Benchmark Results: 4 KB Random And 128 KB Sequential Performance
An overall metric is informational, but it doesn't give us enough data about a drive's specific performance characteristics. That's why it's still important to examine random reads, random writes, sequential reads, and sequential writes. If you're unfamiliar with those terms and what they represent, you can refer back to page three of SSD Performance In Crysis 2, World Of Warcraft, And Civilization V.
Even though the SSD 710 is an enterprise-class drive, suggesting that it's intended to handle intensive workloads where I/O operations stack up, we're starting our synthetic testing with a queue depth of one in order to compare baseline performance with other SSDs. We'll get to the enterprise workloads shortly.
The random read rate for the 710 is remarkably similar to the 320. But again, that's hardly a surprise.
The SSD 710 has a specified random write speed nearly 10x lower than the 320, but that only applies to the high queue depths where all SSD vendors benchmark their offerings, yielding the highest possible performance. When we scale back to a queue depth of one, the SSD 710 behaves a lot like Intel's SSD 320 yet again.
Intel's datasheet also suggests nearly identical sequential performance between the enterprise and client products. Again, though, this only applies to higher queue depths. With only one active I/O operation, the SSD 710 performs about 15% better in sequential reads, and similarly in sequential writes.
Compared to the P300, the SSD 710 offers ~50% slower performance for both sequential reads and writes. You have to ask yourself it the Micron drive is worth its price premium, though; at 200 GB, it sells online for a little less than $2000.
