Final Thoughts
Pricing and Availability
The new Intel Optane SSD 900p is already available in some regions while other offer pre-order options. The 280GB version which I’ve tested today will set you back £379.99 through OverclockersUK or $389.99 through NewEgg. The 480GB version will set you back £599.99 or $599.99.
At £1.38/$1.39 and £1.25/$1.25 per GB, it surely isn’t the cheapest drive on the market. Considering what you get here, it’s a fair price.
Conclusion
What a drive, I’m impressed. The Intel Optane SSD 900p did an excellent job throughout all of our benchmarks. It took the top position in almost all benchmarks and it wasn’t even close. 3D XPoint NAND is clearly doing a great job, there can be no doubt about that.
Performance
The sequential performance is strong, but it isn’t the key selling point for this SSD. The random read and write performance and the low latency is what sets it apart from other drives. Not only do we see speedy benchmark results, it was a joy performing the benchmarks too. The preparations the application do before performing the actual test were a lot faster too. Overall, I’ve never benchmarked a drive this quickly before.
With top scores in almost any test, the Intel Optane SSD 900p is one of best drives on the market. The results aren’t just peek-scores either, the 900p delivers a constant performance across all fillage levels and workload types.
Design
Design is always a matter of opinion, but I think most people will like the Optane SSD 900p. The beautifully crafted heatsink and backplate offer great cooling abilities for the components. With it, you don’t just make sure that it lasts as long as possible, you also prevent any sort of thermal throttling from hardware that’s running too hot.
The HHHL form factor and included low-profile bracket makes it highly compatible with almost any systems. The fact that it’s an SSD and not a caching module also makes it compatible with systems prior to the Z270-series.
Bonus Content
Included bonus content is always nice and this time it’s even something special. The included StarCitizen ship is an exclusive which only can be had through this bundle. Not only is it an exclusive, it’s the best of its class in-game. A perfect match to the drive which also is best in class.
Pros
- Great Performance
- High Compatibility
- Effective Design
- Included Bonus Content
Cons
- None
Neutral
- Not a cheap upgrade, but it’s worth it!
“Whether it’s your workstation or gaming system that needs a boost, Intel Optane SSD 900p delivers. Top scores make it a top drive!”
We would like to thank Intel for providing us with this sample.
sorry but what are the advantages in the real world if you do not report these tests:
– windows 10 start up time
– photoshop applications, premiere, etc., startup up time
– h264 video file conversion, ecc.
your test without this information is not complete …
Hi Pauls
When we test storage drives, we test them separate from the OS drive. Testing from an OS drive won’t show the full potential of a drive and might create interference in the results. As such, a boot time isn’t available. For SSDs, no matter which one, the boot time is so fast anyway that there is no reason to measure it – in my opinion. It really doesn’t matter if it takes you 4.5 or 4.7 seconds to boot windows, or does it? It’s something else for drives with caching technology such as SSHDs or when you use an Optane caching module. In those cases, boot times are important and will be compared.
App and game loading testing is available through the PCMark 8 Storage test and they are easily compared to all the previous drives we’ve tested. As the apps themselves don’t show or log their start time, there is no real way to measure it with comparable figures. Using a stopwatch, for example, would be way too inaccurate. There’s also the matter of costs of the software, the Adobe Suite isn’t exactly cheap and we do not work with pirated software.
If you got any applicable test ideas for the video conversion test, let us know and we’ll see if that’s something worth incorporating into future reviews.
Hi there,
in my opinion it is very important to test the drive as a system drive and measure OS boot time and real world applications performance. Most of us (if not all of us) are going to use this drive as a system drive. Optane 900p is either too expensive or having not enough capacity for all other applications.
Intels last “consumer” SSD 750 has a huge performance drop in terms of OS booting time (I’m not talking about 4.5 or 4.7 seconds, it was > 20 seconds). So it would be very useful, if you could extend your test and measure at least this value.
Sorry for my bad English.
Thank you for the reply
unfortunately you have not tested a samsung 960 so I can not make a comparison,
but by reading the pc mark 8 data it seems that in the real world the differences are minimal even though it has absolute values in 4k that no other ssd has at this time.
For video conversion tests you could try it with handbrake that is free
I agree with paul. wheres the comparison to the 960 pro 512gb m.2 ssd? is it obsolete already?
Sadly Samsung isn’t working with us, so we have no 960 pro results to compare it to.