900P Optane NVMe PCIe 480GB

The 480 GB Intel Optane 900P is one of the first NVMe PCIe SSDs available, based on Intel’s new Optane memory and 3D XPoint technology. 280GB versions are also available with almost identical performance at a lower price, in line with the reduced capacity. The 480 GB 900P is comes in a half height half length add-in card form and has a PCIe 3.0 x 4 interface. The sequential read and write speeds of 2500 MB/s and 2000 MB/s are the fastest of any consumer SSD on the market today, however this is only 10% ahead of the next best NVMe PCIe SSD based on flash technology, the Samsung 960 Pro. The random 4K read and write speed disparities are far greater, with the 480 GB 900P achieving a whopping four times faster random 4K read speeds than for the 960 Pro. If memory usage is heavily skewed towards random 4K reading, then shifting to the 900P would yield a huge performance boost worthy of the 900P’s high price tag. Access to this latest technology comes at double the cost per gigabyte compared to the 960 Pro. Currently the PCIe interface will be a bottleneck for even greater performance. However, it’s early days for Optane memory and it’s likely that Intel will release higher performing devices in the future as faster bus technologies emerge. ^{[Nov '17 SSDrivePro]}