Intel 760p

[Courtland Boland]

Ifyou want to play with NVMe or fill a slot on your motherboard, the 128GB 760p will meet your needs. Most users will find the 256GB has a much better price to performance ratio. If you just need a small boot drive for a spare system or family member, this drive is cost-competitive with 128GB SATA SSDs. It's also a little faster.

Intel's 760p NVMe SSD is the successor to the company's 600p, which is an SSD that's admired more for its price than performance. The new 760p comes with bold claims of twice the performance and capacity of the 600p along with half the power consumption. Better yet, the 760p series retains the same entry-level SSD pricing model even though it sports up to 3,200 MB/s of throughput and 350,000 random read IOPS. Intel claims the 760p offers an amazing mix of performance and price, so this just might be the NVMe SSD we've been waiting for.

Intel has an established history of low failure rates, solid performance, and, to tie it all together, premium pricing. It's not like Intel to release true value SSDs that undercut other companies on price, so it was surprising when Intel's previous-generation 512GB 600p challenged the MyDigitalSSD BPX at the $200 price point. The 600p suffered from low performance, though, so Intel had to market it as a SATA replacement.

The 600p's performance issues stemmed from its first-generation 3D NAND. We tested several SSDs with Intel's inaugural 3D NAND, but regardless of the SSD controller, the drives suffered from high latency. The 3D NAND came from the IMFT (Intel/Micron Flash Technologies) joint venture, and thankfully, the second generation has improved drastically. We've tested several new SATA SSDs with the new 64-layer flash and performance has increased to class-leading levels while prices have decreased. That's a win-win.

The Intel SSD 760p is the first retail NVMe SSD we've tested with Intel's new 64-layer flash. The low-overhead protocol should expose the true potential of the storage media by removing the bandwidth limitations of SATA.

Silicon Motion, Inc.'s new SSD controller is a key piece to the performance puzzle. The company has three different SM226x models that address different market segments. Intel's 760p uses the SM2262, which is an upper mainstream variant that we never expected to see at these low price points. The entry-level SM2263XT HMB controller already impressed us even though it was designed it for DRAM-less SSDs. The Intel SSD 760p with the SM2262 should perform even better.

The Intel SSD 760p comes to market in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities. Intel will roll out 1TB and 2TB models later this quarter. These models are just one hop away from fulfilling Intel's "3.5 TB SSD the size of a stick of gum" prophecy it made when it announced its 3D NAND in 2016.

Intel's performance claims teeter on the absurd. The 760p 512GB delivers up to 3,200/1,670 MB/s sequential read/write speeds. Random read performance stretches up to 350,000 IOPS for the larger models, paired with an 'up to' 280,000 random write IOPS. These are the same performance numbers we see with products that cost twice as much. Intel also effectively doubled the 600p's performance while using only half the power.

Performance shrinks as we move through the smaller models, but even the 128GB drive pushes enough performance across the PCI Express bus to outperform the fastest SATA SSDs ever built. It appears that Intel wants to replace SATA SSDs as the boot drive in your PC.

Once you get past the high performance and low price, the 760p series is a fairly basic consumer SSD. The consumer model doesn't feature encryption or a fancy heat sink. Intel did release a business-focused 760p model today that provides accelerated TCG Opal 2.0 and eDrive hardware encryption technology. The business model also enables Intel's Remote Secure Erase through vPro Platform Security.

We had to dig into Silicon Motion's SM2262 documentation to gain further insight into the new features. The eight-channel SM2262 controller improves on the previous generation and serves primarily as a vessel to bring 64-layer NAND to market. SMI carried over most of the IP from the previous-gen SM2260 controller, but there are some subtle differences to the caching algorithms that help increase performance in random workloads.

Most of the real features go unseen in the flash. The move to 64 layers is more than a normal generational evolution: throughput increases, latency decreases, and Intel cut the physical size nearly in half. The number of bits per wafer exploded, and that's why the 760p is coming to market with such aggressive pricing even though Intel could have easily charged more for this product.

Keeping with the 600p model, Intel also gave the 760p a five-year warranty and the same 72TB of endurance per 128GB of capacity. We haven't tested the 760p's full endurance like we did on the previous generation, but we expect that Intel will adhere to its policy of moving the drive to a read-only state after you exhaust the warrantied endurance.

The new SSD 760p works with Intel's SSD Toolbox software that gives you monitoring and optimization features. Aside from added support for new drives, the software hasn't changed much since its release. Intel also has a data migration tool tucked away on its website, but we had to poke around to find it.

The 760p doesn't feature RGB LED lighting like the new Plextor M9Pe, but it does have a vibrant color scheme on the package. In a way, the package tells the 760p story. The 760p graphics are the same as the 600p, but Intel has managed to make those graphics come alive this time around.

Intel didn't print much information on the package. The back of the package displays the five-year warranty, but it lacks performance data. Now that the NAND shortage is over, the SSD section at Best Buy and Fry's should consist of more than two products in the middle of barren shelves. Performance is a true highlight of this series, and giving shoppers easy access to information would make it easier to browse products lined up in the store.

The top of the controller features a thin copper plate with a nickel finish that helps dissipate heat to the outer surface. The label doesn't have a copper strip inside like the layered label that Samsung pioneered (and Corsair later adopted).

The 512GB drive pictured above has a single-sided design that comes packing dual NAND and DRAM packages. The NAND arrangement is typical for this design, but the two 256MB Micron DDR4 packages are not. Most SSDs only use one DRAM package for lower-capacity drives. We're in the middle of a DRAM shortage, so the design could lower costs, especially in the high-capacity drives coming later this year. Intel also tells us controller can issue parallel operations to the dual DDR4 packages. That capability improves translation table lookup times, which increases performance.

Today Intel is launching a new NVMe SSD for consumers. The Intel SSD 760p is a M.2 SSD featuring Intel's 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash and a new Silicon Motion controller, and it will compete as an entry-level NVMe SSD.

Based on the model number, the Intel SSD 760p would appear to be successor to the Intel SSD 750. However, the 750 was a top of the line premium SSD for its time, and Intel's Optane products are now covering that market segment. The 760p is a mainstream consumer product with accessible pricing that is slightly lower than the Intel SSD 600p, which has been one of the cheapest NVMe drives on the market. The 600p was Intel's first consumer SSD with 3D NAND and their first M.2 NVMe SSD, and it was also one of the first NVMe SSDs that wasn't even trying to compete at the high end. The 760p promises far better performance than the 600p, but not enough to catch up to today's high-end SSDs.

The Intel SSD 760p is a continuation of Intel's close collaboration with Silicon Motion for consumer SSD controllers. As with the 600p, the 760p features an Intel-customized version of Silicon Motion's reference design and firmware. Where the 600p was based on the SM2260 controller, the 760p is the first drive to market based on the SM2262 controller, the mid-range option from Silicon Motion's second generation of NVMe controllers. Silicon Motion has previewed these controllers last year with far higher performance than the SM2260 could deliver, and the Intel 760p is following through on those promises.

The flash memory used in the Intel SSD 760p is the same 256Gb 64L 3D TLC NAND found in the Intel 545s SATA SSD, and is similar to Micron's 64L 3D TLC as found in the Crucial MX500. Other NAND flash manufacturers have also moved to 64L 3D NAND: Western Digital/SanDisk are using theirs in the WD Blue 3D NAND aka SanDisk Ultra 3D, Toshiba's is found in the TR200 budget SATA SSD, and Samsung's 64L 3D NAND is used in the new 860 PRO and 860 EVO. Intel/Micron 3D NAND is still unique for using a floating gate memory cell structure where their competitors switched to a charge trap cell as part of the transition from planar to 3D NAND.

Today's launch includes 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities of the Intel 760p, with the 1TB and 2TB models coming later this quarter. All the major performance specifications are much faster than the 600p, and most of them also beat the obsolete Intel SSD 750. The write endurance is rated the same as for the 600p at 72 TB of writes per 128GB of drive capacity, equivalent to about 0.3 drive writes per day, a typical figure for consumer SSDs.

Performance specifications for the 1TB and 2TB models have not been released, but they will probably not be much faster than the 512GB model. The 128GB and 256GB models are clearly held back some by their limited capacity, but the 512GB's performance specs are close to Silicon Motion's projections for what the SM2262 controller would be capable of.

Intel's pricing for the 760p is competitive, with initial MSRPs at or slightly below current street prices for the Intel 600p and most other low-end NVMe drives. The 760p will not hold the 600p's distinction as the cheapest NVMe drive on the market, because a wave of new low-end NVMe drives is arriving. These drives feature cheaper controllers specifically designed for low-end NVMe SSDs, cutting costs by using a PCIe x2 connection instead of x4, or by omitting DRAM in favor of using the NVMe Host Memory Buffer feature. Those drives will enable NVMe SSDs to further encroach on the pricing territory of SATA SSDs, but they may not be able to match the Intel 760p on performance.

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