualization | Run/manage VM, use general apps inside VM | VirtualBox | ||||||||||
| General Productivity | Browse the web, manage local email, copy files, encrypt/decrypt files, backup system, download content, virus/malware scan | Chrome, IE10, Outlook, Windows 8, AxCrypt, uTorrent, AdAware | ||||||||||
| Video Playback | Copy and watch movies | Windows 8 | ||||||||||
| Application Development | Compile projects, check out code, download code samples | Visual Studio 2012 | ||||||||||
We are reporting two primary metrics with the Destroyer: average data rate in MB/s and average service time in microseconds. The former gives you an idea of the throughput of the drive during the time that it was running the test workload. This can be a very good indication of overall performance. What average data rate doesn't do a good job of is taking into account response time of very bursty (read: high queue depth) IO. By reporting average service time we heavily weigh latency for queued IOs. You'll note that this is a metric we've been reporting in our enterprise benchmarks for a while now. With the client tests maturing, the time was right for a little convergence.
Even though the performance consistency on the SSD 730 is great, it's only mediocre in our Storage Bench 2013. The write performance of SSD 730 is class-leading but as our Storage Bench has more read than write operations, the SSD 730 loses to drives with better read performance. Whether the drive should focus on read or write performance is a question with no single correct answer because it's workload dependent. The heavy enterprise workloads the SSD 730 platform was designed for tend to be more aggressive in writes, so giving up some read performance makes sense there and carries over into the consumer version.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
96 Comments
View All Comments
amddude10 - Sunday, December 7, 2014 - link
I find it endearing. I bought a 240GB version of the 730 precisely because of its boring, but very practical features relating to reliability and early warning if there are any problems, not because of its speed (because that version is actually pretty slow in some areas). It seems so out of place that it kind of makes for a good story.iLovefloss - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Ever heard of their Extreme line of processors? Or Socket 2011 motherboards? Same deal. I think they also have the skull on their AIO liquid cooling kits (made for the Extreme processors). Just take it as a warning that nobody should buy it as it is overpriced compared to their normal goods.nathanddrews - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
It's badaxe!NCM - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Seriously. If I wanted a tasteless tattoo I'd go and spend the $10 on one.nathanddrews - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link
It was a joke for those that remember the D975XBX. I'm just mocking Intel's pathetic marketing attempts at being hard core.JlHADJOE - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
To make it fit with your Skulltrail system!ritabhatt - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Is this WP 8 or 8.1? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMU51KeRIcsruthan - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
I think is bad ideal add on general customer product some religion symbol.. ok skull isnt religion symbol, but yes between us satanists are technology enthusiasts too :)zyxtomatic - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
I have to ask: What on Earth does a skull have to do with Satanism? It's just a skull with some stylized line art applied to it.zyxtomatic - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
I have to ask: What on Earth does a skull have to do with Satanism? It's just a skull with some stylized line art applied to it.