The Intel SSD 545s (512GB) Review: 64-Layer 3D TLC NAND Hits Retail
by Billy Tallis on June 27, 2017 6:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The Intel 545s delivers a much faster average data rate on the Light test than the 540s, and is even slightly faster than the Crucial MX300. It isn't quite up to the level of the Samsung drives, but it's reasonably close. The ADATA SU800 takes first place here, showing that it is optimized for high peak performance at the expense of very poor performance under sustained heavy workloads.
The average latency of the Intel 545s on the Light test is nothing special, but that's still an improvement over the 540s, or the MX300 when the test is run on a full drive.
All of the TLC SSDs suffer from significantly higher read latency when the Light test is run on a full drive rather than an empty drive. The MLC-based Samsung 850 PRO is only slightly affected, and the Intel 545s is less severely affected than the Crucial MX300 or the Intel 540s. The empty-drive write latency of the 545s is significantly better than the 540s but still slightly behind the other 3D NAND SSDs. When the test is run on a full drive, the write latency of the Crucial MX300 spikes and the 545s ends up tied with the SU800 and trailing only the Samsung drives.
The Light test is easy enough that the Crucial MX300 has the best power consumption whether the test is run on a full drive or an empty drive. The Intel 540s and 545s are essentially tied for second place, with the Samsung 850 EVO right behind. The Samsung 850 PRO is the only true outlier here: it generally sacrifices some power efficiency to deliver the best performance, but the Light test doesn't stress it enough for that to matter.
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ddriver - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
Great, now if they could just make a decent NVME SSD as well.ddriver - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
Shame it took them entire 3 years to catch up to the 850 pro. Lets hope they will match the 960 pro before 2020 LOL.eddieobscurant - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
They caught up with the 850 evo, not the proATC9001 - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
True...but atleast for the first time in I think...ever, there's a drive that can compete with the EVO...hopefully we can see the EVO drives start to drop a bit.Alexvrb - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
It IS nice to see some serious competition for the Evo. The 850 Evo is still my go-to for upgrading older systems from a mechanical drive.Now all I need is some serious price drops for lower-performance higher-capacity TLC drives and I can ditch the mechanical drive for mass storage too. Price:capacity hasn't budged much in recent memory. :-/
Impulses - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
Hasn't budged at all... I bought two 1TB EVOs two years ago, almost to the date (Newegg invoice is dated 7/15/2015 for the first one), paid $340 for one and a couple weeks or a month later I managed to get a second one for $320.I was hoping two years later I could buy a 2TB drive to add to those for the same kinda money, instead the prices are exactly the same right now. The recent shortage and price hike didn't help, up until that point I remember prices steadily declining for at least 4-5 years straight...
I guess that couldn't last, historically the flash market has been more volatile (no pun intended) than not, the kind of stability that went on for a couple years aligned with Samsung's rise to SSD dominance were kind of rare in the grand scheme.
At this rate it's gonna be another 3+ years before I can score a couple good 2TB drives for $300/ea, meh.
andychow - Tuesday, June 27, 2017 - link
Nand is in shortage, has been for a few years. In the past, manufacturers would ramp up production, there would eventually be a surplus, and prices would crash. This time around, they've all decided to basically to ride out the shortage by telling their clients to wait.Alexvrb - Wednesday, June 28, 2017 - link
That seems strange. If they have the ability to ramp and fill demand, you would think one of these outfits would be happy to fill that gap and steal those sales. I thought perhaps they are unable to ramp the flash which is in greatest demand. I hope things get better with future heavily-layered TLC/QLC and upgraded controllers. I would like nothing more than to ditch my secondary mechanical drive for flash, but there's no way I'm spending that kind of money.ddriver - Thursday, June 29, 2017 - link
There is nothing strange about it, they know if flash is in shortage they will make more on every grain of sand they put into it. It is like an implicit mutual agreement to sustain an artificial shortage to make more money. And everyone is happy.They still sell as much SSDs as they can, but at a higher price. SSDs are available, but the supply is deliberately held tight, so there is a perpetual "they might run out" even though supply exceeds demand, it is carefully kept short. Nobody is waiting on flash, no company is missing on sales, they still sell as much as they can, they simply take care not to exceed demand by too much, so they do less work to get extra profits. It is an immensely great deal for them.
There is no motivation for any of the big players to end this shortage, because that would drive prices down, hurt their own margins and those of everyone else, and give the others an excuse for hostile actions in retaliation, which they don't really want, because even though to us they are apparent competitors, they are all in it for the money, and they have estimated that cooperating to keep supply tight will win them more than competing who will make the most or the best SSDs.
It sounds like it is illegal, but considering it is all common sense and they didn't have to collude in some dark room to make an explicit agreement to do so, it is perfectly legal as far as the corrupt justice system is concerned.
Error415 - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
Yeah, it should be illegal for a company to decide not drive prices down by flooding the market with cheap products, shm.What sounds illegal to you is a text book example of a sustainable business model. No booms or busts just steady growth and profit.