Intel 760p review: Intel SSD 760p SSD Review — Tom’s Hardware

21 февраля, 2023

Intel SSD 760p SSD Review — Tom’s Hardware

Early Verdict

If you want to play with NVMe or fill a slot on your motherboard, the 128GB 760p will meet your needs. Most users will find the 256GB has a much better price to performance ratio. If you just need a small boot drive for a spare system or family member, this drive is cost-competitive with 128GB SATA SSDs. It’s also a little faster.

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Features & Specifications

Update 3/2/2018: We have added the 256GB and 128GB capacities to the original review, which only included the 512GB drive. The review of the 256GB and 128GB drives begins on page three. Our conclusions have also been updated on page four.

Intel’s 760p NVMe SSD is the successor to the company’s 600p, which is an SSD that’s admired more for its price than performance. The new 760p comes with bold claims of twice the performance and capacity of the 600p along with half the power consumption. Better yet, the 760p series retains the same entry-level SSD pricing model even though it sports up to 3,200 MB/s of throughput and 350,000 random read IOPS. Intel claims the 760p offers an amazing mix of performance and price, so this just might be the NVMe SSD we’ve been waiting for.

Intel has an established history of low failure rates, solid performance, and, to tie it all together, premium pricing. It’s not like Intel to release true value SSDs that undercut other companies on price, so it was surprising when Intel’s previous-generation 512GB 600p challenged the MyDigitalSSD BPX at the $200 price point. The 600p suffered from low performance, though, so Intel had to market it as a SATA replacement.

The 600p’s performance issues stemmed from its first-generation 3D NAND. We tested several SSDs with Intel’s inaugural 3D NAND, but regardless of the SSD controller, the drives suffered from high latency. The 3D NAND came from the IMFT (Intel/Micron Flash Technologies) joint venture, and thankfully, the second generation has improved drastically. We’ve tested several new SATA SSDs with the new 64-layer flash and performance has increased to class-leading levels while prices have decreased. That’s a win-win.

The Intel SSD 760p is the first retail NVMe SSD we’ve tested with Intel’s new 64-layer flash. The low-overhead protocol should expose the true potential of the storage media by removing the bandwidth limitations of SATA.

Silicon Motion, Inc.’s new SSD controller is a key piece to the performance puzzle. The company has three different SM226x models that address different market segments. Intel’s 760p uses the SM2262, which is an upper mainstream variant that we never expected to see at these low price points. The entry-level SM2263XT HMB controller already impressed us even though it was designed it for DRAM-less SSDs. The Intel SSD 760p with the SM2262 should perform even better.

Specifications

Intel SSD 760p (128GB)

Intel SSD 760p (256GB)

Intel SSD 760p (512GB)

The Intel SSD 760p comes to market in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities. Intel will roll out 1TB and 2TB models later this quarter. These models are just one hop away from fulfilling Intel’s «3.5 TB SSD the size of a stick of gum» prophecy it made when it announced its 3D NAND in 2016.

Intel’s performance claims teeter on the absurd. The 760p 512GB delivers up to 3,200/1,670 MB/s sequential read/write speeds. Random read performance stretches up to 350,000 IOPS for the larger models, paired with an ‘up to’ 280,000 random write IOPS. These are the same performance numbers we see with products that cost twice as much. Intel also effectively doubled the 600p’s performance while using only half the power.

Performance shrinks as we move through the smaller models, but even the 128GB drive pushes enough performance across the PCI Express bus to outperform the fastest SATA SSDs ever built. It appears that Intel wants to replace SATA SSDs as the boot drive in your PC.

Features

Once you get past the high performance and low price, the 760p series is a fairly basic consumer SSD. The consumer model doesn’t feature encryption or a fancy heat sink. Intel did release a business-focused 760p model today that provides accelerated TCG Opal 2.0 and eDrive hardware encryption technology. The business model also enables Intel’s Remote Secure Erase through vPro Platform Security.

We had to dig into Silicon Motion’s SM2262 documentation to gain further insight into the new features. The eight-channel SM2262 controller improves on the previous generation and serves primarily as a vessel to bring 64-layer NAND to market. SMI carried over most of the IP from the previous-gen SM2260 controller, but there are some subtle differences to the caching algorithms that help increase performance in random workloads.

Most of the real features go unseen in the flash. The move to 64 layers is more than a normal generational evolution: throughput increases, latency decreases, and Intel cut the physical size nearly in half. The number of bits per wafer exploded, and that’s why the 760p is coming to market with such aggressive pricing even though Intel could have easily charged more for this product.

Pricing, Warranty & Endurance

The 760p starts at $74 for the 128GB model. The 760p matches the 600p’s launch pricing, but the price of some popular capacities increased over the last year. The 256GB 600p currently sells for $139 at Newegg, but the equivalent 760p will cost just $110. The 512GB 760p comes to market at $199 and has a real chance at becoming our go-to NVMe SSD recommendation.

Keeping with the 600p model, Intel also gave the 760p a five-year warranty and the same 72TB of endurance per 128GB of capacity. We haven’t tested the 760p’s full endurance like we did on the previous generation, but we expect that Intel will adhere to its policy of moving the drive to a read-only state after you exhaust the warrantied endurance.

Software

The new SSD 760p works with Intel’s SSD Toolbox software that gives you monitoring and optimization features. Aside from added support for new drives, the software hasn’t changed much since its release. Intel also has a data migration tool tucked away on its website, but we had to poke around to find it.

Packaging

Image 1 of 2

The 760p doesn’t feature RGB LED lighting like the new Plextor M9Pe, but it does have a vibrant color scheme on the package. In a way, the package tells the 760p story. The 760p graphics are the same as the 600p, but Intel has managed to make those graphics come alive this time around.

Intel didn’t print much information on the package. The back of the package displays the five-year warranty, but it lacks performance data. Now that the NAND shortage is over, the SSD section at Best Buy and Fry’s should consist of more than two products in the middle of barren shelves. Performance is a true highlight of this series, and giving shoppers easy access to information would make it easier to browse products lined up in the store.

A Closer Look

Image 1 of 5

The top of the controller features a thin copper plate with a nickel finish that helps dissipate heat to the outer surface. The label doesn’t have a copper strip inside like the layered label that Samsung pioneered (and Corsair later adopted). 

The 512GB drive pictured above has a single-sided design that comes packing dual NAND and DRAM packages. The NAND arrangement is typical for this design, but the two 256MB Micron DDR4 packages are not. Most SSDs only use one DRAM package for lower-capacity drives. We’re in the middle of a DRAM shortage, so the design could lower costs, especially in the high-capacity drives coming later this year. Intel also tells us controller can issue parallel operations to the dual DDR4 packages. That capability improves translation table lookup times, which increases performance.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

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Features & Specifications

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Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom’s Hardware US. He tests and reviews consumer storage.

Intel’s SSD 760p is an excellent budget NVMe drive

Our Verdict

Intel’s new mainstream SSDs finally deliver on the promise of NVMe without any serious compromises.

For
  • Good NVMe performance
  • Attractive price per GB (for NVMe)
  • Intel reliability and software
Against
  • Still more expensive than SATA
  • Requires a newer PC
  • Not quite as fast as the Samsung 960 Evo

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It’s SSD week for me, as two of the biggest players in the market launched new drives today. I looked at the new Samsung 860 Evo SATA offerings earlier, but Intel has bidden farewell to the old interface and is pursuing higher performance with NVMe drives. Intel already reigns as king of the hill with the extremely fast—and equally expensive—Optane SSD 900p series, which launched last October. For mainstream customers, Intel uses its own 3D NAND with licensed controllers, like the SSD 600p’s SM2260 from Silicon Motion, with a far more affordable price but sometimes questionable performance.

Intel is updating it’s mainstream SSD offerings with several new lines, the 760p, Pro 7600p, and E 6100p. Most of you will only be interested in the 760p, as the 7600p is a business solution that chiefly adds a few security and manageability features, while the 6100p is intended for IoT and embedded solutions. The 760p has two major differences from the previous generation 600p series. First, it uses new 64-layer TLC 3D NAND, compared to 32-layers on the 600p. Second, it uses the new Silicon Motion SM2262 controller. Combined, the specs for the new series are dramatically improved. Here’s a look at the paper specs of the 600p and 760p:

While I wasn’t provided full specs for all capacities, the above 760p specs are for the 512GB model that I’m reviewing. The 600p didn’t actually hit full performance until the 1TB model, though the 512GB model wasn’t too far behind. In practice, however, the 600p remains one of the slowest NVMe drives on the market. That’s thanks in part to the first-generation SM controller, which keeps costs down by not including any DRAM.

The new 760p model includes DRAM (there are two packages on the PCB), presumably with larger quantities on higher capacity models. I’m still trying to get precise values, but combined with the DRAM and improvements in the controller, firmware, and other aspects, performance and efficiency is much better than the 600p, and at the same price point.

What will be interesting to see is what happens with some of the other upcoming NVMe drives. Some omit DRAM but use NVMe’s Host Memory Buffer feature, which can use some system RAM to cache frequently referenced data (like the NAND mapping table). That should keep pricing down, but how it impacts performance is a bit of a wildcard.

Launching today are the 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB models, with 1TB and 2TB slated to arrive later this quarter. Pricing starts at $74 for the smallest capacity, $109 for the 256GB model, and $199 for the 512GB drive I’m looking at. If you want the added security features of the Pro 7600p line, each capacity costs $10 more than the 760p. And just for kicks, if you’re interested in the E 6100p line, the 128GB model costs $79 and the 256GB model costs $119—though I don’t have any other details on those drives.

PC Gamer SSD Testbed

Intel Core i7-8700K (Stock)
Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 5
MSI GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X 11G
G. Skill Flare X 2x8GB DDR4-3200 CL14
Samsung 960 Evo 500GB (OS drive)
Corsair h210i CPU cooler
Corsair Carbide Air 740
Corsair CS650M
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Intel rates the 760p NAND endurance at 72TB per 128GB capacity. That ends up being very similar to Samsung’s newly released 860 Evo line, which has an endurance rating of 300TB per 250GB capacity, and it’s quite a bit better than the 100TB per 250GB capacity rating Samsung uses for its 960 Evo line. Of course it’s not just about endurance, there’s the matter of performance.

For the performance testing, I’ve highlighted the 760p in the charts in green, and I’ve also included the Samsung 860 Evo 500GB as a representative of one of the fastest SATA drives (though it does trail other SATA offerings in some disciplines). Intel’s 760p nominally costs $30 more, which works out to $0.389/GB compared to $0.34/GB for the 860 Evo. Another data point you’ll want to pay attention to is the Samsung 960 Evo 500GB, which has a higher price of $0. 456/GB, but does deliver somewhat better overall performance.

The thing is, pure SSD performance starts to become far less important beyond a certain point. For many people, even a good SATA drive remains plenty fast, though if you have a newer system I generally lean toward M.2 NVMe drives now. For tasks like loading games and booting Windows, there’s not much difference between a modest SATA drive and the fastest NVMe drives—maybe a few seconds at best. But if you do any storage-intensive work (maybe you run multiple VMs on your PC workstation), the difference can become more meaningful.

My SSD benchmark suite consists of a mix of theoretical and real-world metrics. Other tests are also run both to condition the drive and to ensure there are no oddities, but for the charts I focus on CrystalDiskMark, IOMeter (mixed read/write performance), file copying, and PCMark 8 Storage. I take the results (in MB/s) from ten of the tests and give each equal weighting (ie, geometric mean) to come up with the aggregate score. While it’s impossible for a single number to tell you everything you need to know about an SSD, still it provides a good high-level view of what to expect.

Image 1 of 14

Intel’s new 760p 512GB sits pretty much smack in the middle of the charts. That might not seem all that great, but as I said above, often it’s a question of balancing price and performance. You’ll notice that the new Samsung 860 Evo basically gets pummeled by the NVMe drives, only coming ahead of a few models in a few of the tests, but it’s really not much of a competition. Considering the relatively small difference in price, it’s easy to see why I recommend NVMe for newer system builds wherever possible. Of course, you can save about $60 if you go with a slower SATA model, and you still may not notice the difference, but I also appreciate the lack of cable clutter that you get with M.2 drives.

Looking at the individual charts, in the mixed read/write IOMeter testing, I use mixed read/write levels from 100/0 percent to 0/100 percent in 25 percent intervals, with 128K sequential and 4K random, and then take the geometric mean of the five tests. Each test runs for six minutes, so this is an extremely intensive workload, and it shows which drives hold up under the most demanding scenarios. The 760p can’t keep up with the better drives, but it still more than doubles the performance of most SATA drives. The file copy test (about 8,800 files totaling nearly 20GB—the Batman: Arkham Origins folder contents) tells a similar story, because it’s reading and writing to the same drive.

Moving to less stressful testing, the pure sequential read/write performance is quite high, and the QD1 random performance also looks good. Most everywhere else the drive falls in the same range as a lot of the other NVMe drives I’ve tested. But the caveat is that, assuming Intel can deliver sufficient quantities of the 760p, it’s the least expensive 512GB-class NVMe drive on the market. Only a few others like the WD Black and the outgoing 600p can match its price, but those are substantially slower drives.

Most users don’t go into a new PC build with an unlimited budget, and that means you need to balance performance, capacity, and features against the almighty dollar. Just as the GTX 1070 and 1060 end up being far more popular graphics cards than the GTX 1080 Ti, a balanced approach to storage often trumps raw performance. As nice as it might be to dream of storing all your games on a 480GB Optane 900p, or maybe one of the future 1.5TB models that are apparently in the works, the reality is we’re usually forced to go with less extreme solutions, and it’s here that the 760p series stakes its claim.

The 760p is never at the very top of the performance charts, but it also avoids falling to the bottom—something which couldn’t be said of its predecessor. But there is one chart where it does come out on top, and that’s in overall value. Looking at current SSD prices, the 760p 512GB currently represents the best overall value for storage, at least in the US market. The UK pricing wasn’t available, and we used the estimate of £199, which may be a bit high (depending on VAT and other factors). Even so, it’s also one of the better values in the UK market. Check regional pricing and look at the 960 Evo 500GB as the chief competition. If there’s more than a 10 percent price premium, then I’d generally lean toward the Intel 760p.

As for the previous generation 600p, it’s almost no contest. The lower capacity 600p models were often slower than a good SATA drive, and many reviewers bashed the drive badly enough that Intel stopped sending out any further samples. I didn’t think the drive was as bad as many, mostly because I didn’t view it as top performance option, but it’s hard to argue with the lackluster performance in random IO and heavier write workloads.

I do need to mention one other item as a final thought. Since Intel is using a third-party controller, there’s nothing to stop other manufacturers from delivering similar performance. In fact we saw at CES that Mushkin and sister company Edge Memory both have SSDs using the same SM2262 controller slated to launch in the near future. The paper specs look strikingly similar to that of the 760p, though with the use of Host Memory Buffer and without any DRAM. Intel does have a good reputation for tuning firmware and reliability (eg, if you go back to the SandForce days, Intel was one of the few companies to avoid some of the reliability issues that came up with the SF-2281 controller), though it’s not perfect by any means (see: Meltdown and Spectre). There’s also the element of price, and since Intel controls its own 3D NAND fabrication it should have an advantage.

If you’re in the market for a new PC in the coming months, and you’re willing to pay a bit of a price premium for NVMe storage, Intel’s SSD 760p series makes a strong case for being the drive you should use. Unless you’re after maximum performance with less regard for pricing, in which case the Samsung 960 Pro still tops the charts for M.2 storage, while Intel’s Optane SSD 900p easily takes the pole position for performance. Regardless of which drive you choose, competition in the market is good, and after 18 months of slowly increasing SSD prices, hopefully we’ve reached the summit and are starting back down the hill. We should also see NVMe pricing start to encroach on SATA territory, which will be a welcome change.

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Intel 760p 512GB

Intel’s new mainstream SSDs finally deliver on the promise of NVMe without any serious compromises.

Jarred’s love of computers dates back to the dark ages when his dad brought home a DOS 2.3 PC and he left his C-64 behind. He eventually built his first custom PC in 1990 with a 286 12MHz, only to discover it was already woefully outdated when Wing Commander was released a few months later. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Brigham Young University and has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge ‘3D decelerators’ to today’s GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance. 

128GB Intel 760p SSD Review and Test (SSDPEKKW128G8)

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • Overview SSD Intel 760p
    • Packaging and contents
    • Visual inspection
    • Software part
  • Test bench and software
  • Temperature rating
  • Speed ​​stability
  • Performance testing
    • Anvil’s Storage Utilities
    • Futuremark PCMark 7
    • CrystalDiskMark (64bit) 3. 0.3
    • Operations with various types of files inside the drive
    • Access time for random read and write operations
  • Conclusion

Introduction

Once upon a time, the very concept of «SSD» was inextricably linked in the minds of users with the Intel trademark. This company actually created the industry in its time. Even «like competitors» ADATA, Kingston and a number of others did not own anything, but simply bought models from her, glued their labels on them and resold them. nine0046

But then Intel gradually began to lose ground, and the latest consumer SSDs of the Intel 540s and Intel 600p series caused more grin than delight. She recently released successors to these lines — Intel 545s and Intel 760p. Thanks to our permanent partner — the company Regard, we will find out the possibilities of the latter.



KingSpec Q-Series 180 GB SSD Review and Test: New Initio INIC-6081 Controller
nine0047


According to customer reviews, KingSpec Q series drives come across two controllers. We already know one — Maxiotek MK8115. But the second one is of interest — a certain Initio INIC-6081. Attempts to search for information on the network yielded nothing. Is it really a new player in the solid state market that has decided to expand its field of activity in the same way that Realtek recently did?

recommendations

Overview of the Intel 760p SSD

In the early days of the SSD era, Intel had everything—flash, controllers, ideas. However, the company decided not to shine with frugality — the race for savings against the backdrop of growing competition and the entry of opponents gaining strength into the market led Intel to purchase controllers first from Marvell (2011), and then got hooked on SandForce (2012).

The ready-made SandForce platform was used, but with Intel modifications: the printed circuit board was changed, the firmware was modified. Added to this was flash memory with a high level of resource (with a corresponding price, which was higher than many alternative solutions). nine0049

At the beginning of 2014, Intel, it would seem, decided to return its own controller to retail drives and released a series of Intel 730 drives (actually a redesigned Intel DC S3500). But, alas, it became more like a “swan song” — the drive turned out to be not only the first in a long time, but also the last one — the Intel 535 released after that was again on SandForce. Moreover, the fact that the flash memory in the Intel 535 was taken from a competitor (SK Hynix) was also quite surprising.

The release of Intel 540s marked a new milestone in the process of reducing the cost of drives: the platform changed to Silicon Motion, and the type of memory used to TLC NAND (the facts are interconnected — the development of the SandForce platform has stopped, new controllers have not been released to this day, and SF-2281 controllers /2241 do not support TLC NAND). Along the way, information appeared that the drives are no longer produced by Intel, their production is given to PTI, a third-party company better known for budget SSDs. nine0049

And memory — SK Hynix again. Here the explanation is simpler: Intel made a bet on the development of memory with a vertical cell layout (3D V-NAND) and refused to invest in the modernization of production facilities for the production of traditional planar memory using a 16 nm process technology. As a result, Micron did it alone (Intel and Micron release flash memory jointly) and did not fail — 3D V-NAND was developed longer than expected, and Intel was left without modern memory available. Hence the purchase of 16nm TLC NAND from SK Hynix. nine0049

As you know, they are greeted by clothes, but see off by mind: whatever happens in this kitchen, it could be forgiven by Intel, but Intel 540s was not impressive in terms of operational and technical characteristics either. In my memory, it remained as one of the worst SSDs in the history of the industry: it could freeze even with the banal allocation of space for downloading a game on Steam — in pursuit of cost, the developers did not implement full-fledged thermal protection in the Intel 540s, and the drive, overheating, simply » hung», corrupting the data. nine0049

The next life stage of the company was an attempt to take a swing at the SSD segment with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface. Here two solutions appeared — Intel 750 and Intel 600p. The first one failed in fact: initially, a server platform focused on multi-threaded workloads with a large request queue depth is not at all what is required in a home PC, plus high power consumption (up to 25 W) and corresponding heating, plus only two volumes and a considerable price. The Intel 600p became an object of ridicule: the Silicon Motion platform used in its basis, combined with Intel’s slow 3D V-NAND (which did arrive in time by that time) turned out to be so weak that the smaller Intel 600p modifications could hardly compete with the usual SATA SSD even at linear read and write speeds. All they could offer was PCI-Express and NVMe nameplates at a relatively reasonable price. nine0049

Three months ago, Intel announced the debut of its next generation of consumer PCIe SSDs, the Intel 760p. They announced a more advanced Silicon Motion controller and a new 64-layer TLC 3D V-NAND. How interesting is the debutant? Has the company corrected the bugs? In theory, the Intel 760p should be faster, if only because the new memory itself has better performance.

And the Intel 760p performance figures are indeed higher: it is promised that even the youngest modification with a capacity of 128 GB can deliver data at a speed of 1640 MB / s, and 256 and 512 can “overclock” up to 3200 MB / s. On record — 650, 1315 and 1625 MB / s. The increase is outstanding: even the older 1 TB Intel 600p could only reach 1800 MB / s for reading and 560 MB / s for writing. Of course, here you need to be aware that the 64-layer TLC 3D V-NAND is a priori unable to provide such a speed for recording, and therefore we have another drive with the implementation of the «accelerated» recording mode (SLC mode) and its performance will also depend on how much data is received in this mode. nine0049

Intel 760p is an NVMe PCI-Express 3. 0 x4 SSD in the M.2 2280 form factor. Users are offered three sizes of 128, 256 and 512 GB at recommended prices of $69.99, $99.99 and $198.99.

In fact, at the time of writing these lines, only the smallest volume is available in Moscow retail — 128 GB, and we will test it.

Packaging and Contents

For the Intel 760p packaging, the company has deviated from its tradition: now it is a single box without the use of an additional industrial cardboard box, and the modest shades of green and blue have been replaced by a bright rainbow. nine0049

Inside the box there is a form made of industrial cardboard, in which a plastic blister with a storage device and a paper instruction booklet are fixed.

There is no package (we are looking for a fixing screw in the motherboard kit — there is no single standard for screws even within the assortment of one motherboard manufacturer, so there is no point in including them in the SSD kit).