Intel 905P NVMe SSD review: Blazing random access and amazing endurance (for a hefty price) - wickerlooris

Intel

At a Glance

Expert's Military rank

Pros

Fantabulous boilers suit execution
Exceptional small file, queued, and rib performance
Improbable length of service (claimed)

Our Verdict

The Intel SSD 905P is ace of the fastest NVMe drives we've tested, and one of the most high-priced. Only that's because IT's rated to be identical durable. If you write a lot of data, that's a selling taper meriting considering.

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Intel's Optane SSD 905P is a follow-on to the Intel Optane SSD 900P we reviewed earlier this year. If you read that review, you already know about the ridiculously long claimed lifespan of Intel's Optane store. I'm talking petabytes written rather than terabytes regular NAND SSDs claim.

The 905P is also faster than the 900P and beats the pants off of any single M.2 PCIe/NVMe screw threaded and small file performance. The downside? It's really, really expensive.

Design and specs

Before I get to the specs, more than on that damage. The 960GB PCIe 3.0, x4 summate-in card version of the 905P that I tested has a inclination damage of a cool $1,300. The 1TB Samsung 970 Pro, a most worthy crusade in its have right, costs less than $400.

At that place are other versions of the 905P, that is to say a bring dow-mental ability 480GB (available happening AmazonPolish of non-product connexion) and a higher-capacitance 1.5GB (lean price $2,200), though I couldn't line up the last mentioned online. All three capacities are as wel available (or will make up) in a 2.5-in form factor with a U.2 user interface (formerly known as SFF-8639) with an adapter cable that runs to your m.2 slot. Also announced is a M.2/22110 (22 mm wide, 110 mm pole-handled) 380 GB version of the drive that North Korean won't be available until November 2018.

The 905P uses Intel's Optane non-volatile retention on board, which in turn uses the NVMe protocol for passing data backward and forward with your electronic computer. On that point's not very much we can tell you about Optane, other than it uses the company's 3D XPoint technology. Intel is Dendranthema grandifloruom as to the technical details.

As the 2.5-inch and M.2 Optane drives we've tested so immoderate are fast readers, but mediocre (for NVMe) writers, we assume that Intel is using some sort of Maraud or separate jiggery-pokery to increase the 905P's write performance. We tested solely the 960GB interlingual rendition, and the performance of the smaller capacities might non be equally flying.

There's a large, finned, black inflame sink covering the entire board, too as blue LED lighting. The drive carries a 5-year warranty, however, that's voided if old in a "multi-user, multi-CPU, data center environment." Okeh.

intel optane ssd 905 series 4 — This is the quite peculiar 2.5-inch version of the 905P. It fits in a lawful drive bay, but attaches to an M.2/PCIe port,

Intel has thoughtfully uprise with a new elbow room to describe longevity in saying that the 905P is good for 10 full drive writes a day. If that's 10 writes per day of 960GB for the five years of the warranty, you're talking most an survival rating of around 17.5 PBW or PetaBytes Written, or 17,500 TBW (TeraBytes Written), which has been the normal metric the last few years. 17.5 PBW is probably more data than most users will write in their lifespan. Fine, users that are already adults, anyway…

Performance

Though information technology's not quite an as speedy as the Samsung 970 Pro when it comes to sustained throughput, the 905P absolutely rocks when it comes to multi-threaded, multi-queued performance.

Below are the CrystalDiskMark numbers racket (the Intel 905P is in red, the Samsung 970 Pro, blue). Impressive. Random write is small file performance, sequential is king-size file or sustained write carrying out.

cdm 6 905p — CrystalDiskMark rated the Intel 905P as slower than the Samsung 970 Favoring in terms of sustained throughput, but faster with smaller files. Lesser file performance is very decisive when it comes to the feel of your operating system and on servers fulfilling lots of single file requests. Some drives are very quick.

AS SSD rated the 905P as slower than the Samsung 970 Pro in sustained throughput, and this test is far more healthy about the actual speeds.

as ssd sew 905p — Longer bars are better. The 905P is in reddish.

Along the other turn over, AS SSD showed the 905P fundament locate files far quicker (seek) and handle small files significantly better than the Samsung 970 In favor of.

as ssd seek 905p — We normally don't evince search times American Samoa they're usually pretty even, but the 905P was considerably faster over about 10 iterations of the test.

as ssd 4k 905p — In most 4K (four K data chunks) tests, the 905P dominated the Samsung 970 Pro. Longer bars are better.

Our replicate tests likewise showed that the 905P was a bit slower than the 970 Pro with continuous throughput, but quicker with our 48GB group of smaller files and folders. Some drives are in no time, but the 905P testament come into its own in multi-access situations.

48gb copy 905p — The Intel 905P is slimly slower than the Samsung 970 Pro with the cosmic files, but quicker with groups of files and folders is the Intel 905P.

Money no aim…

If money weren't an issue, the Intel 905P is the drive I'd use in my system. The performance is great, and the secure longevity parlays into a sense of security system other drives get into't quite provide. It's quite plainly the best thing out there.

But in the real populace, where people actually work for money, I would have to say "Nay, nay…" It's controversial whether even the 970 Pro is worth the money when there are very fast alternatives, such arsenic WD's NVMe Contraband for sale for $100 less.

This clause was edited on Nov 30th, 2019 to correct the math for the TBW from 1750 to 17,500.

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Jon is a Juilliard-trained musician, other x86/6800 programmer, and long-metre (late 70s) computer enthusiast living in the San Francisco bay area. jjacobi@pcworld.com