The Intel Optane SSD 800p (58GB & 118GB) Review: Almost The Right Size
by Billy Tallis on March 8, 2018 5:15 PM ESTIntel's first Optane products hit the market almost a year ago, putting the much-awaited 3D XPoint memory in the hands of consumers. Today, Intel broadens that family with the Optane SSD 800p, pushing the Optane brand closer to the mainstream.
The new Optane SSD 800p is an M.2 NVMe SSD using Intel's 3D XPoint memory instead of flash memory. The 800p is based on the same hardware platform as last year's Optane Memory M.2 drive, which was intended primarily for caching purposes (but could also be used as a boot drive with a sufficiently small operating system). That means the 800p uses a PCIe 3 x2 link and Intel's first-generation 3D XPoint memory—but more of it, with usable capacities of 58GB and 118GB compared to just 16GB and 32GB from last year's Optane Memory. The PCB layout has been tweaked and the sticker on the drive no longer has a foil layer to act as a heatspreader, but the most significant design changes are to the drive firmware, which now supports power management including a low power idle state.
The low capacities of the Optane Memory product forced Intel to position it as a drive specifically for caching in front of a much larger hard drive, but the Optane SSD 800p has enough space to serve as primary storage. While 64GB-class drives have disappeared from current flash-based SSD product lines, there are still plenty of 128GB-class drives around. These drive capacities certainly aren't roomy, but they are sufficient to install an operating system and several applications. For users that don't install huge AAA video games or deal with large collections of videos and photos, the 118GB 800p might not even feel too confining.
For flash-based SSDs, tiny capacities should often be avoided because they have much worse performance than larger models. The relatively small 128Gbit (16GB) capacity of a single 3D XPoint die means the Optane SSD avoids the limited parallelism that small flash-based drives suffer from, and the performance of a single 3D XPoint die is high enough that not much parallelism is needed to begin with.
Intel Optane SSD Specifications | ||||
Model | Optane SSD 800p | Optane Memory | ||
Capacity | 118 GB | 58 GB | 32 GB | 16 GB |
Form Factor | M.2 2280 B+M key | M.2 2280 B+M key | ||
Interface | PCIe 3.0 x2 | PCIe 3.0 x2 | ||
Protocol | NVMe 1.1 | NVMe 1.1 | ||
Controller | Intel | Intel | ||
Memory | 128Gb 20nm Intel 3D XPoint | 128Gb 20nm Intel 3D XPoint | ||
Sequential Read | 1450 MB/s | 1350 MB/s | 900 MB/s | |
Sequential Write | 640 MB/s | 290 MB/s | 145 MB/s | |
Random Read | 250k IOPS | 240k IOPS | 190k IOPS | |
Random Write | 140k IOPS | 65k IOPS | 35k IOPS | |
Read Latency | 6.75 µs | 7 µs | 8 µs | |
Write Latency | 18µs | 18µs | 30 µs | |
Active Power | 3.75 W | 3.5 W | 3.5 W | |
Idle Power | 8 mW | 8 mW | 1 W | 1 W |
Endurance | 365 TB | 365 TB | 182.5 TB | 182.5 TB |
Warranty | 5 years | 5 years | ||
Launch Date | March 2018 | April 2017 | ||
Launch MSRP | $199 | $129 | $77 | $44 |
The higher capacities that the Optane SSD 800p offers over the Optane Memory also allow for much higher write performance, which was the biggest weakness of Optane Memory. Still, this only brings the 800p up to performance levels slightly faster than SATA, with sequential write performance rated at 640 MB/s and 4kB random write at 140k IOPS. Read speeds are slightly faster than the 32GB Optane Memory and also look poor compared to flash-based SSDs, but Intel is specifying this performance at a queue depth of four, which is far lower than what most flash-based SSDs need to hit their peak throughput.
The addition of a low-power sleep state brings the idle power rating of the 800p down to just 8mW, compared to the 1W rating on the smaller Optane Memory modules. The endurance rating for both capacities is 200 GB/day for the five-year warranty period. Given the small capacity of the drives, this works out to 1.7 or 3.4 drive writes per day, which is considerably higher than normal for consumer SSDs.
The capacities of 58GB and 118GB look odd compared to the more usual amounts like 120GB or 128GB commonly seen for flash-based SSDs. The reason the 800p has slightly reduced capacity is that a 3D XPoint die's actual capacity really matches the nominal 128Gb, whereas NAND flash incorporates extra space above the nominal capacity to allow for error correction and wear leveling. For the Optane Memory, the difference between the power of two definition of 32GB and the traditional drive manufacturer's definition of 32GB provided sufficient space, but the 800p's metadata and error correction requires a bit more usable space be taken.
Pricing for the Intel Optane SSD 800p is similar on a $/GB basis to the Optane Memory, which is now significantly cheaper than the launch prices from last year. However, this still leaves the 800p as the most expensive consumer SSD on the market on both a capacity and per GB basis, with the 58GB model exceeding $2/GB. Even the ultra-high-end 900p is cheaper per GB than the 800p.
The Competition:
There aren't any close competitors to the Optane SSD 800p. Intel's Optane SSD 900p is a consumer-focused derivative of their enterprise Optane SSD DC P4800X and inherits its high power consumption and the large PCIe add-in card or U.2 form factors. The existing Optane Memory M.2 modules are closely related to the Optane SSD 800p, but their low capacities prevent them from being used for the same purposes.
Among flash-based SSDs, there are some current-generation 128GB-class NVMe SSDs but no 64GB-class drives. The small flash-based SSDs are all relatively low-end and far cheaper per GB than the Optane SSDs. The high-end NVMe SSDs that roughly match the 800p on price tend to have four times the capacity.
For this review, we are comparing the 800p against Intel's other Optane products and against a variety of flash-based NVMe SSDs ranging from entry-level drives to the premium Samsung 960 PRO.
Intel also sent us four of the 118GB model, so for the curious we have some benchmark results from using them in RAID. For those tests, the Optane 800p M.2 modules were installed in an ASRock Ultra Quad M.2 card and tested in our enterprise SSD test system, using Windows 10 and Intel's Virtual RAID on CPU (VROC) drivers. That enterprise test system includes all the latest firmware and OS patches for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, so those test results reflect the overhead of those mitigations in addition to the overhead of the NVMe RAID software. The single-drive test results were all recorded on our usual consumer SSD test system that has not received any firmware or OS patches for the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities.
AnandTech Enterprise SSD Test System | |
System Model | Intel Server R2208WFTZS |
CPU | 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6154 (18C, 3.0GHz) |
Motherboard | Intel S2600WFT |
Chipset | Intel C624 |
Memory | 192GB total, Micron DDR4-2666 16GB modules |
Software | Windows 10 x64, version 1709 |
AnandTech 2017/2018 Consumer SSD Testbed | |
CPU | Intel Xeon E3 1240 v5 |
Motherboard | ASRock Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC |
Chipset | Intel C232 |
Memory | 4x 8GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR4-2400 CL15 |
Graphics | AMD Radeon HD 5450, 1920x1200@60Hz |
Software | Windows 10 x64, version 1709 |
Linux kernel version 4.14, fio version 3.1 |
- Thanks to Intel for the Xeon E3 1240 v5 CPU
- Thanks to ASRock for the E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC
- Thanks to G.SKILL for the Ripjaws DDR4-2400 RAM
- Thanks to Corsair for the RM750 power supply, Carbide 200R case, and Hydro H60 CPU cooler
- Thanks to Quarch for the XLC Programmable Power Module and accessories
- Thanks to StarTech for providing a RK2236BKF 22U rack cabinet.
Caveat: Many of our current SSD tests were not designed with tiny drives in mind. The results for the 32GB Optane Memory and the 58GB Optane SSD 800p do not represent exactly the same workload performed by the larger drives. Several of our synthetic benchmarks of sustained performance default to using a 64GB span of the drive, and in the case of the smaller drives, the test simply uses the entire drive. Likewise, the workloads represented by the ATSB Destroyer and Heavy tests don't actually fit on such small drives. The small drives still perform the same volume of reads and writes, but the block addresses in the I/O trace that are beyond the capacity of the drive are wrapped around to fit. The ATSB Destroyer and Heavy results for those two drives could be viewed as representative of the drive's performance as a cache device, but they do not include the effect of cache misses that would be present in a real tiered storage configuration.
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Reflex - Thursday, March 8, 2018 - link
I'm sorry you know how many are rushing out to buy a product that isn't available yet? I don't personally expect large volumes since at the current capacities it isn't in the sweet spot for consumers in price/perf, but its offering solid performance that bests NAND in almost every consumer scenario, in some cases significantly while consuming less overall power. That's a win. As production ramps, costs will come down.And only the literacy challenged have chosen to read Intel's claims about 3DXPoint's potential as claims about its first generation products. Right now its constrained by a number of things beyond the memory itself, such as PCIe bus speed.
iter - Friday, March 9, 2018 - link
And I am sorry don't possess common sense.Of course I am not talking about how the 800p sells, only a complete idiot could take this out of my comments. I am talking about the non-existent demand for it in the enterprise, which the introduction of the 800p is another testament to.
If intel was able to sell it at high enterprise margins they wouldn't be forcing it in the consumer world where it is pointless. Intel is not keep on losing money, and as overpriced as it is even as a consumer product, it is tremendously cheaper than what they can ask for it at the enterprise market. Instead they are marketing it to frigging games... which is 100% laughable.
And of course, I don't expect anyone save for silly fanboys with rich mommies to buy it in the consumer world. because it can offer absolutely nothing for the price premium it comes at. No intelligent human being would pick a 118 gb 800p to a decent 256 gb nvme or 512 gb ssd drive. None whatsoever.
Constrained by PCIe? It doesn't even come close to that. Neither in terms of bandwidth nor latency. But believe whatever it takes to reinforce your fake worldview.
Luckz - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Is there actually a point to 256 gb NVMe though? I mean, performance of the small 960 Evo sucks balls compared to the bigger ones. Why go NVMe when you can have a nice SATA drive with much more capacity and not even much worse perf?Adramtech - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link
iter, Lehi fabs are 100% dedicated to Xpoint and no longer NAND. They wouldn't commit billions to that if they didn't have a path outlined for improvement and scaling.patrickjp93 - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link
Are you kidding? AWS Memcached, Lambda, and DynamoDB have their caching layers and indexing stored in Optane.eddman - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link
We just found ddriver's long lost twin brother.Alexvrb - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link
Cloning tech gone wrong.Reflex - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link
It's not his twin, it's just his new account. This place had a much better community during the too brief time he was gone.patrickjp93 - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link
3DXP is being made on the 90nm node right now. What did you expect? It's a vastly cheaper research node for something so complex.And the performance is stunningly better than everything else Samsung has EXCEPT for high Queue Depth sequential performance. All real world testing shows the 960Pro getting smashed.
Reflex - Saturday, March 10, 2018 - link
Didn't you hear the memo that because this first gen product isn't as good as the theoretical max performance discussed three years ago its all a big fail? /sarcasm