Intel Optane 800P SSD Review (58/118GB)

OPTANE FEATURES, PRICING AND WARRANTY

The Intel Optane 800P SSD is a bootable M.2 form factor PCIe 3.0 two lane NVMe SSD that builds upon the original Intel Optane Memory release that  is available in 16GB and 32GB capacities for use with a hard drive in a caching environment (our report).  The difference of course is that the Optane 800P is aimed at portable and PC systems and is bootable and available in 58 and 118GB capacities, sizes large enough to contain a system OS and applications.  We can say right from the outset that there is a visible system performance increase when Optane is used as your system SSD, vice a NAND flash memory based SSD.

Something just a bit interesting is that the Intel Optane 800P is based on two PCIe 3.0 lanes of data travel, vice the four of most other SSDs and is rated for performance of 1400MB/s read and 600MB/s write data throughput and 340K read and 140K write IOPS.  Performance doesn’t change depending on capacity, unlike many NAND based SSDs. The Optane 800P only comes in the M.2 2280 (80mm) form factor, has a life expectancy of 1.6 million MTBF (mean time before failure) and a lifetime endurance rating of 200GB/day during the course of its five-year warranty.Particularly interesting is the fact that, while in steady state, we are certain that the Intel Optane 800P performs much better than other SSDs, although it uses only two PCIe 3.0 lanes of travel, vice four.  For those unfamiliar with this, a single lane at PCIe 3.0 allows up to a theoretical maximum of 984.6MB/s, so technically, one might think that SSDs using four lanes might be twice as fast as those using two lanes.  While this is definitely true when using the SSD during typical consumer use, the opposite is the case when comparing the two lane Optane 800P to other SSDs in a steady state environment of constant use.  Check out Intel Optane pricing!

Lastly, the Intel Optane has an average latency of <6.5µs read and <18µs write, a power rating of 3.75W active and Deep Sleep/L1.2 rating of 8mW with an operating temperature of 0°C-85°C

OPTANE 800P BUILD

The Intel Optane is a single-sided two-lane M.2 2280 SSD with the branding sticker covering the memory chips on the front.  All components are contained on a single side of a blue PCB (printed circuit board).

Visible on the right side of this SSD are a number of power loss capacitors, along with the SSD controller located at the bottom left of the PCB.

Both pieces of Intel 3D XPoint memory are visible once remove the sticker, each having the product number 29P64B2AMDNF2.  Each has a RAW value of 64GB for a total 128GB, however once formatted, only 110GB of user space is available to the consumer.

Somewhat interesting is how we can physically identify a two-lane M.2 SSD In comparison to a four-lane SSD.  With the two lanes, as shown above, there are two slots which are designated as the ‘M’ and ‘B’ keys.  On a four-lane SSD, there will only be one slot which is the ‘M’ key.