Benchmark Results: Storage Bench v1.0 & PCMark 7
While Intel's SSD 710 isn't a consumer drive, PCMark 7 and our own Storage Bench v1.0 provide a quick and dirty way to examine storage performance. If you're unfamiliar with Storage Bench v1.0, we'd suggest that you read page three and four of Second-Gen SandForce: Seven 120 GB SSDs Rounded Up.
The performance specs provided for the SSD 320 and 710 are remarkably close, which is why it isn't too surprising to see similar rankings. The 710 only falls behind the 320 by a small margin, which we'd attribute to the lower random write spec inherent to eMLC NAND. However, compared to Micron's SLC-based P300, Intel's latest enterprise SSD falls far behind.
While we have enthusiast-oriented drives in this chart for comparison, the SSD 710 isn't an enthusiast product. We get good perspective on how vendors balance performance and reliability, though, in adding drives that are faster, less expensive, but ultimately unsuited for enterprise duty to the results list.