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Intel X25-M G2: Dissected and Performance Previewby Anand Lal Shimpi on 7/22/2009 6:00 PM EST
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Bolas - Friday, August 21, 2009 - linkSo... does it work yet?
What's the current status of the G2 firmware bug? Any idea when we'll be able to buy G2 drives on Newegg? Reply
krazyderek - Sunday, August 16, 2009 - linkI know this is a bit pre-emptive, but i really hope that if the introduction of TRIM goes well that we see a double bar graph showing new AND used performance bars for each drive (ie: TRIM on, TRIM off). Once TRIM is implemented it may level the playing field for some drives and that should be easily and fairly shown in the charts. I know you had shown used vs new benchmarks during the anthology but in different charts sometimes on different pages made it tricky to see exactly the difference. Again, if TRIM is all it's touted to be, "new" state may be, the longterm state of an SSD.
Here's hoping Intel get's it act together with those seq writes.
PS, i own an 50nm 80gb intel, i'm semi ticked intel won't release a firware with TRIM in it, at the same time, it still has the second fastest random read and write (second only to it's newer version) and it feels rediculously fast to me launching every application on my computer at once when i start windows, and a sub 20 second boot time in OSX. Reply
Alberto122 - Tuesday, August 04, 2009 - linkI think computer market will slowdown in the next two years. Industry results in July shows profit warnings and losses in many companies. Intel lost 398 US$ mill and AMD 335 US$ mill.
New Google Chrome operating system (which has lesser hardware requirements than Windows), virtualization runing on multicore computers (one computer, many users) and financial crisis can hit very hard the sales for PC market.
Well see how can they sale new processors.
http://managersmagazine.com/index.php/2009/08/info...">http://managersmagazine.com/index.php/2...ctorial-... Reply
krazyderek - Sunday, August 16, 2009 - linkIntel with it's high IOPS, and SSD's in general with their non-existent response time seem poised to dominate multi-user, and virtualization setup's. It does seem like hard times ahead, but that's where bang for buck is really going to count and not to many people actually "need" a 2TB drive, where as HD's have been the bottleneck in computer's ever since the GHZ race spread out into the multi-core arena. SSD's seems ready to stand up in a multi user server, or virtualization setup to take it from "hold on a second i'm on a shared server login" to.. "really, this is a shared computer?" Reply
jimhsu - Sunday, August 02, 2009 - linkHey Anand, I think I finally found the Achilles Heel of the X25-M: Poor random read performances under a heavy seq write workload.
Reproduce with:
PerformanceTest 7.0 (x64)
Advanced Disk Test
2 synchronous threads
500MB test files
Uncached Win32 API
Thread 1: 100% Read, 100% Random, 4096 byte block size
Thread 2a: 100% Write, 0% Random, 1 MB block size
Thread 2b: 100% Write, 100% Random, 4096 byte block size
In general, the X25-M lags HEAVILY when doing a seq write (e.g. file copy) while doing random reads (e.g. opening microsoft word). Heavy RANDOM writes are not a problem, suggesting possibly poor interleaving of large seq writes and small reads.
Worth discussing with Intel? Reply
jimhsu - Saturday, August 15, 2009 - linkWhat makes this even harder to understand is that performance on the drive is dynamic - the algorithms gradually accommodate changing workloads under a fragmented condition. This only happens under LOW free space conditions in the used state.
I copied a lot of files sequentially to the SSD these few days. Seq write speeds increased from 30-40MB/s to over 80MB/s these few days, but random writes dropped to 15MB/s. These are Crystaldiskmark benches so I don't trust them much at all, but seq writes definitely became faster (can't feel the effect of slower random writes).
The performance profile of these Intel drives is VERY confusing. TRIM will probably help a lot to make performance less confusing.
iwodo - Monday, August 10, 2009 - linkInteresting, does this problem exsist in other SSD drive from Samsung or Indilix? Reply
HexiumVII - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - linkDo these new drives support it? Reply
Alkapwn - Sunday, July 26, 2009 - linkCame across this information, and wonder if there is any way to verify it. Anyone heard of drive problems on these new g2's?
somedude1234 - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - linkI ordered one from Puget last week. I can confirm that they are doing exactly as they said in the linked post and contacting people with pending orders directly.
I fell into the category of "not likely to use a BIOS password on the drive, but willing to wait if Intel thought a hardware change was necessary".
Once they confirmed that a simple firmware update would resolve the issue, I gave them the go-ahead to ship mine. I should be receiving it soon.
So far I've been very impressed with the customer service at Puget Systems. They are definitely responsive to their customers. Reply
has407 - Sunday, July 26, 2009 - linkSeen the same on a couple sites. Apparently setting a drive password and then trying to change or disable it can cause the drive to become inaccessible. They're also no longer listed on Newegg. Reply
Jefrach - Monday, July 27, 2009 - linkI bought one of these drives from Newegg the day they were released. I just received an email today saying I was getting a refund because they were out of stock and that the item is discontinued. Price was at listed 449. Reply
billybob54321 - Saturday, July 25, 2009 - linkAnand-
I know application performance is on its way, but I'd love to see individual perforamnce time of actually running applications. The original Intel SSD review focused on copy/launch times whereas I'd be interested in run times of apps after they are launched.
For example, I do a lot of work in Photoshop CS4 with big RAW files. It's unclear whether the random read/write speed of the Intel drive would be superior to the sequential write of the Vertex drive when working in PS CS4 because the temp files can get into the 100's of megabytes.
Thanks for your hard work! Reply
erikejw - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkIs this benchmarked in a used state of the drive?
That is how we all use hard drives so if it is not it is pretty worthless for users.
Cov - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkHere you can find results of someine who tested his SSD (that he just bought)with CrystalDiskMark:
(last posting on that side) Reply
piasabird - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkThese performance tests do not tell you anything.
1. How do they compare when actually running programs in an operating system?
2. How do they compare to a standard 500gig Hard Drive?
How are these to be used? Are people planning on using them as hard drive replacements in laptops? What about Heat and cooling requirements like you might mention for RAM or a video card?
The reason I am asking these questions is Microsoft Windows as an operating system is not designed that well to use these devices, and they dont show much advantage when used in cooperation with a hard drive to boot a computer faster. This seems like much todo about nothing when I can purchase a 320GB Drive for about $100.00. Reply
evand - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkWell, some application benchmarks would be nice. But then, the article is titled "performance preview". If you don't know how to read these numbers and take a guess at what it will mean for you, then don't.
They compare very, very favorably to a top of the line, high performance hard disk, and you're asking how well they compare to a drive that said high performance disk will eat for breakfast? Seriously, the comparison almost isn't worth making. If you're really curious, find reviews of the disk you want compared to, and see what high performance rotating drives they compared it against (or go see what regular drives that high performance drive was compared against in its reviews).
People are considering using these on laptops, on desktops as a primary (OS / apps / heavily used data) drive with rotating media for bulk storage, in silent /fanless computers, etc.
Why do you even need to ask about cooling and heat sinks? It doesn't need them. It draws 150mW of power. Putting heat sinks on it would be ludicrous.
So what if Windows isn't "designed" to use these disks? It will use them without any problems. Perhaps a more carefully designed OS could eek a bit more out of them, but so what? It should be worlds faster than any rotating media you can compare it to.
If you want capacity, go buy a 1TB drive to use a secondary data drive for $100, and use one of these for things that care about io performance rather than storage. Splitting your data across the two disks to get both good performance and lots of space isn't exactly hard for the normal desktop usage case.
evand - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkI was discussing these drives with someone who works in the storage industry with Flash technology, but not these specific drives. He had an interesting observation: a lot of flash drives will keep a pool of pre-erased pages available for writing. However, they can't erase new pages fast enough to keep up with the peak random write performance indefinitely. Once the pre-erased pool runs dry, random write performance drops dramatically.
Is this the case with the new (or old, for that matter) Intel drives? How long a time period do your random write benchmarks run for? Would you be willing to run a random writes benchmark that runs long enough to overwrite a larger fraction of the disk, and tell us whether the performance drops under sustained load?
iwodo - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkI just read other review site that Intel SSD uses SUBSTANTIALLY more CPU usage then other competing SSD. I hope your future detail review will test this out as well.
Even thought Intel SSD uses much less power then competing SSD, the CPU usage required will discount those saving. ( Possibly uses even more power. )
In could be another case for Intel to push you buying a more powerful CPU. Which is rather sad. Since this is exactly what happen to USB, which makes it slow and unresponsive compare to Firewire. Reply
pmeinl - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkDoes anybody know PC cases optimized for SSDs.
I only found the following enclosures to mount SSDs in cases designed for HDs:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... Reply
velis - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkSo you don't wonder too much any more:
RE: How Come Intel Can't Compete The Sequential Performances Of Its Rivals?
by Anand Lal Shimpi, 1 days ago:
I'm not sure it's a question of why Intel can't, I think it's a conscious architectural decision. It's something I've been chasing down for months but I can't seem to put my finger on it just yet.
This is indeed an implementation decision.
The difference between "ordinary" drives and the Intel drives is in the way they write data to the disk:
"Ordinary" drives can have "high" sequential throughput because they employ only coarse levelling algorithms. That is, they keep erasure counts for entire blocks and write data to the block that currently has the lowest erasure count.
First a bit of glossary for the terms I use:
Block - the smallest unit on a flash chip that can be erased by erase command (typically 256MB).
Sector - The smallest data unit controller's algorithm recognizes. This is probably not equal to 256 or 512 bytes (actually it's a bit more for CRCs and stuff) which is a typical sector size on a flash chip because the reallocation tables would take way too much space then.
Below I only explain the reallocation algorithm - which is in reality also complemented by a wear leveling algorithm (the wear leveling you already know and understand).
Intel's controller (also OCZ Vertex) do this differently: they convert all writes to sequential where they look for the block which has the most "free" sectors. Of course some weal leveling is also applied. So each write is preceded by a lookup of such a block, then this block is erased, the non-free sectors re-written to it along with the new sector.
This method creates massive fragmentation issues and to keep track of it, some quite large lookup tables have to be maintained in the controller.
In order for this method to work as efficiently as possible, it is always good to leave some space on the disk free for the algorithm itself. I know the disk itself doesn't have 80GB capacity, more like 70 available for an OS to use. I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of flash chips on the disk itself was more than 80GB, but I just checked out the PCB pics and this doesn't seem to be the case.
The translation / lookup tables take 1MB per 1GB of storage space if "cluster" size is 4KB, which I strongly suspect it is (default FS cluster size for many file systems). Additionally you need derived "free sector" tables which are also quite large and barely fit into that poor 128Mbit SRAM chip that's there on the PCB if at all. This is only for the most simple implementation os sector reordering algorithm. In order to make things faster, they probably need even larger / more tables.
This free space on the disk simulates the announced TRIM support. Since you always have a certain percentage of the drive "free" for your algorithm to use, you can always assume (and be right) that you will find a block that has at least some sectors free. Since typical disk writing occurs mostly in a few clusters, this then translates into "the same" blocks alternating among themselves.
The reason intel's drives showed performance decrease when in "used" state (BTW: this state is achieved at the same moment when you have written disk's capacity blocks to the disk, but it doesn't mean that the disk is at that time full - it just performed, say 80GB of writes) is because at that particular moment the disk itself has run out of 100% free blocks and it has to start looking for blocks that have as many as possible free sectors. But, naturally, only rarely are those blocks >50% free so writing speed decreases because after block erasure, the controller must write back the sectors that were already full in the block.
So, supporting TRIM will improve the situation for these disks because more sectors will be marked as free. They will still suffer some performance degradation, but not nearly as much as G1 models. Of course this will hugely depend on the amount of disk space that is actually taken (what explorer reports as used capacity). The more free space on the disk, the more sectors "TRIMmed" on the disk itself and the more free sectors to use when writing.
It will also not be necessary to wipe the drive when the TRIM support is installed. It will only take a bit longer for most of the sectors to actually become marked as TRIMmed. So the benefit will be there. But I can't be sure what will happen to the drive's data when the new firmware is flashed on it. If the flashing process or algoritm differences (there shouldn't be any) should wipe the data from the disk, the TRIM benefit will then only come with a wiped drive, won't it?
Also even generation 1 drives should exhibit a lot less "used state syndrome" if they were "resized" to a smaller size. 40GB (half the disk) should be small enough for the degraded performance to never show. Unfortunately I can't test this since I don't have an Intel SSD.
So, finally, to answer the question:
Intel's drives have lesser sequential performance (in theory) than "ordinary" SSD drives because they perform sector reallocation. This algorithm takes it's processing time and the controller chip isn't exactly a 253THz organic computer - if you know what I mean. Additionally, the reallocation tables are quite large and need to be written to the disk along with the data sectors. The ordinary disks have only small reallocation tables and don't suffer so much from having to write them.
has407 - Friday, July 24, 2009 - link1. Intel spec's 312,581,808 user-addressable sectors = 160GB excluding a "small portion for NAND flash management". Most of that management overhead is below the visibility of the user, and at worst likely to be ~3-5% even if they subtracted all of the overhead from the user-accessible space.
2. A "page" is the smallest unit recognized by a NAND unit--that is, the smallest unit of data that can be read or written. Pages are grouped into blocks. A block is the smallest unit that can be erased. A page must be erased--or more accurately in the unprogrammed state--before it can be written/programmed.
a) You don't need to "write back sectors" (pages) unless you are overwriting an existing page; doing so would simply prematurely degrade the flash. The algorithm is: Has this *page* been programmed? No: write it, end; Yes: Does the block contain other valid pages? Yes: Read valid pages, erase block, write back valid pages and new page, end. Obviously you'd prefer to find a unprogrammed page rather than go through the read-write cycle.
b) We don't know the geometry of the Intel flash chips; specifically the page and block size. However, the ONFI 1.0 spec (on which Intel says these are based) states "The number of pages per block shall be a multiple of 32."
3. All reasonable implementations perform remapping as part of wear levelling. Ideally that remapping should be at the page level, as that is the smallest unit of programming (which may be larger than a sector); you also need to keep track of the number of erase cycles for each block.
a) Page mapping requires LOG2(number of pages) bits for the remap table for each page. E.g., for 160GB and page size of 4KB; then: # pages/entries = ~39M; bits/entry = LOG2(39M) = ~25 bits/entry = rounding up to the next byte = 4/bytes/entry * 39M entries = ~160MB
b) Erase cycle counts requires either a counter for each block, a FIFO/LRU that orders blocks based on preference for next write, or more likely a combination of the two (the latter optimized for run-time to answer the question "which page should I write next?").
c) Assuming an erase cycle granularity of 1/2^16 (i.e., a 16-bit counter for each block), a page size of 4KB, a block size of 32 pages (128KB), then for a 160GB drive = 2 bytes/block * ~9.7M blocks = ~20MB. (Again, however, trying to maintain a sorted list of counters is probably not the most efficient way to determine "where should I write next?).
4. Given the above assumptions, the total in-memory wear-leveling overhead for a very reasonable and high performance algorithm for a 160GB drive is ~180MB, less with a bit of optimization. From that we can posit:
a) The page and block sizes are larger than assumed above (less memory needed).
b) The Intel controller has quite a bit of RAM (above the external 32MB DRAM chip).
c) The Intel controller is partitioning operations (reduce the amount of memory required at any time).
d) Something else.
In short, it is far from apparent why differential between Intel's and the competition's serial vs. random IO performance. By all means if you really do know, please explain, but your previous "explanation" appears dubious at best, and ill-informed at worst. Reply
velis - Monday, July 27, 2009 - linkSorry, had no intention to offend you.
The difference between user addressable blocks and actual flash size is quite substantial:
On the PCB you have 160GB of flash (160 * 1024^3 = 171798691840 bytes). Of that, you have 160 billion bytes (~160 * 1000^3) user addressable.
That's almost 11GB difference. Even if my info about disk free space is incorrect, this difference makes up for almost 7% of algorithm useable sectors. Flash chips do come in power of 2 capacities, unlike rotating platter disks.
Your calculations for the tables taking 180MB therefore still leave almost 11GB for the reallocation sectors.
I have also tried to be as plain as possible in describing the algorithm. I delved in no details, but if you insist:
It's impossible to retain information in RAM, be it on controller or on the external RAM module. So no tables there, only cache.
Your calculations actually just "specify" what I told in general terms. For such specification and detailed calculations you would have to actually know the actual algorithm employed.
Your assumption a is incorrect because there's enough space for the tables, so no compressio / optimization is necessary.
Your assumption b probably fails, controllers typically don't have massive amounts of ram. Even if there was massive ram in there, it would still only be used as cache.
I don't see how partitioning operations would reduce disk space requirements, but I believe that partitioning is done. Partition being one sector (smallest storage unit size).
There's probably quite a few "something elses" in there. With only 7% of spare disk space to work with, the algorithm is IMHO a lot more complex than I suggested.
So - why slower seq writes (in a bit more detail):
The controller has to read reallocation tables for the relevant tables. That may mean more than one sector, probably more like 3 or 4, depending how deep the reallocation tables trees are.
Then the sector's physical position is determined and it is written and - if it's time, the modified reallocation tables are written too.
Both reading and writing "excess" information take time. As well as the calculation of the appropriate new address.
I don't know if that's what Intel implemented, but it seems to me a good guess, so don't beat me over it. Reply
has407 - Monday, July 27, 2009 - linkApologies, that last statement in my previous post was unwarranted. No you didn't offend me, and I didn't mean to beat you up, I was just being a cranky a*hole. Again my apologies.
My comments were primarily directed at controller run-time memory overhead, not overhead within the flash device itself. As you said, controllers aren't likely to have that much memory; specifically, sufficient for an in-memory logical-to-physical (LBA-PBA) map for every page of the SSD (never mind for every sector).
Yes, there is going to be some storage overhead; specifically, that needed for garbage collection and long-term wear leveling, where unused pages are coalesced into free blocks (improve write speed), and data in blocks with low erase counts are redistributed (improve longevity).
The importance of the latter is often overlooked, and if not done will lead to premature failure of some blocks, and result in diminishing capacity (which will tend to accelerate). E.g., you load a bunch of data and never (or rarely) modify it; without long-term leveling/redistribution, writes are now distributed across the remaining space, leading to more rapid wear and failure of that remaining space.
I expect they're doing at least garbage collection, and I hope long-term leveling, and may have opted for more predictable performance by reserving bandwidth/time for those operations (write algorithm treats random IO as the general case, which would play to SSD's strengths). OTOH, it may be a lot simpler and we're just seeing the MLC write bandwidth limits and housekeeping is noise (relatively speaking); e.g., ~7MBs for 2-plane x8 device = X 10 channels = ~70MBs.
I won't lay claim to any answers, and AFAICT the simple/obvious explanations aren't. The only thing clear is that there's a lot of activity under the covers that effects both performance and longevity. Intel has done a pretty good job with their documentation; I'd like to see more from the rest of the vendors. Reply
velis - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkOops: Block size is 256 KB, not MB Reply
rcpratt - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkNow on newegg, fyi. Reply
StormyParis - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkI'm deeply bothered by the disapearance of the tests that showed (only) 25% better level-loading times, and my comments about that.
I thought Anand was one of the last intelligent and honest sites around. Good bye guys, it's been nice while it lasted. Reply
Kougar - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkNoticed that on the last page the Random Read and Random Write charts need to be switched to align with the actual text above/between them. Reply
jimhsu - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkPure conjecture, but read this, specifically page 14:
Possibly Intel is using a longer BCH error correction code to get the 10-15/bit BER rate? Reply
jimhsu - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkAlso interesting from there was the fact that errors in hard drives usually occur in bursts i.e P(error in bit b|error in bit b-1) is high vs. errors in SSDs which are basically randomly distributed. Reply
Robear - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkThanks for the quick update. I'm on the edge of my seat with these new drives. The suspense reminds me of when Conroe first debuted ;)
Given the apparent quality of the controller, I'd like to assume that the low sequential writes were intentional to some degree. I'm sure Intel's engineers had to make some design decisions, and it appears as if they've chosen to sacrifice sequential writes in most (if not all) cases in favor of random writes.
I think Intel is on the right track with the controllers on these drives. If you look at desktop usage patterns, your random reads / writes reign supreme. Sequential writes are the most infrequent operations.
Anyway, that's based on the assumption that random write performance and sequential write performance are mutually exclusive somehow (supported by the X-25E benches...).
VERY interesting.
I'm also very interested to see how interfaces and controllers try to keep up with the drastic increase in storage bandwidth for the enterprise. The current mass storage architecture is mature and versatile. Going straight PCI-E seems to be a step backwards in architecture in exchange for raw performance. It seems to me to be an immediate stop-gap, and I'm not sure how many serious companies will buy into this fusion-IO thing long-term.
I'd personally rather have 7 SLC's in a RAID 5EE over two redundant PCI-E cards and one hot-spare. It's far more cost efficient, and I think everyone will agree hot-swapping SAS/SATA is a lot easier than hot-swapping an internal card.
All and all, very exciting.
glugglug - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkPCI-E Will be even be an even shorter term stop gap than most people realize.
PCI-E x1 bandwidth is the same as regular PCI: 133MBps.
So PCI-E x4 like the Fusion I/O uses is actually slightly below the SATA 3.0 600MBps spec that will be out soon.
glugglug - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkActually I just looked this up, its rated higher than I thought, especially since they doubled it with PCI-express 2.0.
2.0 is 500MB/s per lane, so theoretically the PCI-e 4x cards could get up to 2GB/s
Still with the rate these things are improving I think that is 2 years away. Reply
iwodo - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkYou really dont need 4x Slot. PCI - E 2.0 2x Slot already gives you 1GB/s
Since PCI-E Express 3.0 is coming at 1GB/s single Slot. I think 2x for compatibility is reasonable enough. Reply
araczynski - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - link...this is basically saying the drives are great (assuming the price is much better than the X25-E) as long as you're not moving large files around?
i.e. the relatively infrequent software installations wouldn't be optimal, but otherwise it would be quite a good drive? or like an OS drive basically?
can you throw in an average 7200 rpm hard drive into the mix for a relative comparison? Reply
araczynski - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkooops, never mind, forgot about the velociraptor in there :) Reply
bobsmith1492 - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkPerhaps a log scale would be appropriate to show the orders of magnitude in difference between the drives! Reply
iwodo - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkThe 64Gb 8Gx8 MLC cost average 12.5. Ofcoz since Intel are making the Flash themselves ( or Joint Venture ) they are already making a profit on Flash. 10 of those = 125. I think controller may be a 90nm tech cost around $15. Again Intel is making profit on the controller as well. Packaging and DRAM etc, the 80GB SSD should cost $160 to make.
I believe that NAND price is still based on 50NM - 40NM price. So 34nm should cost less. Hopefully in a years time it will cost 50% less.
In 2010, SSD should finally take off. Reply
KenAF - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkHas Intel committed to supporting TRIM with a firmware update on G2? Reply
smjohns - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkYeah Intel have confirmed that TRIM support will be delivered as part of a firmware upgrade to be released when Windows7 supports this. Apparently for XP & Vista machines this will also require supporting software to be installed as neither have inbuilt TRIM functionality.
Not so good news for the original G1 drives as it does not seem that Intel will be releasing similar firmware for these. Reply
ITexpert77 - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkHi, thanks for the great article, although would love to see reviews on the smaller capacity drives (e.g. the 80GB Intel) that most people buy, instead of the expensive ones.
Also I read terrible reports of unreliability on Intel SSDs (blue screens, incompatibilities). It seems way too risky to me to put any SSD in RAID-0
Would love a review on the new Crucial SSDs, they just came out this week, have very good read/write rates, they are available NOW on the Crucial website, are quite CHEAP, but there are no reviews yet, not even what controller they use. Reply
trivik12 - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkNo technology is 100% reliable. Even enterprise hard disks fail quite a lot. Intel's SSD is as reliable any other SSD. I dont think you have to worry on that count.
I wish intel had bumped up the warranty to 3 years. That would speed up the adoption of ssd. Reply
smjohns - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkI too am disappointed that Intel have failed to improve their sequential write figures when everything else seems to have been.
What I would like to know is if Intel can do anything with the G2 firmware that will improve sequential write performance without effecting the other numbers? or is this a hardware limitation and as such we will need to wait for the G3 or 34nm SLC drives?
Also in the real world, where will this sequential write performance bottleneck really affect or be noticable for laptop users? Copying large files to the drive? Unzipping files? or some other task?
This sort of information would really be useful in deciding whether to go for the new Intel drive or the Vertex in time for Windows 7.
Out of interest, is there any news on when the OCZ Vertex Turbo drives will be included with these tests? Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkHonestly I doubt we'll see significant gains in sequential write performance with this generation. Intel could improve sequential write performance but I believe it would be at the expense of random performance, which for desktop users is a bit more important.
Copying large files to the drive will be the biggest indication of the limited write speeds compared to the Samsung/Indilinx offerings. Even at 70MB/s the X25-M is faster than any hard drive you'd stick in your notebook, but it's definitely slower than the Vertex/Samsung SSDs.
In my opinion it's random read/write performance that ultimately matters, as you tend to not copy huge files to such a small drive on a regular basis once you have everything setup.
I should have the first Vertex Turbo drive by the end of next week.
Take care,
Anand Reply
deegee - Wednesday, August 05, 2009 - linkPersonally my feelings on this is that I believe that [medium to large] Sequential Writes are equally as important as [small] Random Writes.
I have noticed that especially on SSD reviews, the common random write tests are 4kb sized and deemed most important by many.
I honestly have not seen any one validated bit of information anywhere showing that [small] Random Writes are the highest percentage file IO that desktop PCs write out, in fact it is just the opposite
Most data files written by common productivity software are almost always larger than 4kb, and most software either performs a backup-rename or write-then-delete so partial file small block update/overwrite is not an issue; with growing web content the browser cache files are getting larger, as is most temp files; and one of the most heavy users of the hard drive is the Windows page file and they are optimized to perform large sequential file writes. See this page: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/05/05/suppor...">http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/0...nd-q-a-f...
"Should the Page File be placed on SSDs? Yes."
"Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1."
"Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size."
Personally I am looking for SSDs with higher Sequential Write performance and would welcome some "real world" tests in the many reviews on the Internet since I don't believe that what we are getting is valid information in this regard. For example, 128kb through 1MB writes would give a more valid idea of page file performance on a drive.
Reviewers need to educate themselves on how the OS works.
emboss - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkThe poor random write performance is likely due to the controller lacking hardware (or having slow hardware) for the MLC ECC calculations. SLC flash doesn't require such heavy ECC, and so the X25-E's don't hit this bottleneck. It's unlikely to be fixed via firmware, though I was personally hoping that they would include it in this new revision of the controller. Reply
emboss - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkArrgh, just noticed I put random instead of sequential. Replace "poor random write performance" with "poor sequential write performance". Reply
ssj4Gogeta - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkDon't know about you, but 70 MB/s is more than enough for me. I'll happily trade sequential write for random write. Especially since the alternatives are so much slower in random write. You'll notice random write performance much more than you will sequential write performance. How many times per day do you copy/move multi-GB files, especially since you're probably only going to use it as a system drive? Maybe a couple times per day? Compare that to the fact that random writes keep happening in the background for as long as you use your computer. Reply
JakFrost - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkI've read AnandTech's SSD Anthology and decided to go with the Intel X25-M G1 80GB MLC SSD drive on 2009-06-10 for $314 USD at Newegg. Due to a incompatibility with the nVidia nForce4 chipset I couldn't use the drive and I had to upgrade my entire system early to an Intel Core i7 with Asus P6T Motherboard with X58 and ICH10R. I only got to use the SSD starting in July, 2009 and I've been using it for a month with Windows 7 RC.
The performance is absolutely fantastic and I think that this upgrade and the troubles were worth it. However now I hear that Intel might not release a firmware upgrade for the Generation 1 drives to enable TRIM support and this seriously pisses me off. On top of this the new G2 drives seems to perform faster for Random Writes. I am contemplating on putting up my G1 drive for sale on eBay now to recoup almost all of the money that I spent on it so I can purchase a G2 drive with TRIM support upgrade potential.
If Intel would have come out and promissed support for TRIM for the Generation 1 drives I would most likely keep it but unless that happens in the next week or two I'm going to dump this G1 like a hot potato.
One thing that I would love to know is what is the actual sale date of the G2 drives and what will the street price be for the 80GB model. Reply
Gary Key - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkPricing is here - http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?... Reply
NishiGotanda - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkJakfrost - both G2 models have been on sale here in Tokyo for 2 days already, albeit in limited quantities. I picked up a G2 160 Gb one yesterday for JPY 49,000, that's $519 in today's exchange rate. It's humming along nicely in my MacBook Pro now, I'll have to pick up another one ASAP. Reply
DatabaseFrk - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - link
compare the X25-Mg1's workstation against the X25-Eg1's:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performanc...">http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-performanc... Reply
iwodo - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkReal Power usage - 150mw stated in the previous article is far too low compare to other SSD. Which is 2 - 4W. If what Intel state is true then it is many times better then its competitions.
How much different do we get if we could use DDR3 Ram? I.e if the cache is 5 times faster.
And why is Intel only using 32Mb Ram when others are already using 64Mb? ( Limited by SD Ram?? )
Another questions i have in mind, although not relevant to SSD, i hope someone or Anand could answer it here - WHY SD Ram. Why is it still existing? DDR2, which i believe to be the cheapest Ram out there, is faster, lower power, and higher capacity. Why do we keep producing SD Ram anyway?
Did Intel artificially limit the Seq Write performance?
Any pricing for X-18M? I would prefer my laptop using more space for battery. Reply
jimhsu - Saturday, August 01, 2009 - linkRe: SDRAM
Most likely cost saving. As memory (even PC133) is much faster (bandwidth wise) than Flash, and latencies are about the same, it's simply cheaper to go with SDRAM. The same reason why they didn't paint the G2... Reply
DatabaseFrk - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - link
Apart from sequential write performance (which isn't much an argument for enterprise performance) of the X25-Eg1, the X25Eg1's high price compared to the X25-Mg1 was argumented by the fact that it had superiour random write IOps: check tom's IOmeter File server I/O:
In a mixed random read/write scenario the X25-E was 3 times faster. This is what other tests suggests as well the X25-M has a randowm write IO/sec of under 1000 while the X25-E is somewhere 3000~5000 IOps? But the Random 4kb write graphs shows the X25-Mg2 is faster here. I am missing something here? Is there a test missing showing the X25-Mg2's poor random IOps write performans to the X25-E? An IOmeter test?
I am considering 4 X25-Mg2 in a raid-0 on my Areca 1231ML for working on a 15GB~20GB dataware house on SQL Server, or would 2~3 X25-Eg1's be faster? Reply
has407 - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkCouple things to note about those benchmarks...
1. PC Perspective's recent benchmarks show the X25M-G2 and the X25M-G1 both peaking at ~16K IOPs with IOMeter database pattern at a queue depth of 32.
3. The THG numbers in that article (and elsewhere) appear low compared to many others. They also show falloff starting at queue depth 8 for the X25E and 16 for the X25M--those are odd and suspicious. They don't provide details, but I suspect they used one of the Promise SATA controllers on the test system, and the funny numbers are primarily an artifact of the controller.
3. THG used IOMeter 2003.05.10 for the IO performance tests in that article, which is ancient; 2006.07.27 was the last release. I've noticed significant differences in results in what are otherwise nominally similar benchmark setups depending on IOmeter version. E.g., if you look in the "charts" section at THG, you'll find the X25E tested with IOMeter 2006.07.27; database pattern = 6400 IOPs vs. ~5000 IOPs for IOMeter 2003.05.10 in that article; yet in another article using IOMeter 2006.07.27 they show ~66oo IOPs.
4. We don't know the test parameters... partition with a test file? raw disk? how big? While I'd expect test size to have much less effect with SSD's than HDD's, that information isn't provided.
In short, until sites provide much more information about the details of their tests configurations and parameters, comparing benchmarks from different sites--or often from the same site--is a crap shoot. Not to mention that you can be pretty sloppy with HDD benchmarks and still get pretty similar numbers; SSD benchmarking really needs more attention to details that might not matter much in the HDD world.
p.s. The X25M-G2 (both 80GB and 160GB) is spec'd faster than the X25E in all respects except serial write and write latency which is the same for both, which suggests the X25M-G2. However, I haven't seen any reputable comparable benchmarks between the two. Reply
has407 - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkOops, sorry, clarification: "...except serial write and write latency which is the same for both..." should read "...except serial write which is slower, and write latency which is the same..." Reply
vol7ron - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkDid you by any chance have the opportunity to compare the various Indilinx Barefoot (MLC)s? I'm curious if there's any variations in the firmwares or even unspotted hardware differences.
vol7ron Reply
Diesel Donkey - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkAnand, thanks for the great preliminary review. I think, however, that your figure for average latency in random reads is missing. Reply
anactoraaron - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkAny chance of seeing any of the new expresscard SSD's reviewed soon? This would be the way I would go... but I don't know enough about these drives to take a chance on it meeting my needs for my laptop. The wintec filemate 48gb would be perfect for OS and programs and would allow me to keep everything else in my system the same. This drive claims read/write speeds at 115/65mbps.
I guess what I'm getting at is... do these studder? Are they fast? Would make a great review... Reply
Sunday Ironfoot - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkCould you possibly benchmark these drives with BitLocker or TruCrypt as I'm interested to see the performance impact of using full hard drive encryption with these SSDs. Reply
swish - Wednesday, January 06, 2010 - linkI've got an x-25M G1 80GB and I installed truecrypt whole-disk encryption on it.
Windows Experience Index dropped from 7.4 to 5.9 after I encrypted.
ATTO disk benchmarks dropped from around 70MB/sec writes and 220MB/sec reads to ~65MB/sec writes and 130-145MB/sec reads.
"Seek" latencies are still pretty low.
Keep in mind I have a slower CPU (AMD AthlonX2 4800+) so my encrypt/decrypt speed isn't stellar (TrueCrypt benchmarks AES at around 200MB/sec which is what I'm using)
Anyone else care to share? :) I'm curious about BitLocker performance too.
Swish Reply
Dospac - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkI too am extremely interested in this type of testing. Just the numbers on one of the new Intel drives with and without fde would suffice, don't need an all-out comparison. Reply
has407 - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkThanks for the update! Based on your numbers, a couple items you might look at when you do more testing, assuming you're using IOmeter(?) ...
1. 4KB random write 34.5MBs = ~8.4K IOPs and a latency of ~118us = very close to the Intel spec ("up to" 8.6K IOPs and 115us latency).
2. 4KB Random read 58.5MBs = ~14.3K IOPs and a latency of ~70us = significantly lower IOPs and a bit lower latency than Intel specs ("up to" 35K IOPs and 85us latency), and significantly lower latency than you show (200us).
Intel uses IOmeter with a queue depth of 32; are you using the same, or is there another possible bottleneck (especially on the read side) in your test system?
Or maybe methinks Intel's 35K IOPs 4KB random read claim is bogus? That would imply a latency of ~29us (or ~143MBs), but they also spec 85us latency, which gives ~11.8K IOPs--which more closely matches your test numbers. Reply
has407 - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkApologies, last paragraph in my previous post has a brain fart... it assumes IOPs are proportional to latency, which is obviously false with multiple channels and pipelining. Duh. Other benchmarks (e.g., PC Perspective) suggest 35K IOPs might be achievable in theory, but I've yet to see anything close to that number in practice. Reply
MODEL3 - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - link"While I don't believe that 70MB/s write speeds are terrible, Intel does need to think about improving performance here because the competition is already far better. The more important values are still random read/write performance, but sequential write speed is an area that Intel continues to lag behind in."
Well maybe with the introduction of the 320GB model with increased Random 4KB Writes (10.6 IOPS?) and with 166MHz SDRAM instead of 133MHz maybe they can hit around 95MB/s (85 advertised) in Sequential write performance Reply
DominionSeraph - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkPC133 SDRAM has a bandwidth of 1.066GB/s. Somehow I don't think it's the problem. Reply
sotti - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkAny update on the ammount of writes the drive will take before it's Kaput.
I know MLC lifespan is improving, but an update on how long a drive like this would last as an OS drive w/ a page file would be nice to know. Reply
has407 - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkUnfortunately as Anand mentioned, Intel doesn't provide detailed durability specs for the M/MLC drives, other than a "Minimum Useful Life: 5 years" (from the datasheet). While the 34nm parts may have actually have a lower per-cell durability than the 50nm parts, I would hope and expect they have compensated for that with additional sparing and ECC. (The BER for all Intel's SSD drives are the same: "1 sector per 10^15 bits read".)
Intel provides more data for the E/SLC drives: "1 petabyte of random writes (32 GB)" and "2 petabyte of random writes (64 GB)" (from the datasheet). Assuming "random writes" means evenly distributed, that implies ~31.5K erase/write cycles. Again, however, I would hope and expect that Intel is being very conservative with those numbers. MLC drives typically can sustain an order-of-magnitude (or more) fewer cycles than SLC, but then again they're cheaper, so more room for spare cells and better ECC.
I think (or at least hope) there's little reason to doubt Intel's "5 year" assertion; validation is pretty straightforward, and they seem to have done their homework in all other respects. Not to mention that SSD typical failure mode (write and non-catastrophic) is preferrable to HDD (read and catastrophic), assuming of course it's done properly...
Given that Intel is holding their controller very close to the vest, my guess, and only a guess, is that Intel is being very conservative with writes (more power and slower programming = longer life), or might be doing a full write-read-verify, which might explain why their write speeds are lower than the competition. If so, good for them. Last thing the SSD market needs is to have large numbers of drives failing in weird ways in a couple years.
p.s As far as pagefile activity... I wouldn't worry about it unless you're constantly and seriously overcommitted on memory. There's a lot less pagefile activity than most people think. But that's another subject. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkI believe Intel is still rating these things as having a minimum useful life of 5 years.
Take care,
Anand Reply
InternetGeek - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkPrice/Capacity wise I'm just one or two steps away from buying my first SSD.
tomoyo - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkI'd make a conjecture that intel's very good random write performance may somehow relate to why the sequential write isn't as good, although this isn't evident in the SLC version of their SSD. The other possibility is that Intel is distinguishing between their SLC and MLC series through lower write. I'd have to say that random read and write are way more important for a normal desktop user than anything else though, I always notice latency and responsiveness far more than a small change in long term transfer speed. Personally I'm very interested in getting a 80GB/160GB as a main os drive for both my primary box and a ZFS RAID server/storage box. Reply
haze4peace - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkWith the recent price drops I'm considering getting this drive in its 80GB flavor as an OS drive. Sequential write speed is the least of my concerns, because once you load on your OS and other apps, you barely write in big blocks. Reply
pennyfan87 - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkI think Anand forgot to include the G.Skill Falcon series along with the other Indilinx MLC drives.
Just sayin'. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkwoops, you're right, table updated :) Reply
hyc - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkAnd isn't the Samsung controller in the OCZ Summit also used in the Corsair P256 and SuperTalent MasterDrive SX? Reply
hyc - Friday, July 24, 2009 - linkdoh. Corsair P256 is already listed.... Reply
deputc26 - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkGiven the choice which controller would you rather have in your drive? despite samsung's reputation, I'm going with indilinx. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkMy pick is still the Intel drive, but I'd take Indilinx over Samsung (assuming there are no compatibility issues with the system I was putting it in).
Take care,
Anand Reply
deputc26 - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkI also pick Intel as number one but the battle for second place is a little grayer, Samsung is more expensive which leads many to believe it is faster which of course is not the case. Reply
pennyfan87 - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkso i heard you're giving the sample away to your readers... Reply
Souka - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkI heard there were two samples being given away... ;) Reply
Zelog - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkI'm guessing the new FLASH chips aren't BGA, then they don't need the potting. Would explain why the new controller still has it. Reply
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tajmahal - Thursday, July 30, 2009 - linkwell hello! Nothing like a little corruption of data is there.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=15827">http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=15827 Reply
has407 - Sunday, July 26, 2009 - linkTake a close look at the part numbers. A bit hard to read given the resolution of the pic's, but I'd bet the old unit uses the equivalent of Micron MT29F64G08CFxxx 64Gb parts, and the new unit uses the equivalent of Micron MT29F128G08CJxxx 128Gb parts.
Micron production MLC parts for both are available only in TSOP 48. The package dimensions also appear to be the same, and per ONFI 1.0 (on which Intel says they're based), that could be easily verified from the package dimensions. The controller is obviously BGA.
As to why the potting or lack of... thermal, shock, anti-whatever... but I'd guess Intel has just gotten better with the qualification/manufacturing process. Reply
FaaR - Thursday, July 23, 2009 - linkBGA chips typically do not need potting. In fact, the vast, vast majority of BGAs - including some that run very hot - are not potted at all.
If the original Intel SSD used extensive potting - I don't know myself, I've not opened up my 60GB SLC drive - I'd assume it would be as an anti-counterfiting measure to prevent far-east outfits from screwing with the innards and then selling the drives more expensively as a higher capacity unit. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 - linkVery true, although the new controller doesn't have it to the exact same extent.
Take care,
Anand Reply


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The Haswell Ultrabook Review: Core i7-4500U Testedby Anand Lal Shimpi on 6/9/2013 9:00 AM EST
87 Comments
Back to Article
StealthGhost - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkIs PCMark 8 Home less demanding than 1080p video? If not, it doesn't seem like the Asus can call itself an Ultrabook.
Still, impressive gains in battery life. I hope this will carry over, to some extent at least, into the CPUs that will be in laptops like the MacBook Pros. Guess we will have to see when that review comes out =) Reply
StealthGhost - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - link*Acer Reply
Death666Angel - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkAs far as I know the Ultrabook specs don't define a minimum luminance for the display. So Anand's test isn't relevant for the Ultrabook spec. Reply
axien86 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkLaptopmag just reviewed the Sony Vaio based on the i7-4500u and they also noted that performance wise the Haswell offered marginal improvement over Ivy Bridge laptops, while battery life was indicated as improved.
One important characteristic that most laptop users want to know is regards to heat and fan noise. Laptopmag found that the Haswell i7-4500u based Sony Vaio found that the back of the laptop "reached a more troubling 110 degrees." They also found fan noise was definitely noticeable in a quiet room just running Word and a Youtube video.
The question is, why hasn't Anandtech run extensive temperature and noise characteristic analysis on Intel Haswell processors and your current laptop? Reply
Kristian Vättö - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkLikely because of lack of time. As Anand said in the article, he got the unit while in Computex, so basically he did the review between meetings. I'm pretty sure he didn't have the equipment with him to do temperature or noise tests properly but I'm sure this is something that will be tested in later reviews.
Also, keep in mind that heat and fan noise are system-dependent. If the Vaio has poor cooling, then it will be hot and loud but that's not Haswell's fault (I'm not saying this is the case but we obviously need more reviews before any conclusions can be drawn). Reply
mavere - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - link"The question is, why hasn't Anandtech run extensive temperature and noise characteristic analysis on Intel Haswell processors and your current laptop?"
The WHr of battery that a laptop consumes is the exact same thing as its heat output.
Anand is trying to test the Haswell platform, not the design deficiencies of any specific manufacturer. Sony's problems are its own. Reply
n13L5 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkCause they had to run their test in Taiwan with a borrowed machine?
I was rather disturbed by the temperature of Sony's Vaio Pro, as well as the instability of the carbon case, which must be paper thin... And their keyboard backlight has the worst bleed I've ever seen, they should have a look at Lenovo and Samsung keyboards...
Well, I'll be waiting for more tests and the ULT Haswell with the Iris 5100 GPU. Maybe that'll rack up a high enough temperature to fry a steak. Reply
akbisw - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkSony has terrible cooling system in their laptops in general. The worst I have seen done by any manufacturer. Even my my old acer before their "reiteration" had better cooling design than current VAIO systems. Reply
Dnann - Friday, June 14, 2013 - linkHe probably didn't have the time considering the circumstances... Reply
DanNeely - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkThe fact that companies historically known for horrible battery life are getting good results out of Haswell with Intel's help is promising; but starting from such a horribly low baseline makes getting gains much easier. I'm much more interested in seeing what companies who've historically offered good battery run times will be able to do with Haswell. Reply
broccauley - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - linkWere Acer not known for their "Timeline" series of laptops which were known for groundbreaking battery life? Reply
smilingcrow - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - linkApple are claiming dramatically improved battery life. Reply
deeps6x - Sunday, July 14, 2013 - linkI just don't get why Intel caved to MS pressure and made touchscreen a requirement for Haswell. Everyone I know who does image editing insists on doing it on a matte screen.
Metro was a huge mistake.
Gaah, just too pissed about this to make a coherent comment.
I want haswell with a matte screen and 13 and 15 inch 'ultrabook' size options. I guess manufacturers will just have to invent some new name to call their matte screen ultrabooks. Perhaps just call them 'laptops' and say screw you and your goof ass naming rules Intel. Reply
Xenon14 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkIt would be useful to see productivity and multithreaded benchmarks like Excel and Fritz. It'd be nice if you provide a few charts with higher TDP Cpu's so we can see the relative performance differences. Reply
Synaesthesia - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkWow Anand you delivered! Once again such an in-depth analysis of EVERYTHING relevant to the platform. Nowhere else can I find this information! Reply
uditrana - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkExcept for one thing. How did they change the backlighting in the S7. I am really interested in knowing. Reply
n13L5 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkyeah, they did a good job doing that on location and before anyone else :D Reply
meacupla - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkThat's great news.
Now, I can't wait to see it in surface pro. Reply
B3an - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkYeah Surface Pro with one of these, in a thinner and lighter design (should be possible now) with Windows 8.1 = ultimate device. Reply
MrSpadge - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkOr the Thinkpad Helix! Reply
Rogatti - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkGPU Intel.........no thanks !!!!!
Kaveri ... where is you !!! ... do not let me down ! Reply
A5 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkAnything based on Steamroller isn't going to be able to touch these battery life numbers.
If you don't care about battery life, you can get much better value for your money outside of the ultrabook form factor. Reply
Samus - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkThe GPU performance is slowly creeping up to AMD; AMD won't be able to use their GPU as a crutch much longer. Reply
Death666Angel - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkJust the ridiculously lower price. Reply
kyuu - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkYeah, because AMD isn't going to be improving their iGPU tech at all...? Reply
nunomoreira10 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linknot really, intel currently uses an abnormal 180mm2 of die area on 22nm (hd5000) for the same perfomance and efficiency of an 80mm2 28nm amd gpu.
the are trying to go all out, but their gpu tech basically sucks Reply
smartypnt4 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkWhere'd you see the analysis of how much space HD5000 takes? I haven't seen anything on that. Maybe I just missed it...
180mm2 of die area for Haswell ULT total is what's been reported, and AMD's Trinity 4C at 28nm is 246mm2. The number of transistors in each is basically identical. The difference comes in where Intel and AMD spend transistors. I'd wager that AMD spends more transistors in GPU, and Intel spends more in CPU.
To be frank, I don't see how you can assert that Intel's <90mm2 of graphics on an integrated chip has appreciably lower efficiency than any other mobile part on the market. I could be wrong, but I just don't see it as that far off. Reply
smartypnt4 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkNever mind. Found Anand's analysis. There's no way that's correct though. If 1/2 of GT3 takes up 87mm2, then full GT3 takes up 174mm2. Haswell 2C ULT is a 184mm2 die. There's no way the GPU takes up 90% of the chip. Over half, sure. but 90% is ridiculously high. Something in the 75-80% range is the absolute highest I'd expect. Reply
Homeles - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkA bit disappointed to see the CPU performance largely stand pat compared to Ivy bridge, but it nailed the one major thing that mattered: battery life.
GPU performance isn't awfully inspiring either. I suppose that I won't see the performance gains I was hoping for until Broadwell.
Oh well. I suppose Fall IDF isn't too far away. Reply
meacupla - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkWell, i7-4500U is clocked 100mhz slower, but haswell IPC is about 10% better, so obviously CPU performance is not going to differ by much.
GPU performance for HD5000 is pretty much what was expected from early intel slides. Iris pro is what was touted as performing up to 'more than 2x' performance. Reply
xTRICKYxx - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkAMD's target market has been at a considerably lower price platform than Intel's Ultrabook. Reply
zdw - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - link6 PCIe 2.0 lanes is probably the minimum possible for a MacBook Air, as ThunderBolt + WiFi would take up a 4x and 1x respectively. Reply
risa2000 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkSo, if I minimize task manager into tray, which updates, let's say, every second, does it mean I will wake up the GPU and save and restore the buffer into display's DRAM every second just for this update? What would be the impact on battery life?
(If there is a tray on Win 8, as of which I am not sure right now.) Reply
tential - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkThere is a tray. Reply
A5 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkIt would wake up the GPU whenever something that is on-screen changes. Once per second is still much better than 60 times per second. Reply
Synaesthesia - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkIt can remain in sleep state for most of that second so it won't impact the battery much, particularly with Haswell. Reply
mikk - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkWhy is there no memory configuration detail in the test? This is tremendously important especially for integrated GPU tests. Because we don't know this all gaming tests are completely useless. Bad job. Reply
Homeles - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkYou've completely missed the point of this review. Reply
mikk - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkI think you did. Reply
Egg - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkI'm assuming they're comparable between the Acer S7s. But I could be wrong. Reply
Homeles - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkMaybe you didn't catch on with Anand's "I was running this in my hotel room" statement, but the idea was to get the anxiously awaited battery life numbers out to the public. Reply
seapeople - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - linkYou mean a hotel room in Taiwan is not the normal procedure for a pedantically complete review? Reply
ciparis - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkOT: Opening paragraph typo: "Haswell less than a month after the arrival of a new CEO," Reply
jhoff80 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkI know you said that you disabled any Display Power Savings options in the Intel driver, but still, out of curiosity, it would be interesting to know what kind of effect those have. I mean, it wasn't made explicit, but does this specific ultrabook support Panel Self Refresh? If so, what improvements does that give? Reply
yoyoma245 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkI don't understand why battery life increased going from pcmark8 home to pcmark8 creative. Wouldn't a more demanding test suite result in reduced battery life? Reply
meacupla - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkCould Minecraft be added to benchmarks for ultrabooks?
HD5000 is obviously quite pitiful at eye candy games, so how about popular games that are most likely to be played on them?
I get around 34~40fps with surface pro, which is playable, but could be better. Reply
esgreat - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkI don't think I've seen benchmarks for HD5000 yet. The i7-4500u uses HD4400 graphics.
With 2x the EUs, HD5000 should give quite a performance boost, but not as fast as Iris. Reply
krumme - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkHaswell U improves excactly where it was needed; on the battery life. This segment dont need more cpu power or gpu power than ib, they want battery life.
This is the luxury product that ultrabooks are made for.
Haswell for the desktop was utterly unimportant, but this is excellent targeted and a very tangible improvement for everyone. Reply
name99 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - link"Haswell for the desktop was utterly unimportant"
Uhh, well apart from defining a rather different parallel programming model going forward... Reply
krumme - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkYes. Thats relevant in perhaps 5 years from now. Perhaps. Its a technology and innovative huge step forward, but hardly of any pratical importange to the consumers today. Reply
JDG1980 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkDo Haswell notebook chips have the same crazy high temperatures on full load that the Haswell desktop chips do? Reply
dealcorn - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkI am not comfortable with your suggestion that DEVSLP's 2 mw benefit shows exclusively/primarily when the system is asleep. I sense a big benefit at low loads because the SSD's can slip in and out of DEVSLP really fact. Let's have some testing, at your leisure. Will a SSD be in DEVSLP state 50% of the time while watching non HD video? I suspect power requirements during DEVSLP is the new idle power measurement for typical home use and SSD reviews should be revised accordingly.
Everything else: Bravo! Reply
Sivar - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkTypo:
"Haswell less than a month after the arrival of a new CEO"
Just trying to help out. :) Reply
kallogan - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkWhat a tech revolution, a bigger battery gives a bigger battery life. Reply
FwFred - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkReading is FUNdamental: "Using Acer's Aspire S7 as a comparison platform and NORMALIZING FOR BATTERY CAPACITY DIFFERENCES I measured anywhere from a 15% to a 60% increase in battery life thanks to the move to Haswell."
Emphasis mine. Reply
kallogan - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkScam. A well optimised ivy lap would do the same. Reply
Egg - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkProof? Reply
Homeles - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkI see that reading comprehension is not your strong point. Reply
kallogan - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkI just need more than one Haswell based laptop review to draw any conslusions. Reply
seapeople - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - linkMe too. I think Anand should have held any Haswell reviews until we've had a good five years for industry to comprehensively adopt the architecture and fundamentally evaluate the aggregate system stability on an enterprise-wide scale. Then he could submit all the reviews he had saved up. Reply
Freddo - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkI wonder if this CPU is powerful enough to run the PS2 emulator PCSX2 well, it require a somewhat decent CPU. Reply
bakedpatato - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkSo the M series socketed Mobile Haswells are not getting S0ix? Reply
stevechippy - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkCorrect, but there are U-series 28W TDP parts that aren't in the Ultrabook bracket AFAIK. Reply
Kevin G - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkTypo on page 7 on the Tomb Raider 1600 x 900 test graph: "Motion Blue".
http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7047/55515... Reply
Ryan Smith - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkThanks! Reply
name99 - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - link"The shift of consumer dollars to smartphones and tablets instead of notebooks and desktops won't be reversed, but a good launch here might at least help keep things moving ok until Silvermont, BayTrail and Merrifield can show up and fill the gaps in Intel's product stack."
I love you Anand, and I love your tech analysis. But it might be worth your team acquiring a business analyst, or at least asking those sorts of questions of your informants.
Silvermont does not "fill the hole in Intel's product stack" because that hole is business-based not tech-based. We saw the prices of Haswell a few days ago --- $250 and way up. Meanwhile the price of a high-end ARM SoC is, what, $20? That's one hell of a difference.
The problem intel faces is that, for many purposes, it's perfectly adequate to pay for the $20 ARM CPU rather than the $250 Intel CPU. Silvermont and the whole Atom strategy, rather than making things better make things worse. Yes, now maybe Intel captures $20 from sale of an Atom --- but that Atom is ALSO able to replace Haswell (or at least lower-end but still more expensive Intel CPUs). The SMART Intel strategy would have been to acquire an ARM ISA license, making competitive ARM CPUs at $20 (so you still capture from that market) but at least avoid competing so directly with your more expensive line.
Intel's problems from here on out are business problems. They have to compete with an architecture that is simple enough that Apple could put together a competitive CPU starting from scratch in two years, and they have to do so using an architecture that is so complicated it took Intel 5 years to out together a competitive CPU. Meanwhile they can't charge Haswell prices to maintain the massive parallel design teams that are required to create these ever more sophisticated x86 designs.
(And, to make life even worse, apart from the myriad own goals Intel has inflicted, they have MS in the background insisting on its charges for Windows x86, one more drag on the sale x86 in the tablet market.)
I don't think things are nearly as rosy for Intel as do you. Technically yes, they are well-positioned right now. But they seem to be in the position of DEC or IBM in the early 80s --- technically superb, but with an extremely problematic business model. And it's business model that determines the future, more than technology... Reply
rwei - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkIIRC Intel does have a full ARM license. But supporting ARM by making ARM parts competitive with Intel's x86 ones would be a blow to their future ability to extract economic rent for x86, as more software targeted at ARM became available.
Much preferable to decisively beat ARM for 1-2 generations with x86 parts - if they can manage it. Reply
peterfares - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkARM is going to keep getting better and better with or without Intel. It might be smart for them to have the best ARM chips because then they'd get the money from people buying ARM chips. Not too much better than the rest that it impacts their x86 chips though. Either way, I'm glad that we can get affordable x86 computers. Until Android can truly compete with Windows on the bigger screens I'll stick with x86 Windows. Android is a LONG ways away from being able to replace Windows for me. Intel is in a tough position though. Reply
meacupla - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkThe main short comings with ARM are the lack of processing power and the massive power consumption increase with faster chips. These chips are good enough for a majority of users and the OS' that run on them support just enough games and programs to keep those users happy.
Intel, on the other hand, have chips that are fast, but need to get their power consumption and heat output lower. There's no shortage of games and programs that only run on x86, so if you need to run a specific program that won't work on ARM, your choices become quite limited. Reply
Amagus - Sunday, June 09, 2013 - linkIs the increased battery size without increasing size/weight of the system a result of a better battery/design by Acer, or is it directly influenced by Haswell (eg lighter/smaller platform)? I noticed the thing happened with the Sony Vaio Duo Haswell design...they stuck in a bigger battery (in addition to a bigger screen) but it's weight barely went up to. Reply
FwFred - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkSingle package instead of two, integrated VRs instead of discrete. Perhaps this allows a smaller mainboard and allows a bigger battery? Reply
piroroadkill - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkNot impressed.
Yeah, the idle time battery life is better, but that GPU is super-lousy. In my opinion, Intel have done themselves a massive disservice by making crappy GPUs available with Haswell. The choice should be only 5100 and 5200. The others are a total waste of time, and barely interesting over HD 4000. Reply
nunomoreira10 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkThere is not a single 5100 17w sku, and the reason is power.
intel is going the nvidea and amd road, choices, this is the budget i7, want more, pay more. Reply
mikebelle - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkI still think he has a point though. While some consumers may prefer the battery life and/or cost savings. Intel seems to have made it very difficult to get access to any of there 5000 series graphics. I wouldn't be surprised to see Iris and Iris Pro come to a few Core i5 parts during Haswell's "refresh". Reply
samkathungu - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkIs it just me or are the releases coming from Intel about all the flavours of Haswell getting a little confusing? Probably a better communications strategy next time will benefit consumers.
The confusion over what graphics ships with the desktop or mobile parts is not pleasant. Reply
vipw - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkMaybe I'm bad at counting, but it still looks like there are two chips on the package. Reply
sheh - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkWhen are the i5 43xxM and 42xxM are going to be available? Reply
darthrevan13 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkSo no more PCIe 2.0? Will Thunderbolt be available for ULT/ULX processors? You could in theory connect a dGPU through that, right? Reply
Sugardaddy - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkOn page 2, you state that "any hopes for pairing a meaningfully high performance discrete GPU with Haswell ULT are dead."
But there is a lot of Ultrabooks coming out like the Aspire S3-392 with a discrete GT 735M, which is probably 50%-100% faster than the 620M in last year's Asus UX32VD.
How does that fit together? Is the 735M not "meaningfully faster" than HD4400/HD5000?
Thanks! Reply
extide - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkI was hoping charlie would be wrong. Sadly, he was right, Intel took away PCIe 3.0 and all CPU based PCIe lanes from this CPU. This is how the kill off AMD/nVidia competition, make it literally not an option. Scary as hell, I hope they don't start doing this to higher TDP SKU's. Reply
warezme - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link"the processor graphics story by finally delivering discrete GPU class gaming performance". I hate this summation being thrown around, as I'm sure it will get re quoted somewhere as gospel. It is definitely NOT discrete GPU class gaming performance in any shape or form. There should be a limit to what is considered discrete GPU performance, like maybe 30-60FPS at, at least 1600x900 resolution and game settings across the board for all games set to Medium. That is not crazy or unreasonable for a true discrete GPU you would actually go out and buy. It shouldn't be unreasonable than to expect that in a built in GPU that is sold as "discrete GPU" quality. Reply
gnx - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkKudos! You have to love AnandTech for providing such detailed analysis, so soon after Haswell was made public!
But it does seem that Haswell for Ultrabooks isn't so revolutionary as Intel seemed to imply. Not that we have much of a choice, since ARM isn't an option, and AMD doesn't provide much of an alternative, but I was personally hoping for more from Haswell.
Maybe it's change the equation for Windows Tablets? look forward to more from AnandTech! Reply
Kiijibari - Monday, June 10, 2013 - linkCan you please add Wh numbers in the Battery Life Test graph (http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7047/55504... or normalize them at least like in the previous tables? Seems to me that you compare 2 different batteries there. Haswell is great sure, but not THAT great ;-)
Yes it is explained in the text below, but a picture not matching the numbers in the text is useless and misleading. A picture should be worth more than 1000 words and not demand reading 1000 words of explanation ;-) Reply
broccauley - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - linkDoes anyone know what the status of "activity alignment" for power optimisation is on the Linux kernel and how it compares with Windows 8? I assume such techniques were added when the changes from the Android branch were merged? Reply
Henry 3 Dogg - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link"And today, we had to track down a pre-production Haswell Ultrabook in Taiwan to even be able to bring you this review of Haswell ULT."
And today, a day later, you can pick up a production Haswell ULT based MacBook Air in your local Apple store. Reply
lhurt - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - linkSo are Platform Activity Manager (Windows) and Timer Coalescing (OSx) two different OS implementations of the same idea, to take advantage of Intel's Power Optimizer and are Haswell cpus required to get the benefit? Reply
fteoath64 - Saturday, June 15, 2013 - link"Any hopes for pairing a meaningfully high performance discrete GPU with Haswell ULT are dead."
This is Intel's method of CLOSING other discrete GPU solution on their cpus towards the future. This is a predatory move and premeditated !. Just stop buying their chips as this is forcing users into a proprietary path using their inferior gpu technology. It is a selfish and disgusting move. Now ARM is going to cream them on the desktop side as well soon and server side in time. Reply


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