Intel announced and then demonstrated at Computex 2018 the awesome power of a 380GB Optane SSD 905P in a M.2 22110 (22mm wide, 110mm long) form factor that will come to market before the end of the year. The announcement was light on details, but we've already uncovered most of Intel's secrets prior to the 905P add-in card launch.
To demonstrate the new SSD's capabilities, Intel showed two systems side-by-side while they encoded the same video. One system utilized the Optane SSD 905P while the other used a 760p, Intel's flagship flash-based SSD. It's difficult to see in the picture we snapped from the event, but the Optane SSD fed the CPU data fast enough to utilize 82% and the GPU (also used to process data) 86%. The SSD 760p with flash memory and a Silicon Motion, Inc. SM2262 controller only allowed the CPU to utilize 13% and the GPU 17%.
We're not able to give you the rendering time for the high resolution 40 second 4K video clip because Intel shut the display down before the 760p finished. The Optane system took just 17 seconds to finish; the 760p system was slightly less than halfway through the workload.
On stage, an Intel representative said the 905P M.2 SSD would ship before the end of the year. We suspect the company will aim for the Flash Memory Summit time frame in August, but then again, we could have these drives in our hands before the end of the month. Intel has been very aggressive with Optane Technology, more so than we ever expected. The 900P, 905P, Optane Memory, and 800P M.2 SSDs hit the scene like a landslide. We hope the company also builds a smaller, more affordable drive that fills the gap between the 118GB 800P and 280GB 900P that currently sells for around $370.
Regardless of when it debuts, if you are a performance enthusiast, this is the storage technology you want in your system. You can read our review of the 905P add-in card here.
