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[Anandtech] Intel SSD DC P3700 Review: The PCIe SSD Transition Begins with NVMe

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Brokenstorm

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Quote:
The Intel SSD DC P3700, P3600 and P3500 are all PCIe SSDs that feature a custom Intel NVMe controller. The controller is an evolution of the design used in the S3700/S3500, with improved internal bandwidth via an expanded 18-channel design, reduced internal latencies and NVMe support built in. The controller connects to as much as 2TB of Intel's own 20nm MLC NAND. The three different drives offer varying endurance and performance needs.

The pricing is insanely competitive for brand new technology. The highest endurance P3700 drive is priced at around $3/GB, which is similar to what enthusiasts were paying for their SSDs not too long ago. The P3600 trades some performance and endurance for $1.95/GB, and the P3500 drops pricing down to $1.495/GB.
Click to expand...
LINK

First news post, hope I did it right
 
#3 ·
What a beast!
 
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#5 ·
So I'm still unclear as to how PCIe SSDs affect things like SLI when available lanes is an issue.

If I'm running 2-way SLI on x8 slots on something like a Z97 motherboard, can I even use a PCIe SSD? Will using it drop the available lanes, and thereby prevent even 2-way SLI from working?
 
#6 ·
Finally something to get really excited about during Computex 2014. Just one of these is almost 3X faster than my current RAID0 array, just made its way onto the future parts upgrade list.

Rampage V Extreme, DDR4, HWE CPU = $1400 to $1800
Intel P3700 400GB = $1200
Intel P3500 400GB = $599 *best value

Thinking one of these instead of a new Z97 or X99 platform might yield overall higher system computing performance at least for my apps and work.

I'll never run more than one video card, so this is ideal.
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http://s1177.photobucket.com/user/M...-solid-state-drive-data-center-family-for-pcie-ssd-620x458_zps7abc6f41.jpg.html

http://s1177.photobucket.com/user/MeanBruce/media/DSC00944_zps02738514.jpg.html

http://s1177.photobucket.com/user/MeanBruce/media/case_zps70fb2592.jpg.html
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mand12 View Post

So I'm still unclear as to how PCIe SSDs affect things like SLI when available lanes is an issue.

If I'm running 2-way SLI on x8 slots on something like a Z97 motherboard, can I even use a PCIe SSD? Will using it drop the available lanes, and thereby prevent even 2-way SLI from working?
Click to expand...
Generally speaking there are the pci lanes that are controlled by the cpu itself for the x16 lanes and there are pcie 2.0 lanes for the other lower speed slots on the board that are controller by the chipset.
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by MeanBruce View Post

Now where are those SandForce 3rd Gen controllers hiding?
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SandForce probably dropped the ball.... they just got sold AGAIN this time to Seagate.

Quote:
Originally Posted by iatacs19 View Post

The only downside for now is the price! 400GB version is $1200...
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That's not a downside at all.... that's an excellent price for enterprise hardware.
 
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#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsumi View Post

Low queue depth random reads and writes are still barely above SATA II levels though. I'll stick with my sub $0.50/GB SSDs for now.
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Of course.... SSDs achieve performance through parallelism and this is for enterprise applications which generally do have higher queue depths.
 
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#13 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsumi View Post

Low queue depth random reads and writes are still barely above SATA II levels though. I'll stick with my sub $0.50/GB SSDs for now.
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You might be reading some charts incorrectly or something. The P3700 at QD=1 outperforms many SATA 6Gb/sec SSDs at QD=32.
 
#14 ·
Typical hard disk drive for 4K: random read 1 MB/s random write 1 MB/s.
Samsung Evo at QD1 for 4k: ..random read 41 MB/s random write 110 MB/s (toms tests QD1)
Intel P3700 at QD1 for 4k: ....random read 36 MB/s random write 250 MB/s.

Samsung Evo at QD3 for 4k: ..random read 100 MB/s random write 280 MB/s (anandtech tests at QD3)
Intel P3700 at QD3 for 4k: ....random read 140 MB/s random write 430 MB/s (assuming chart is to scale)

P3700 at low QD for 4K is not impressive, though writes better than reads. As QD increases or in sequential read/write use, it is very impressive. End user going from HDD to typical sata SSD will notice faster random small file speeds/access times, but wouldnt notice going from sata SSD to P3700 unless heavy large file transfer, benching, or server-like use.

Quote from anandtechs article on random 4k
Quote:
Small block random read operations have inherent limits when it comes to parallelism. In the case of all of the drives here, QD1 performance ends up around 20 - 40MB/s. The P3700 manages 36.5MB/s (~8900 IOPS) compared to 27.2MB/s (~6600 IOPS) for the SATA S3700.
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Quote from same on sequential 4k (where it does shine at low QD)
Quote:
The biggest takeaway from this graph is just how much parallelism Intel manages to extract from each transfer even at a queue depth of 1. The P3700 delivers more than 1GB/s of bandwidth at QD1. That's more than double any of the other competitors here, and equal to the performance of 3.7x SATA Intel SSD DC S3700s.
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difficult to get very high QD on typical home computer
quote from http://www.storagereview.com/SingleVsMulti.sr:
Quote:
An average queue depth of 4 was achieved by copying a folder of files (9.31 GB, 2035 files of varying sizes) to another drive while copying the same set of files from the other drive to this target drive while defragmenting the disk while running a full spyware scan while running a full antivirus scan.
Click to expand...
 
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#16 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieHo View Post

SandForce probably dropped the ball.... they just got sold AGAIN this time to Seagate.

That's not a downside at all.... that's an excellent price for enterprise hardware.
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However, their current contracts are staying as-is and won't be affected.

Yes... You can buy a house, or you can buy 10.24TiB of enterprise-grade PCIe flash storage. Which do you want?

Quote:
Originally Posted by opt33 View Post

Typical hard disk drive for 4K: random read 1 MB/s random write 1 MB/s.
Samsung Evo at QD1 for 4k: ..random read 41 MB/s random write 110 MB/s (toms tests QD1)
Intel P3700 at QD1 for 4k: ....random read 36 MB/s random write 250 MB/s.

Samsung Evo at QD3 for 4k: ..random read 100 MB/s random write 280 MB/s (anandtech tests at QD3)
Intel P3700 at QD3 for 4k: ....random read 140 MB/s random write 430 MB/s (assuming chart is to scale)

P3700 at low QD for 4K is not impressive,
though writes better than reads. As QD increases or in sequential read/write use, it is very impressive. End user going from HDD to typical sata SSD will notice faster random small file speeds/access times, but wouldnt notice going from sata SSD to P3700 unless heavy large file transfer, benching, or server-like use.

Quote from anandtechs article on random 4k
Quote:
Small block random read operations have inherent limits when it comes to parallelism. In the case of all of the drives here, QD1 performance ends up around 20 - 40MB/s. The P3700 manages 36.5MB/s (~8900 IOPS) compared to 27.2MB/s (~6600 IOPS) for the SATA S3700.
Click to expand...
Quote from same on sequential 4k (where it does shine at low QD)
Quote:
The biggest takeaway from this graph is just how much parallelism Intel manages to extract from each transfer even at a queue depth of 1. The P3700 delivers more than 1GB/s of bandwidth at QD1. That's more than double any of the other competitors here, and equal to the performance of 3.7x SATA Intel SSD DC S3700s.
Click to expand...
difficult to get very high QD on typical home computer
quote from http://www.storagereview.com/SingleVsMulti.sr:
Quote:
An average queue depth of 4 was achieved by copying a folder of files (9.31 GB, 2035 files of varying sizes) to another drive while copying the same set of files from the other drive to this target drive while defragmenting the disk while running a full spyware scan while running a full antivirus scan.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Are you kidding me? How is that not impressive? This is a huge leap forwards for random speeds! They're finally getting bottlenecked by a SATA interface (yeah, I know, PCIe, but SATA is a good reference point). I am not aware of any other drive that has that luxury.

Quote:
Originally Posted by d2jade View Post

I find the appearance and performance numbers overall to be somewhat arousing...
tongue.gif
Click to expand...
You've come to the right place.
yessir.gif
 
#17 ·
Looking at the queue depth I'd say this will bring no beneficial gains in the consumer space, unless programs and OS loads increase substantially.
 
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#19 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by CynicalUnicorn View Post

Yes... You can buy a house, or you can buy 10.24TiB of enterprise-grade PCIe flash storage. Which do you want?
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If that 10.24TiB of storage allows me to make millions a year...... the storage, obviously!
 
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#20 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieHo View Post

If that 10.24TiB of storage allows me to make millions a year...... the storage, obviously!
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That's the way you have to look at it running a business. Invest and return. Who needs a house anyway when a tent in the backyard will do just fine.
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I'm wondering are both these form factors shown going to deliver the same performance?

The PCIe and the 2.5inch I'm assuming it's either SATA Express OR PCIe cable out, cannot find a description of the connection.
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