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Four-Corner Performance Testing
Comparison Products
To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. Four-corner testing is covered on page six of our How We Test guide.
Sequential Read
All three of the SSD 750s experience a dip at a queue depth of two during our sequential read test. Back when we only had one of these drives, we spent a lot of time looking at our methodology and trying to smooth out the results. But after benchmarking three different capacities, we're certain that the dip comes from Intel's controller and not our metrics. The hit comes at an unfortunate time too, since we use the QD2 results to build our chart that reflects desktop performance. Once the SSD 750s get past that hiccup, they speed up under more intense workloads.
Sequential Write
The performance curve changes when we apply sequential writes. Throughput remains flat across the chart, and it doesn't change as much when the workload ramps up. Each charted NVMe-based drive boasts more impressive specs than our numbers would indicate. That tells us we need more workers to write data. You'd get them in an enterprise environment, but not so much on the desktop. Staying true to an enthusiast PC, we're sticking with a single worker.
Random Read
NVMe's biggest contribution to your storage experience is lower random access latency. This allows the 800GB SSD 750 to deliver gobs of I/O performance at low queue depths, even when we're dealing with 4KB blocks of data. The middle child trails Intel's 400GB and 1.2TB models at a queue depth of one, but still delivers almost 11,000 IOPS. Increasing the queue depth steadily improves performance before it levels off at 240,000 IOPS.
Random Write
In most of the tests up until now, the SSD 750s trailed Samsung's UBX-based drives. The random write tests are dominated by Intel, though. The difference is evident even at a queue depth of one, and by QD2, Intel's drives hit higher IOPS than Samsung's controller can manage.
On your desktop, that difference is felt more than it's seen. An enthusiast PC writes thousands of small files each day in the background. And in many cases, a small write precedes a read request. If a write command hangs or is delayed, you encounter a slight pause. You won't have that issue with Intel's SSD 750s.
