Intel Rolls Out SSD 670p Mainstream NVMe SSD Series

[btarunr]

Intel today rolled out the SSD 670p series, a new line of M.2 NVMe SSDs that are targeted at the mainstream segment. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 host-interface, the drive implements Intel's latest 144-layer 3D QLC NAND flash memory, mated with a re-badged Silicon Motion SM2265G 8-channel controller that uses a fixed 256 MB DDR3L DRAM cache across all capacity variants. It comes in capacities of 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB.

The 1 TB and 2 TB variants offer sequential read speeds of up to 3500 MB/s, while the 512 GB variant reads at up to 3000 MB/s. Sequential write speeds vary, with the 512 GB variant writing at up to 1600 MB/s, the 1 TB variant at up to 2500 MB/s, and the 2 TB variant at up to 2700 MB/s. The drives offer significantly higher endurance than past generations of QLC-based drives, with the 512 GB variant capable of up to 185 TBW, the 1 TB variant up to 370 TBW, and the 2 TB variant up to 740 TBW. Intel is backing the drives with 5-year warranties. The 512 GB variant is priced at $89, the 1 TB variant at $154, and the 2 TB variant at $329.



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[Selaya]

Intel solidifying itself as the vendor of bottom-of-the-barrel budget garbage.

EDIT: Wait, $154 for 1TB? Yeah, ignore the budget part then, this is more of a scamaz.

 

[kapone32]

Intel solidifying itself as the vendor of bottom-of-the-barrel budget garbage.

EDIT: Wait, $154 for 1TB? Yeah, ignore the budget part then, this is more of a scamaz.

What exactly is wrong with Intel NVMe drives? Furthermore the packaging alone disputes your claim.

 

[dragontamer5788]

What exactly is wrong with Intel NVMe drives? Furthermore the packaging alone disputes your claim.

QLC and PCIe 3.0. Top-tier brands are on TLC + substantial SLC caching and PCIe 4.0, reaching speeds of 7000 MBps instead of the 3000 MBps we see on this drive.

Seeing QLC at $150/TB is nonsensical. You can buy superior technology at lower prices. Intel is really damaging their name by offering a budget-tier QLC drive at prices this high IMO. TLC NVMe / PCIe 3.0 is selling at $120/TB or so, and would be a superior choice. Heck, given the slowdowns associated with QLC, you might even prefer SATA TLC at $80 to $100.

 

[Selaya]

$154 for 1TB of QLC, that's whats wrong with Intel (NAND) NVMes.
(Their Optanes are great and I have one, but they're priced in an entire different league.)

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

What exactly is wrong with Intel NVMe drives? Furthermore the packaging alone disputes your claim.

The only thing wrong is hearing anything positive about intel, because nowadays everyone likes to laugh at them, despite the news of them breaking records

 

[dragontamer5788]

The only thing wrong is hearing anything positive about intel, because nowadays everyone likes to laugh at them, despite the news of them breaking records

Intel's QLC drives were always overpriced however. Intel constantly tries to sell QLC drives at the same cost as a TLC drive. IMO, their SSD department is a joke, and will continue to be a joke until their QLC offerings are properly priced.

Intel's CPUs are underrated and I'm excited to see them enter the GPU market. But Intel's QLC storage has always been wtf to me. Intel does have a quality offering in the name of Optane (though very expensive).

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

Intel's QLC drives were always overpriced however. Intel constantly tries to sell QLC drives at the same cost as a TLC drive. IMO, their SSD department is a joke, and will continue to be a joke until their QLC offerings are properly priced.

Intel's CPUs are underrated and I'm excited to see them enter the GPU market. But Intel's QLC storage has always been wtf to me. Intel does have a quality offering in the name of Optane (though very expensive).

You can find the intel 665p 1tb for 100$, it comes with 2000mbs read and 300tbw endurance

The samsung 860 evo 1tb sata ssd with 560mb read is 130$ or above !

 

[dragontamer5788]

You can find the intel 665p 1tb for 100$

Yeah, that's a QLC drive. You can find a proper well-reviewed TLC drive 1TB like HP EX920 for $115: https://www.newegg.com/hp-ex920-1tb/p/N82E16820326778 (which happens to be a winner in Random QD1 tests).

You can find a brand-name SATA TLC drive for $90 btw. Such as Crucial MX500 (https://www.newegg.com/crucial-bx500-1tb/p/N82E16820156231).

If you want cheap/capacity, SATA-TLC for the win. If you want performance, NVMe TLC for the win. Why buy the low-endurance low-performance QLC product in the middle? Once you account for QD1 performance, SATA-TLC starts to make more and more sense for cheap capacity.

it comes with 2000mbs read and 300tbw endurance

And the HP EX 920 has 3500 MBps read and 650TBW, because TLC beats QLC in both speed and endurance. Furthermore, actual practical tests (aka: QD1 IOPS speeds) strongly favor TLC drives. So the "hidden" advantage leans towards TLC drives like HP EX920 or even SATA-TLC drives in practice. Especially when the very slow continuous write speeds of QLC are taken into account ("continuous write" meaning after the SLC cache is exhausted).

 

[TheLostSwede]

Intel's QLC drives were always overpriced however. Intel constantly tries to sell QLC drives at the same cost as a TLC drive. IMO, their SSD department is a joke, and will continue to be a joke until their QLC offerings are properly priced.

Intel's CPUs are underrated and I'm excited to see them enter the GPU market. But Intel's QLC storage has always been wtf to me. Intel does have a quality offering in the name of Optane (though very expensive).

Isn't that why they sold it to SK Hynix?

SK hynix to Acquire Intel NAND Flash Memory Business for $9 Billion

SK hynix and Intel today announced that they have signed an agreement on Oct. 20, KST, under which SK hynix would acquire Intel's NAND memory and storage business for US $9 billion. The transaction includes the NAND SSD business, the NAND component and wafer business, and the Dalian NAND memory...

www.techpowerup.com

You can find the intel 665p 1tb for 100$, it comes with 2000mbs read and 300tbw endurance

The samsung 860 evo 1tb sata ssd with 560mb read is 130$ or above !

Keep in mind that prices of SSDs vary a lot depending on where people live.
In fact, the 665p isn't even available here and the older 660p costs $115 locally, at 1TB.
For slightly less I can get an XPG 8200 Pro, a WD Blue N550, a Sandisk Ultra 3D ($108) and a bunch of tier 2 and 3 drives from Apacer, Teamgroup, AGI, SEKC, TCell, Leven, Topmore, Klevv and so on. Most of these are using TLC rather than QLC.
Even in the US the SN550 can be had for around $100, which I'd rather get than a QLC drive from any brand.

 

[kapone32]

Intel's QLC drives were always overpriced however. Intel constantly tries to sell QLC drives at the same cost as a TLC drive. IMO, their SSD department is a joke, and will continue to be a joke until their QLC offerings are properly priced.

Intel's CPUs are underrated and I'm excited to see them enter the GPU market. But Intel's QLC storage has always been wtf to me. Intel does have a quality offering in the name of Optane (though very expensive).

Actually, when they launched the 660P for a long time was the cheapest NVME drive you could buy. The fact that it looked slow compared to other drives in the spec did not mean that you the user could notice the difference. Intel also (as I said) made you feel you were getting something of significance with not just the packaging but the software that is available to use as well. I guess they were selling well as they have increased in price to the point of no longer being a viable option as they are more expensive than more compelling drives in the QLC space.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Actually, when they launched the 660P for a long time was the cheapest NVME drive you could buy. The fact that it looked slow compared to other drives in the spec did not mean that you the user could notice the difference. Intel also (as I said) made you feel you were getting something of significance with not just the packaging but the software that is available to use as well. I guess they were selling well as they have increased in price to the point of no longer being a viable option as they are more expensive than more compelling drives in the QLC space.

I disagree.

The HP EX850 series was available for years, before being upgraded to the HP EX920 recently. HP's TLC drives have always been rated with high-reviews and "practical tests". Furthermore, Crucial's offerings (MX500) was following in a long line of TLC drives as well: MX100, BX100, etc. etc.

Samsung drives command a premium due to their popularity. But once you start looking at other top-tier brands (Crucial), or 2nd tier brands (ie: Mushkin, which is based off of Crucial NAND Flash), there were plenty of brands with superior quality over Intel's QLC drives, at much lower prices. HP, Crucial, Mushkin, ADATA, even WD drives I'd recommend over Intel for pretty much the entire existence of Intel's QLC line.

Intel commanded a premium years ago when they sold SLC drives before anyone else. Intel lost the crown around the MLC-drive (2-bits per cell) time period, and Samsung became king around that era. In the TLC-time period, Samsung had an early lead in price/performance/quality, but Crucial / Mushkin and HP really overtook Samsung years ago.

Really, the last time I'd say Intel was worth a recommendation was SLC-time frames or Optane. The SSD market has had a furious amount of competition over the years: its hard to keep up with who had the best brand (especially with Kingston's and ADATA's shenanigans). Still though, HP, Crucial, and Mushkin have reliably performed over the years, with Seagate and WD somehow managing to remain competitive as well (but never really "the best" IMO. Seagate purchase of Sandforce was clearly a good move... but Seagate ultimately relegated themselves to the enterprise market and seems to have left the consumer market).

-----

So once again:

* Intel won the SLC era for sure.
* Samsung won the early MLC era
* Crucial / Mushkin won the late MLC era
* Samsung won the early TLC era
* Crucial / Mushkin won the 2nd round of the TLC era
* HP suddenly comes out of no where and suddenly becomes a valid SSD manufacturer as the TLC / NVMe era begins
* Intel wishes to get a head start in the QLC era, but every time I look at their drives I'm WTFing because TLC drives are still better than Intel's offerings in basically every spec.
* NVMe / PCIe 4.0 begins with $200 / TB TLC drives from a variety of manufacturers, probably most useful for PS5 (because of the 5000+MBps requirements). We might be going faster rather than capacity: where TLC will have an advantage for some time over QLC. Hard to see the future from here.
* Intel Optane came around but was always too expensive for most people's purposes. Still, its very interesting, especially in the enterprise memory-only database market. (Slower than DDR4, but far faster than other SSDs in that application).

Crucial / Mushkin have very similar prices. Crucial makes its own SSDs, while Mushkin buys Crucial / Micron flash and assembles them into SSDs as well. I don't understand how that arrangement benefits them at all, but hey, they got some good prices and quality.

 

[newtekie1]

The drives offer significantly higher endurance than past generations of QLC-based drives

Maybe we have different definitions of "significantly", but 70TBW more isn't what I would consider significantly more endurance.

Keep in mind that prices of SSDs vary a lot depending on where people live.

This is definitely something to take into consideration, which is why generally we go by MSRP. However, as far as I can tell, Intel hasn't given an MSRP publicly yet. The prices in the article are prices from retailers, who always like to overprice anything new for a short while after it is released. I would expect the market to dictate the price of these drive, and the price to drop to sub-$100 to match the 665p in a couple of weeks or so.

 

[P4-630]

The samsung 860 evo 1tb sata ssd with 560mb read is 130$ or above !

With 600 TBW / 5 year warranty, I bought one a few weeks ago @ 103 EUR.

 

[Easo]

I feel like people here again forget that main PC parts market is mainstream, cheapish parts, not the PC Masterrace ones. I fail to see what is bad about these SSD's for that price and segment. If for someone 3 GB/s is slow then I question your understanding of what the average PC looks like.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Just going to leave this here.

The Intel SSD 670p (2TB) Review: Improving QLC, But Crazy Pricing?!?

www.anandtech.com

 

[StrayKAT]

$154 for 1TB of QLC, that's whats wrong with Intel (NAND) NVMes.
(Their Optanes are great and I have one, but they're priced in an entire different league.)

They had TLC 760p's out for a little while, but they're nowhere to be found anymore. It really does seem like they're shooting for the bottom with SSDs. I had an Optane 900p on my old mobo too, but they've gutted their whole strategy there as well. They're focusing mostly on enterprise Optane now and pulled all the consumer level stuff. Things look bad for Intel, beyond just the CPUs. I hate to see it actually..

 

[dragontamer5788]

I feel like people here again forget that main PC parts market is mainstream, cheapish parts, not the PC Masterrace ones. I fail to see what is bad about these SSD's for that price and segment. If for someone 3 GB/s is slow then I question your understanding of what the average PC looks like.

The 3GB/s speed is slow for $150, when there are plenty of $120 drives that offer superior performance at a much lower price.

Second: IOPS at QD1 is a superior measurement of a typical PC's workload. QLC is well known to be bad at that benchmark compared to TLC (further processing is needed to get QLC to work).

------

Why spend an extra $30 on something worse than typical $120 PCIe 3.0 NVMe TLC SSDs? Crucial 1TB P5, HP EX950, WD Blue SN550, etc. etc. So many NVMe SSDs out there at way cheaper prices and similar (or even superior) performance.

 

[lexluthermiester]

QLC is garbage for high use drive scenario's, plain and simple. As low use, occational drive usage, they're ok, but not for boot drives or any other scenario where drive writes are frequent. Wear-leveling schemes can not make a low-quality, low-endurance NAND product better.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Too much nerves! Next 2-3 months will be announced and released SSD's with up to 176 layers also will be introduced first 16TB models M.2 PCIe SSD's on market. Prices of all older series will decrease, also prices of models with smaller than 16TB capacity will decrease. Newer models will increase speed for random read of program files that mean little or much faster load of game scenes and other applications which contains huge number of small files.

 

[bug]

I'm guessing these are perfect for the "moar is betta" buyer. "Your SSD has triple-something in it? Mine has quad-something, pwn3d!"

 

[Crackong]

Consumer Optane drive - cut
Crap QLC drive - Let's sell them at TLC prices

Nope just Nope.

 

[newtekie1]

QLC is garbage for high use drive scenario's, plain and simple. As low use, occational drive usage, they're ok, but not for boot drives or any other scenario where drive writes are frequent. Wear-leveling schemes can not make a low-quality, low-endurance NAND product better.

This just isn't true. Yes it is correct that a system/boot drive is a high write scenario, but even that will not wear out a QLC drive. Even the really crappy ones with really low TBW ratings won't get worn out being a boot drive. The SN350 probably has the worst TBW ratings with just 40TBW for the 240GB model, and even that is enough for a typical system drive to last for 5+ Years.

 

[Tom Yum]

This just isn't true. Yes it is correct that a system/boot drive is a high write scenario, but even that will not wear out a QLC drive. Even the really crappy ones with really low TBW ratings won't get worn out being a boot drive. The SN350 probably has the worst TBW ratings with just 40TBW for the 240GB model, and even that is enough for a typical system drive to last for 5+ Years.

QLC drives also have pretty ordinary write speeds after the SLC cache is exhausted/drive fills up. With modern games requiring 10's of GB of data to be written during install, QLC has real world shortfalls.

 

[watzupken]

Looking at the QLC drives released over the years, we can observe that QLC have indeed allow for higher capacity. However it is failing on their cost proposition. If a 1TB QLC cost as much as a decent TLC drive, its completely pointless to get that 1TB QLC drive because no matter what they do to it, it will always be inferior to a good TLC drive.

They had TLC 760p's out for a little while, but they're nowhere to be found anymore. It really does seem like they're shooting for the bottom with SSDs. I had an Optane 900p on my old mobo too, but they've gutted their whole strategy there as well. They're focusing mostly on enterprise Optane now and pulled all the consumer level stuff. Things look bad for Intel, beyond just the CPUs. I hate to see it actually..

I feel Optane is a great product and would be a step in the right direction as an upgrade to the existing SSDs. But I feel adoption is very low mainly because Intel limited the technology largely to their own systems, high cost, and because of the high power consumption which makes it unsuitable for adoption in laptops, especially for higher capacity versions. With Intel withdrawing this from the consumer space, I am not sure how well it sell to the enterprise space.