Intel 750 PCIe SSD Review (400GB)

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 4.0.3 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Performance is virtually identical, regardless of data sample so we have included only that using random data samples.

Intel 750 Series 400GB CDM 4

In Crystal Disk Mark we see reads reaching up to 3.3GB/s and writes reaching over 1GB/s again. The 3.3GB/s read performance could be a fluke as this is a newer version of Crystal Disk Mark than we have used in the past and the previous 1.2TB Intel 750 only reached 1.6GB/s. 4K performance is also very strong reaching almost 49MB/s for 4K read and nearly 350MB/s for 4K write. Overall, the performance is quite impressive, let’s see how it compares in our other benchmarks.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.8

The toughest benchmark available for solid state drives is AS SSD as it relies solely on incompressible data samples when testing performance.  For the most part, AS SSD tests can be considered the ‘worst case scenario’ in obtaining data transfer speeds and many enthusiasts like AS SSD for their needs. Transfer speeds are displayed on the left with IOPS results on the right.

Intel 750 Series 400GB AS SSD Intel 750 Series 400GB AS SSD IOPS

Our next benchmark, AS SSD, shows a very good score. A Total Score of 3403 points was achieved, about 400 points below the 1.2TB model. The Intel 750 400GB reached 2,041MB/s read and 1,000MB/s write speeds. 4K performance is a bit less than shown in Crystal Disk Mark, now at 43MB/s read and 203MB/s write. During the 4K-64Thrd test it hit 357K IOPS read, just as its 1.2TB bother and 171K IOPS write. Latency is also within spec at 0.016ms read and 0.020ms write.

The AS SSD Copy benchmark shows some impressive scores also, though a bit less than its 1.2TB bother.

Intel 750 Series 400GB AS SSD Copy

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL

Anvil’s Storage Utilities (ASU) are the most complete test bed available for the solid state drive today.  The benchmark displays test results for, not only throughput but also, IOPS and Disk Access Times.  Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and use in our benchmark testing.

Intel 750 Series 400GB Anvil

The 400GB Intel 750 showed very similar performance in Anvil Storage Utilities as well, with a total overall score of 11,492 points.  Sequential reads are a bit shy of spec at 1,956MB/s and sequential writes are a bit higher at 1,008MB/s. Random reads reached over 152K IOPS and writes up to 234K IOPS.

IOMETER

Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. It was originally developed by the Intel Corporation however, they discontinued work on the program. In 2003 it was re-launched by an international group of individuals who are now continuously improving, porting and extend the product that is now widely used within the industry.

Intel 750 400GB Iometer QD128 Full RandomIn order to attain the max IOPS we set 4KB random read and write workloads at a QD of 128 and tested for a 10 minute span. We can see that read IOPS averaged 443K while write averaged 36K. After about 30 seconds performance dropped off from 250K down to 20-25K IOPS, which is extremely good for a consumer SSD. For comparison most other SSDs will drop to around 10K.

Intel 750 400GB Iometer SeqNext we measured sequential performance and got an average read of about 2.4GB/s and average write speed of 1GB/s. The consistency of both random and sequential write performance is very good.

29 comments

  1. blank

    Thanks very much for this review – especially for also covering boot times.
    Booting slower after post than expected and as samsung’s nvme drive is really a bit strange.
    Maybe it simply depends on the driver? Which driver did you use for booting
    test for the 750? Intel or Windows integrated one? Regarding
    performance after boot there are some differences in speed depending on
    the driver – maybe during boot too? Which driver was used for the
    samsung? Many thanks again!

  2. blank

    I’d be interested in seeing latency tests done between NVMe SSD connected directly to CPU PCIe Gen3 lanes vs PCH Gen3 lanes on the upcoming z170 chipset. Do you have any plans on testing it out or do you think the differences would be so minor it isn’t worth it?

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    Jeffrey Michael de Smit

    how about booting in non uefi systems like x58?

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    Are their motherboards/adapters that could put 4 of these into a RAID 10 and see even further speed benefits? I’d like to make a database server with Windows Server 2012. Not sure where to start.

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    Hello,

    I was reading this review and that of the Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB PCIe 2.0 M.2 SSD and I couldn’t fail to notice the huge difference between the writing endurance capabilities, while Intel 750 delivers 127TB writes (70GB/day), on the course of its 5 y warranty, the HyperX delivers a “staggering” 882TB writes (with an 1.7/day). I’m in the point of choosing on of them for my x99 system. My final objective would be: video/photo editing, gaming and last, but not least, running a couple of VMs (at least 5 VMs that are intended to simulate a Linux Lab and Exchange/AD environment). The main question is if this storage solution will last for at least 8-10 years if it only has a 70GB write/day?
    Thank you in advance for your advice and response Sean.

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    Could you please provide a full Linux Kernel source build time ?
    such as “time makepkg” with ArchLinux x64_64

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    As of 9/12/15 the Kingston Predator PciE ssd does not upgrade to windows 10 at all.

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    If boot times are important I guess it would be better to use PCIe SSDs for storage only, while having the OS installed on a SATA SSD.

    You mention this SSD would be perfect for replacing a raid of SSDs used for media editing or virutal machine storage. Would it make a huge difference in terms of load times in certain games as well? Or would a high-end SATA SSD do the job just as good?

  9. blank

    Just bought this drive and not seeing the speeds shown in this article. https://imgur.com/G2eBmYu is the speeds I am getting. Drive is plugged into a pcie3.0 x4 slot on a Dell T5600 workstation on a Windows 10 machine. Any pointers on what you needed to do to get the speeds mentioned in the article.

    I have done the following attempting to get the speeds you mentioned

    1. Installed latest intel nvme driver.
    2. Installed intel ssd toolbox and verified that drive is using pcie 3.0 x4 channel.
    3. Installed latest firmware.
    4. Reboot after the above.
    5. Switched to performance power plan.

    Speeds I get are shown in following image – https://imgur.com/G2eBmYu

    Any pointers on things I could try?

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    Here is an Video overview of this :
    https://youtu.be/lH1Lexy61CM

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