Intel 750 Series SSDs (Pre-roll landing page)

[CostcoSamples]

I ordered one from Newegg, waiting for it to arrive!  I'll post a mini review once I have had time to play with it.

[Stefan1024]

One core can not satturate the drive? WTF that's insane! And useless for most of the people here^^
You need it for compillation for example when a lot of smal files written. But for gaming? Complete overkill...

[DaveBG]

Bring it on. I am planning on getting several of these and making ZFS RAIDZ on them.

[NumLock21]

According to Asus PCDiy

• UEFI compatible hardware ( including a UEFI GOP supported graphics card and optical drive )

All current ASUS graphics cards both AMD and NVIDIA fully support GOP VBIOS previous. Should you have a GTX 600 series GPU or AMD 7000 series GPU you will need to update the VBIOS to be compliant

 

Does that mean, if you want to run a nvme drive, you must have fast boot enabled?

[Aibohphobia]

Does that mean, if you want to run a nvme drive, you must have fast boot enabled?

 

I think it's more to do with not supporting CSM mode rather than fast boot.

 

I have Windows 8.1 installed on a 400GB 750 on a Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5. CSM is turned off and Fast Boot is disabled.

[xeromynd]

Can't wait until advancements in NVMe and M.2/PCIe stuff slopes off and gets to a nice place.

Right now improvements in SSD storage are coming at rapid-fire speeds, by the time you research one purchase and wait for it's commercial release, something better has already come along.

 

HyperX Predator M.2 ----> Intel 750 ----> Samsung SM951 ----->  ?????

[CostcoSamples]

I think it's more to do with not supporting CSM mode rather than fast boot.

 

I have Windows 8.1 installed on a 400GB 750 on a Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5. CSM is turned off and Fast Boot is disabled.

While installing my new 750 SSD last night, when I disabled CSM my motherboard gave me an error and I had to enable it.  Works fine with it on.  Fast boot also doesn't seem to make any difference on my board.  z97 Sabertooth Mark 1

[Aibohphobia]

While installing my new 750 SSD last night, when I disabled CSM my motherboard gave me an error and I had to enable it.  Works fine with it on.  Fast boot also doesn't seem to make any difference on my board.  z97 Sabertooth Mark 1

 

I double-checked and to get NVMe mode working it has to be a UEFI installation. Disabling CSM forces Windows to install in UEFI mode so that's the deal there.

 

If you run AS SSD it'll tell you if the drive is using NVMe or AHCI.

[Amavin]

I double-checked and to get NVMe mode working it has to be a UEFI installation. Disabling CSM forces Windows to install in UEFI mode so that's the deal there.

 

If you run AS SSD it'll tell you if the drive is using NVMe or AHCI.

So I take it that it's not possible to circumvent the X99/Z97 limitation, by having the bootmgr on a regular AHCI SSD and pointing it to winload on the NVMe SSD, in either CSM or native UEFI mode?

I want one of these drives, but it would kinda suck to not be able to boot it on my Rampage IV Extreme. It's a tiny bit too expensive to be a storage drive

Anyone with X79 up for doing the testing? JJ from Asus said that in their testing it sorta-somewhat worked (he wasn't very specific), but it would take a long time to get anything verified/certified..

[Aibohphobia]

I had a SM951 back when the only ones available were pulled from Lenovo ultrabooks. My Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5 only has a 2.0 x4 M.2 slot so I got a M.2 to PCIe card adapter so I could run the drive at full speed.

 

The adapter worked just fine as a secondary drive but unfortunately the board didn't recognize the adapter as a bootable device so I tried for a few days to make it work with the bootloader on a Sata drive pointing to the Windows installation on the SM951. Didn't have any luck with that so I ended up selling the drive.

 

PCPer tested with the P9X79-Pro and it wasn't bootable so you'll have to hope Asus comes out with a BIOS update: http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Intel-SSD-750-Series-PCIe-Compatibility-Tested

[Amavin]

I had a SM951 back when the only ones available were pulled from Lenovo ultrabooks. My Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5 only has a 2.0 x4 M.2 slot so I got a M.2 to PCIe card adapter so I could run the drive at full speed.

 

The adapter worked just fine as a secondary drive but unfortunately the board didn't recognize the adapter as a bootable device so I tried for a few days to make it work with the bootloader on a Sata drive pointing to the Windows installation on the SM951. Didn't have any luck with that so I ended up selling the drive.

 

PCPer tested with the P9X79-Pro and it wasn't bootable so you'll have to hope Asus comes out with a BIOS update: http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Intel-SSD-750-Series-PCIe-Compatibility-Tested

Yeah JJ has a strawpoll going to see if the demand is high enough to get official support on older boards: https://pcdiy.asus.com/2015/04/asus-nvme-support-poll-voice-your-opinion/

Also in a reply to a comment asking for support for Rampage IV Extreme black edition he replied: "My internal test have shown it works stay tuned for a “update” on boards not officially supported. I will be showing some tests of what I find internally." (http://pcdiy.asus.com/2015/04/asus-z97-x99-motherboards-intel-750-series-nvme-ssds-all-you-need-to-know/)

 

Guess theres not much to do but wait and see what he (or others) finds..

[DeViLzzz]

.. and for me I can still get by on just using hard drives.  I don't know when I will ever use an SSD if ever.

[Aibohphobia]

.. and for me I can still get by on just using hard drives.  I don't know when I will ever use an SSD if ever.

 

It's amazing how much more responsive and "fluid" a computer feels with an SSD in it compared to a hard drive.

 

It won't increase FPS for the most part so if that's all you care about an SSD wouldn't be a great idea but for everything else it's one of the most cost-effective upgrades you can make to increase the perceived speed of your PC.

[coder-guy22296]

would you reccomend 8x 1.2TB in raid 0?

[Stefan1024]

would you reccomend 8x 1.2TB in raid 0?

You need 24 PCIE 3.0 for that. And you CPU can't make use of all that insane storage bandwith anyway.

For what do you need that massive storage solution?

 

And no I won't recommend it.

[Theknight42]

I cant wait to get my hands on one of these, it will greatly make my PC better for my use case. Can anyone say super fast scratchdisk!! Rendering video and animations will be so much better becuase the storage wont be the bottleneck as much anymore!!

[H4X3R]

 I would actually like you to say one of the fastest, not the fastest CONSUMER SSD. I have found multiple pci e based consumer SSDs faster than the intel 750 SSD (you didn't specify sata or pci e ssd), for example: SanDisk Fusion-io ioDrive Octal, Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe, Samsung SSD SM951 256GB onwards (depends on the workload) and OCZ Z-Drive R4 C Series CM84.

[The_Strict_Nein]

This was posted in April and the video has only just now gone on to Vessel.

 

Talk about content overload and delays. But I guess dealing with the new office stuff has been taxing.

[Aibohphobia]

 I would actually like you to say one of the fastest, not the fastest CONSUMER SSD. I have found multiple pci e based consumer SSDs faster than the intel 750 SSD (you didn't specify sata or pci e ssd), for example: SanDisk Fusion-io ioDrive Octal, Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe, Samsung SSD SM951 256GB onwards (depends on the workload) and OCZ Z-Drive R4 C Series CM84.

 

https://www.cdw.ca/shop/products/Fusion-io-ioDrive-Octal-solid-state-drive-10.24-TB-PCI-Express-2.0-x1/2610912.aspx

 

I wouldn't say anything IO Drive makes is a consumer SSD.

 

The Mushkin and OCZ are just RAID on a card with the issues that entails.

 

The SM951 is arguably faster depending on the benchmark but it's an OEM only drive. So I think it's fair to say that the 750 is the fastest consumer SSD, but probably not for long.

[H4X3R]

https://www.cdw.ca/shop/products/Fusion-io-ioDrive-Octal-solid-state-drive-10.24-TB-PCI-Express-2.0-x1/2610912.aspx

 

I wouldn't say anything IO Drive makes is a consumer SSD.

 

The Mushkin and OCZ are just RAID on a card with the issues that entails.

 

The SM951 is arguably faster depending on the benchmark but it's an OEM only drive. So I think it's fair to say that the 750 is the fastest consumer SSD, but probably not for long.

Well if you can buy it from a normal e-tailer, doesn't it make it "consumer"? What exactly do you mean by the term consumer?

Well even if they are RAID-on-cards, they are faster but have more issues as you have rightly said. This is about which is faster, not which is overall the better SSD.

And finally the SM951, we both agree on what you have said (in my OP: "depends on the workload"),

[Aibohphobia]

Well if you can buy it from a normal e-tailer, doesn't it make it "consumer"? What exactly do you mean by the term consumer?

 

No, just because a consumer can purchase a product does not make it a consumer product. Like the crazy 18-core Xeon build Linus just did, just because he plays games on it does not suddenly make that chip a "gaming" CPU.

 

 

Well even if they are RAID-on-cards, they are faster but have more issues as you have rightly said. This is about which is faster, not which is overall the better SSD.

And finally the SM951, we both agree on what you have said (in my OP: "depends on the workload"),

 

I got the OCZ Z-Drive R4 confused with the RevoDrive, the Z-Drive is an enterprise drive.

 

So that leaves the Mushkin, its sequential writes are higher with compressible data (since it's 4 x Sandforce drives in RAID) but the Intel has higher reads and when it comes to incompressible the Intel beats the Mushkin handily.

[H4X3R]

No, just because a consumer can purchase a product does not make it a consumer product. Like the crazy 18-core Xeon build Linus just did, just because he plays games on it does not suddenly make that chip a "gaming" CPU.

 

 

 

I got the OCZ Z-Drive R4 confused with the RevoDrive, the Z-Drive is an enterprise drive.

 

So that leaves the Mushkin, its sequential writes are higher with compressible data (since it's 4 x Sandforce drives in RAID) but the Intel has higher reads and when it comes to incompressible the Intel beats the Mushkin handily.

You still haven't defined consumer. If a consumer needs an 18 core xeon for a server but owns no company / firm then what would you classify the xeon as?

 

Once again, define enterprise and consumer.

 

Fair enough.

[Aibohphobia]

You still haven't defined consumer. If a consumer needs an 18 core xeon for a server but owns no company / firm then what would you classify the xeon as?

 

I'm not the one defining it, products are designed, marketed, and sold to different groups and so whether it's consumer or professional or something else is defined by the companies producing the product.

 

Like the E5-2699 v3 CPU, it bears the Xeon branding because Intel positions it as part of their Xeon line of server CPUs. It doesn't matter if grandma gets one just to look at pictures on Facebook, it's still a Xeon and hence a server product.

 

It is possible that consumers latch onto a professional product and it becomes so popular with that market that the company decides to shift their design and marketing. However, I don't think anyone would argue that is going to happen with something like the Z-Drive R4 that costs $2200 for 300GB.