The Intel SSD 660p SSD Review: QLC NAND Arrives For Consumer SSDs
by Billy Tallis on August 7, 2018 11:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The Intel SSD 660p manages an average data rate on The Destroyer that is only slightly slower than the Crucial MX500 mainstream SATA SSD and the Kingston A1000 entry-level NVMe SSD. It's a step up from the performance of the 512GB Intel SSD 600p, and more than three times faster than the DRAMless Toshiba RC100.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores for the Intel SSD 660p are quite poor by NVMe standards and significantly worse than the Crucial MX500, but the latency isn't completely out of control like it is for the Toshiba RC100.
The average read latency from the 660p during The Destroyer is comparable to other low-end NVMe SSDs and better than the 600p or Crucial MX500. The average write latency is more than twice that of the MX500 but lower than the 600p and RC100.
The 99th percentile read latency from the Intel SSD 660p on The Destroyer is significantly worse than any other NVMe SSD or the Crucial MX500 SATA SSD, but the 99th percentile write latency is an improvement over the 600p and does not show the extreme outliers that the Toshiba RC100 suffers from.
The energy usage of the 660p during The Destroyer is a bit better than average for NVMe SSDs, though still quite a bit higher than is typical for SATA SSDs. The 660p is less power hungry than most NVMe drives and slower, but not enough to drag out the test for so long that the power advantage disappears.
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StrangerGuy - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
"I am a TRUE PROFESSIONAL who can't pay more endurance for my EXTREME SSD WORKLOADS by either from my employer or by myself, I'm the poor 0.01% who is being oppressed by QLC!"Oxford Guy - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
Memes didn't make the IBM Deathstar drives fun and games.StrangerGuy - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
I'm sure you were the true prophetic one warning us about those crappy those 75GXPs before they were released, oh wait.I'm sorry why are you here and why should anyone listen to you again?
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
Memes and trolling may be entertaining but this isn't really the place for it.jjj - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
Not bad, at least for now when there are no QLC competitors.The pressure QLC will put on HDDs is gonna be interesting too.
damianrobertjones - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
These drives will fill the bottom end... allowing the mid and high tiers to increase in price. Usual.Valantar - Wednesday, August 8, 2018 - link
Only if the performance difference is large enough to make them worth it - which it isn't, at least in this case. While the advent of TLC did push MLC prices up (mainly due to reduced production and sales volume), it seems unlikely for the same to happen here, as these drives aim for a market segment that has so far been largely unoccupied. (It's also worth mentioning here that silicon prices have been rising for quite a while, and also affects this.) There are a few TLC drives in the same segment, but those are also quite bad. This, on the other hand, competes with faster drives unless you fill it or the SLC cache. In other words, higher-end drives will have to either aim for customers with heavier workloads (which might imply higher prices, but would also mean optimizations for non-consumer usage scenarios) or push prices lower to compete.romrunning - Wednesday, August 8, 2018 - link
Well, QLC will slowly push out TLC, which was already pushing out MLC. It's not just pushing the prices of MLC/TLC up, mfgs are slowing phasing those lines out entirely. So even if I want a specific type, I may not be able to purchase it in consumerspace (maybe enterprise, with the resultant price hit).I hate that we're getting lower-performing items for the cheaper price - I'd rather get higher-performing at cheaper prices! :)
rpg1966 - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
"In the past year, the deployment of 64-layer 3D NAND flash has allowed almost all of the SSD industry to adopt three bit per cell TLC flash"What does this mean? n-layer NAND isn't a requirement for TLC is it?
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
3D NAND is not a requirement for TLC. However most of the 32/48 layer processes weren't very good, resulting in poorly performing TLC NAND. The 64 layer stuff has turned out much better, finally making TLC viable from all manufacturers.