Intel Optane SSD 900P Review: The Fastest, Most Responsive SSD Yet

Name: Optane SSD 900P
Brand: Optane

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, November 16, 2017, 12:20 PM EDT

Intel Optane SSD 900P - The Verdict

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Performance Summary: Intel's new Optane SSD 900P offered exceptional overall performance. When under load, the drive’s latency characteristics are far superior to NAND-based NVMe solid state drives. The Optane SSD 900P also offered the best 4K random, mixed-workload bandwidth and latency by far, its write performance was strong throughout, and it swept the other drives in the trace-based application benchmarks as well. It’s only in certain large, sequential read transfers where the Intel Optane SSD 900P trails some higher-end NVMe NAND-based SSDs, but even then, the 900P still offers north of 2GB/s for read throughput.

Intel Optane SSD 900P Solid State Drives - Find Them At Amazon

In terms of bandwidth, latency, and endurance, the first enthusiast-class Intel Optane SSDs rock. The vast majority of consumer-desktop storage workloads reside at low queue depths while speedy, random 4K transfers are paramount for a responsive system; and that’s exactly where the Intel Optane SSD 900P shines. There are simply no other solid state drives on the market that can offer the kind of consistently low latency, with high bandwidth, under such a variety of workloads and use cases.

The further sweeten the deal, Intel is also partnering up with the developers of the popular space MMO Star Citizen. Intel Optane SSD 900P drives include a code to claim a Sabre Raven Fighter, which also grants access to the game itself. About the only downside to the Optane SSD 900P is pricing. Intel set the MSRP of the 480GB drive at $599 and the 280GB at $389. However, street prices are currently a bit higher, but will probably come down as availability ramps. At those prices, the Optane SSD 900P is about twice the price of today’s fastest NAND-based NVMe solid state drives. With that said, the performance and endurance characteristics of the Optane SSD 900P will easily justify the premium pricing for many enthusiasts and workstation professional types. Put simply, if you want the most responsive and durable SSD on the market, the Optane SSD 900P is currently it.