Conclusion
Conclusion
Intel’s 910 800GB is currently a dominating titan within the solid state drive market but with extreme performance and impressive longevity comes a price that will be staggering for many of our readers. But before the pitchfork-wielding enthusiast mob descends upon this four thousand dollar monster, let’s all take a deep breath and remember that Intel’s focus here is firmly pointed towards the enterprise market and to a lesser extent workstation consumers. In that respect, they’ve succeeded beyond the expectations of many professionals that populate this highly influential sector.
Other than initial startup cost, one of the primary reasons why SSDs aren’t more prevalent in the enterprise market is their lack of performance longevity. With the 910’s impressive engineering backbone in place Intel has succeeded in creating a drive that can dig itself out of a degraded state / steady state in the blink of an eye. Not only is this drive quick to claw its way back up to near-maximum performance but getting it into a degraded state in the first place is bloody difficult to say the least. Even after
ten hours of constant hammering – or more than enough time to turn even a potent RevoDrive3 x2 480GB drive into a quivering puddle – performance levels were maintained and workloads were processed without it batting an eyelash. Even the slightest pause in testing gave the 910’s controllers enough time to start regaining some of their lost performance.
Unfortunately, even though the sequential and even steady state performance was undeniably impressive, the 910 is not going to be right for all consumers (professional and otherwise) and all scenarios. At lower queue depths most of the 910’s performance overhead will simply never be utilized outside of somewhat pointless synthetic tests. Only when you place deep queue I/O workloads upon it can the Intel 910 800GB really stretch its legs and outpace anything else we have tested to date. We believe Intel has done this on purpose so everything from choice of controller to NAND to lack of bootability can scream ‘Enterprise storage’ towards its intended market niche.
Satisfying the needs of the Enterprise market – where deep queue depths and extreme durability are not only the norm but requirements– is the 910’s main priority and it shows. This will however limit its appeal outside of this rather narrow optimal operating environment, but the hardware and firmware refinements have be carried out with such subtly and deftness that it is still a true joy to see it in action.
Looking at the larger picture, sometimes it is better to offer an elegant solution that’s narrowly focused rather than a brute force device which good at many things but excels at nothing. Intel has done just that as their 910 is
very good when given the problems it was designed to solve.
For customers that want ultra high performance, reliable storage for a web server or an all round “cloud” storage server, the low CPU overhead, ease of use and nosebleed-inducing performance levels of Intel’s 910 will make it a truly stellar choice. To a lesser extent we could see this being an excellent fit for workstation consumers who require massive amounts of performance without excessive power draw and heat production. Even Virtual Machine users and gaming enthusiast with more money than good sense will likely be lusting after this drive and its insanely high performance capabilities.
In the end there really is only one thing we can say which best sums up the Intel 910: this is a Dam Good drive. As long as your needs fall within its clearly delineated operating parameters, its price and quirks are far out weighted by a long, long list of positives.
