Intel 750 Series PCIe SSD 1.2 TB

[W1zzard]

Intel's new 750 Series SSD is a technological marvel. It is built on an 18-channel controller using a PCI-Express x4 3.0 interface with the NVMe protocol. This provides transfer rates of well over 1 GB/s, which clearly impresses. With a price of $1 per GB, the drive is also not prohibitively expensive.

Show full review

 

[v12dock]

How about reviewing the Samsung SM951?

 

[the54thvoid]

How about reviewing the Samsung SM951?

It's OEM only - not technically a retail product. Any you find are not covered by typical warranty and is not supported by Samsung's own 'Magician' software. Any review would need to make it very clear it's not for low level users.

EDIT: besides: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8979/samsung-sm951-512-gb-review

 

[Delta6326]

Great review W1zz! If i had the $$$$ I would get one!

Also found error in last page cons:

• Low performance per sollar

 

[bogami]

Durability is phenomenal in relation to other discs in this field and also drive version has to offer but many of the base plate missing a connection. Here is the first ASUS submitted to all its new models (NVMe SFF-8639 add-on M.2.).
Even though much cheaper than its big brother set 3700 is an expensive purchase. I would have if I had resources.

 

[alwayssts]

Great review, as always. I'm always happy to see these graphs:

Because just like graphics cards,

it reminds me when there is a decent performance option at literally around to over ~2x value and a decent amount over 50% (say 60%+...equalized to around 1.2 perf/$/relative perf; essentially the difference in performance between gpu segments or what you could expect to lose in scaling) in whatever area is your performance aim, it's really hard to justify it (especially given the hoops/challenges this creates for itself and certain builds) . If anything, often just like gpus, if the situation is indeed that lopsided and you really need the performance, build a RAID with said cheaper parts. While this is indeed super fast, it's not super-fast enough (and the fringe cases RAID doesn't scale or becomes a hindrance) to warrant it over other options, say a M550 or better/cheaper in the slightest (imho). That said, these solutions (the controller, the interfaces, etc) had to start somewhere, and it certainly justifies quick adoption so that the value proposition changes.

Of course as mentioned elsewhere, things could get interesting 'if' (when) Intel releases an 800GB version. While the price/GB will still be be high, it *should* be almost exactly offset by performance (if pricing/performance structure holds) to make it 'worth it' to some compared to options from the competition. They have almost certainly (by purposely holding it back) created a desire for such a product and built a market for it. At $800 it would still be an absurd investment imho, given how fast things are likely to change over the coming year or so, but at least it would be remotely justifiable for a power user looking for the next tier of performance right now in a reasonable-size single drive.

 

[Easo]

I would not realy going to count issues with Windows 7 as minus - OS doesnt support the technology by default because it is too old (yeah, a bit silly since it went out in only 5 years ago) so all support would be ad-hoc anyway.

 

[Naito]

It's good to know that it is possible to get it running under Windows 7, but with native support in Windows 8 and all the benefits the OS brings itself, why would you go with Windows 7?

 

[deemon]

not quite sure what you are doing differently (wrong?) with your testing (testing software is outdated, or drivers missing?), but those guys got 2.6GBs read and 1.3GBs write on Intel 750:

or maybe your motherboard choice was wrong. Even in the "Intel® Solid-State Drive 750 Series Product Brief" they used ASUS motherboard.:
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/ssd-750-brief.html
Test and System Configuration: Processor: Intel Core i7-4790K, Speed: 4.0 GHz, Chipset: Intel Z97, Motherboard: ASUS z97-Deluxe, DRAM capacity: 4GB, DRAM Speed: DDR3 2133 MHz, OS: Windows* 8.1

 

[W1zzard]

got 2.6GBs

so they used crystaldiskmark. probably on a completely empty drive... you are aware that cdm writes compressible data? last i checked, the data you write to your actual hdd isnt all zeros

if i got some software showing 3 gb/s would that make me the better reviewer ?

 

[Snufkin]

$1200

 

[deemon]

so they used crystaldiskmark. probably on a completely empty drive... you are aware that cdm writes compressible data? last i checked, the data you write to your actual hdd isnt all zeros

getting twice worse results that are in the product specification makes one wonder, if your setup and/or benchmarking tools choice was correct.
Another reviewer got twice better results than you did:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/intel_750_nvme_1_2_tb_pcie_ssd_review,10.html
quote from there: "That's right, that is 2.670 MB/sec at the maximum block size."
Then again we have no clue what block size you used in your testing.

And another one:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-750-series-ssd,4096-4.html

... I see a pattern emerging here.

here's the page with test that didn't write all 0-s but used variable compressable data:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/intel_750_nvme_1_2_tb_pcie_ssd_review,15.html
... still ~2.3GB/s read and 1.3GB/s write

if i got some software showing 3 gb/s would that make me the better reviewer ?

your attitude makes me sad.

 

[RealNeil]

It's good to know that it is possible to get it running under Windows 7, but with native support in Windows 8 and all the benefits the OS brings itself, why would you go with Windows 7?

Win-8 isn't enough justification to drop Win-7.
Why spend the money for it?

 

[Naito]

Win-8 isn't enough justification to drop Win-7.
Why spend the money for it?

You could almost say the same about Vista vs 7; by the time Windows 7 came around, Vista has matured and stabilized a lot. Apart from a new task bar and slightly better resource management, they're pretty much the same.

Windows 8/8.1 has faster boots, native USB3.0 support, better SSD support, more secure, generally more responsive and, in my opinion, cleaner/sleeker look than the now tacky Windows 7 feel. Well worth $60!

Windows 10 is shaping up just as nicely, so would buy that too, if they weren't going to offer it for free.

 

[1337]

I found an easy (though not free) fix to installing and booting from this NVMe drive. I had a Samsung 850 pro SSD as the boot drive on my workstation, running Windows 7, with lots of custom programs, patches and domain membership all installed, none of which I wanted to redo unless I really had to. So I installed the 750 into an empty slot on my ASUS X99-E WS board, loaded the Intel drivers and then ran Paragon Migrate OS to SSD 4.0, targeting the new drive. It created all the necessary partitions, boot loader files, etc. and cloned everything over (in just a couple of minutes). Then all I had to do was boot into the BIOS and select the NVMe device as the boot device, and everything came up perfectly. My old boot drive was reassigned a new drive letter and could be accessed, but there was nothing on it that I needed. I'll now use it as a hot-spare boot device, probably imaging my 750 over to it once a month (just before patch Tuesday). Nicer than a system-state backup. Paragon's software is $19.95 for a single-user license, and well worth it for me.

By the way, the new drive is insanely fast.

 

[GC_PaNzerFIN]

Opened a bubble wrap containing this 1,2 TB pure awesomeness few minutes ago and I must admit I am drooling on my desk already like 5 year old with new LEGO toys.

 

[erixx]

price going up (no competitors?)

 

[erixx]

LOL, just found myself ^

REPORT:
I just installed mine (400GB) under Windows 10 Pro RTM on a Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1, in slot PCI-E 16x number 2.
More exactly I did a clean Win10 install directly from a USB drive on this sweety, and NO DRIVERS requiered. (Latest EFI bios of course)