There was a great enthusiasm about the Intel’s new product after long time and the product wasn’t a CPU. Yes, Intel unveiled the 750 SSD PCI Express drive, the first to offer flash storage based on PCIe and that too at consumer budget pricing. Isn’t that worthy?
This new 750 SSD drive is bound with such unique features that you will forget the SATA interface as well as AHCI protocol. The specs have been discussed in the previous part and now let’s look at the performance.
Installation and Setup –
Since the card features two different clips one for a full-sized PCIe slot, and one for a half-height, it was slightly difficult to pop up the 750 Series into the tower desktop. The one for a half-height chip was installed by default which was surprising as most desktops are full-size towers. It required replacing two screws and took just a minute after which the drive was placed and system was turned on.
There are only two platforms that work with the 750 Series – Intel’s X99 and Z97. A new driver will automatically get detected and installed with one of these platforms along with a current version of Windows 8 or even new one maybe Windows 10Technical Preview. There is also Intel’s own driver available which was also tested as according to the company it’s significant to obtain complete performance potential.
To boot from the drive isn’t a fuss. Installing Windows in 750 SSD is similar to that in the common SATA SSD and therefore, one can use the 750 in a brand new desktop as the boot drive. At last, installation was simple and easy with no bugs, no failed boots and no glitches. Thus, the goal of NVMe of making PCIe drives simply less painless as their SATA peers was achieved.
Performance of 750 SSD Drive –
No wonder the 750 SSD’s performance tops as compared to the 730 series. The speed of sequential read and write has increased up to 2,400 MBps and 1,200 MBps individually which was 550 MBps and 470 MBps respectively in the 730 Series, was a SATA-based drive. These values indicate that the speed of the 750 series1 has been almost doubled the 730 one and this is the reason for PC enthusiasts and hobbyists are crazy for the new drive.
The first step to judge the performance of the 750 SSD drive, it was first put in the Crystal Disk Mark, a test used regularly to judge all the notebooks and desktops. The 750 Series passed the test successfully by giving a stronger start. Read speeds of 1,346 megabytes per second and write speeds of 1,291MB/s which the highest value recorded for the first time. Prior to these best results given by the 750 SSD, the Origin EON17-X had hit the read speeds of 1,179MB/s and write speeds of 891MB/s. Intel team had recorded speeds approaching but not extending, 1GB/s from systems that have dual SATA SSDs in a RADI0 configuration.
The next testing was with the IOmeter, used to perform random access and sequential tests. A sequential 128 kilobyte read and write loop was created in which the drive hit 2,664MB/s in reads and 1,226MB/s in writes. While random testing with 4KB payload produced read speeds of 1,649MB/s and write speeds of 1,148MB/s. Usually, IOmeter isn’t used in drive tests and therefore lack in comparing many results, it’s proven that these numbers are extremely high and twice or thrice better that those produced by the best SATA drives.
Conclusion –
The Intel’s 750 SSD drive is the first quickest drive ever developed and also the quickest ever built. One thing that is noticeable in terms of performance about this drive is that it is an incredible leap forward performer. Additionally, it also uses the new NVMe standard that means the drive is completely bootable and operates similar to a plug-and-play solution without extra drivers.
One thing is for sure that 750 SSD drive can be recommended only for the crowd that is working with large files on regular basis, similar to a 4K video content. Though, it’s an impressive achievement in technology which has forced solid state drives to a new stage. It will also serve as a proof for the NVMe standard. Finally, I can only say that Intel has succeeded in breaking the significant blockage between innovation and pricing by giving PCIe speed at consumer SSD prices.
See more….SSD 750 Drives to Boost You PC
