Although Intel’s SSD DC P3700 is clearly targeted at the enterprise, the drive will be priced quite aggressively at $3/GB. Furthermore, Intel will be using the same controller and firmware architecture in two other, lower cost derivatives (P3500/P3600). In light of Intel’s positioning of the P3xxx family, a number of you asked for us to run the drive through our standard client SSD workload. We didn’t have the time to do that before Computex, but it was the first thing I did upon my return. If you aren’t familiar with the P3700 I’d recommend reading the initial review, but otherwise let’s look at how it performs as a client drive.
via AnandTech | The Intel SSD DC P3700 Review Part 2: NVMe on Client Workloads.
This is Part #2 of the full review Anandtech did on the Intel P3700 PCIe/NVMe card. It’s reassuring to know that Anandtech reports Intel’s got more than just the top end P3700 coming out on the market. Other price points will be competing too for the non-enterprise workload types. $3/GB puts it at the top of a desktop peripheral price for even a fanboy gamer. But for data center workloads and the prices that crowd pays this is going to be an easy choice. Intel’s P3700 as the Anandtech concludes is built not just for speed (peak I/O) but for consistency at all queue depths, file sizes and block sizes. If you’re attempting to budget a capital improvement in your Data Center and you want to quote the increases you’ll see, these benchmarks will be proof enough that you’ll get every penny back that you spent. No need to throw an evaluation unit into your test rig, testing lab and benchmarking it yourself.
As for the lower end models, you might be able to dip your toe, though not at the same performance level, in at the $600 price point. That will be an average to smallish 400GB PCIe card the Intel SSD DC P3500. But still the overall design and engineering is derived in part from the move from just a straight PCIe interface to one that harnesses more data lanes on the PCIe bus and connects to the BIOS via the NVMHCI drive interface. That’s what you’re getting for that price. If you’re very sensitive to price, do not purchase this product line. Samsung has you more than adequately covered under the old regime SSD-SATA drive technology. And even then the performance is nothing to sneeze at. But do know things are in flux with the new higher performance drive interfaces manufacturers will be marketing and selling to you soon. Remember roughly this is the order in which things are improving and of higher I/O:
NVMe/NVMHCI>PCIe SSD>M.2>SATA Express (SATAe)>SATA SSD
And the incremental differences in the middle are small enough that you will only see benefits really if the price is cheaper for a slightly faster interface (say SATA SSD vs. SATA Express choose based on the price being dead equal, not necessarily just performance alone). Knowing what all these things do or even just what they mean and how that equates to your computer’s I/O performance will help you choose wisely over the next year to two years.
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