Intel 730 480GB SSD Quick Benchmarks

Today we have quick benchmarks of the Intel 730 480GB SSD on a standard LSI/ Avago SAS controller. In an effort to get more data out on SSDs on industry standard LSI controllers, we are adding benchmarks of several datacenter focused SSDs to our data set. We recently ran a series of SAS SSD benchmarks, including a recent Toshiba 12gbps SAS SSD review that links over 10 other SAS SSD configurations. We also just released SanDisk CloudSpeed 1000E 800GB SATA SSD quick benchmarks. Generally there is little data on SSDs and most consumer-oriented technology sites use Intel onboard SATA controllers. This is a slightly different spin on these benchmarks.

The Intel 730 480GB SSD is a very interesting drive. It is based on the same basic platform as the Intel S3500 and S3700 SSDs with an Intel controller. Intel “overclocks” the controller for enthusiast performance. On the other hand, the drive has less over provisioning than the S3700 and S3500 (and allegedly lower quality NAND than the S3700) making it extremely interesting for read-intensive workloads. If one were to overprovision the drives to 400GB then one gets the faster controller speeds with decent endurance and better IO/ consistency. We are going to open up a retail Intel 730 SSD to see if there are capacitors onboard. There is a question on the forums as to whether these drives do indeed have power loss protection. Intel is selling these drives for well under $0.50/GB as we saw on the Intel 730 SSD deal. 

Test Configuration

Since we are going to assume the use of already released hardware, we are using a legacy system for testing across the test suite:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7PESH3
• Processors: Dual Intel Xeon E5-2690 (V2)
• SAS Controller: LSI SAS 3008
• RAM: 64GB DDR3L-1600MHz ECC RDIMMs
• OS SSD: Kingston V300 240GB

We are using the same test configuration as we did with our SAS SSD tests. It should be noted that these drives will work on the onboard Intel controller but we wanted to present a different view of their performance by using the SAS controller. We did buy our own drives for benchmarking so this is not an Intel sanctioned benchmark session.

Intel DC S3700 400GB SSD Quick Benchmarks

For our quick tests during this part of the series we will just provide the quick benchmarks with only a bit of commentary. The results should be fairly straightforward and the index of previous articles in this series (linked above) is a good resource to compare against.

AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD is a solid benchmark that does not write compressible data to drives. The result is perhaps one of the best workstation SSD benchmarks available today.

We will have Intel DC S3700 benchmarks up in the next week (they are already complete including our longer term testing.) The quick summary is that we can see the controller speed performance enhancements on the drive. There are clear performance benefits on “bursty” tests like our quick benchmarks. Enterprise drives need longer-term performance consistency testing but this does provide a nice baseline.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is another benchmark which gives non-compressible read/write numbers. This is in contrast to the ATTO Benchmark used by LSI/ Sandforce and its partners when they market a given solid state drive.

In general, these speeds are 5-10% faster than the Intel DC S3700 400GB and over 10% faster than the SanDisk CloudSpeed 1000E 800GB. Those drives offer (far) superior write endurance but if one can assume read heavy workloads, such as web host serving, this is an intriguing option.

ATTO Benchmark

The value of the ATTO benchmark is really to show the best-case scenario. ATTO is known to write highly compressible data to drives, which inflates speeds of controllers that compress data like LSI/ SandForce does prior to writing on a given solid state drive.

Both the Intel DC S3700 400GB and SanDisk CloudSpeed 1000E 800GB SATA drives achieve only about 480MB/s read/ write speeds. The Intel 730 makes use of its faster controller to show sequential speeds in a best case scenario are faster. Given the write endurance differences, using an Intel 730 in a datacenter would likely be a use case founded on low-end web servers where writes will be uploading photos in WordPress which is a short sequential write workload much like ATTO provides.

Conclusion

Most sites reviewing the Intel 730 SSD used engineering samples. Over the next few days we will open up a 480GB model to see if there are indeed power loss capacitors. If there are, either as a 480GB web serving SSD or a 400GB over provisioned SSD with higher write endurance and more consistent I/O, the 730 will make an absolutely interesting proposition. These drives have been selling new for around $200 and with higher clocks and excellent performance, they could be interesting basic web server SSDs. More to come!