Intel SSD DC P3700 800GB and 1.6TB Review: The Future of Storage

Results: Enterprise Workload Performance

Our next set of tests simulates different enterprise-oriented workloads, including database, file server, Web server, and workstation configurations.

The database workload (also categorized as transaction processing) involves purely random I/O. Its profile consists of 67% reads and 33% writes using 8 KB transfers.

The SSD DC P3700's excellent performance at low queue depths shows through in our database profile. As the command queue increases, Micron's P320h and OCZ's Z-Drive show their respective strengths.

Even though we didn't measure much difference between Intel's proprietary driver and Windows' native support in our performance consistency test, that's not the case here. Intel's more optimized implementation typically yields a 5-10% boost at low queue depths, which increases to 20-25% as commands started stacking up. Even though the native driver lets you boot to Windows and get started quickly, you really should make sure Intel's software gets installed before taxing the SSD DC P3700 in a production environment.

In the file server workload, which consists of 80% random reads of varying transfer sizes, we see similar results. The SSD DC P3700 again does an excellent job at low queue depth, and both capacities stay ahead of Micron's P420m.

Our Web server profile closely mirrors our random 4 KB read tests, which makes sense: it's 100% reads of varying transfer sizes.

While the finishing order is close at low queue depths, Micron's drives pull away beyond 32 outstanding commands. The two SSD DC P3700s behave almost identically due to their similar read performance.

Lastly, the workstation benchmark (80% reads, 80% random) results land predictably in our chart as the SSD DC P3700 drops off at higher queue depths.

Summing it all up, Intel's latest performs well at low queue depths and then trails as the count increases. Also, compared to Micron's P420m, the SSD DC P3700 performs better as the workload biases to writes. Unfortunately for Intel, the P3700s can't touch the Micron drives in read performance.