Intel SSD 730 240GB Review

Performance Analysis

The Intel SSD 730 240GB has one of the very best results in AS SSD's sequential read speed test with 524MB/sec, which is 22MB/sec faster than the SSD 530. However, it isn't as responsive to CrystalDiskMark's data pattern, as here it only manages 478MB/sec, which is no better than the SSD 530 and one of the worst on test.

As expected, sequential write speeds are nothing exciting – it hits 276MB/sec in AS SSD and 288MB/sec in CrystalDiskMark (both of which are still over the quoted 270MB/sec). At these speeds, it's actually slower than the SSD 530 as well as every other tested drive. As we said, however, you can expect significantly higher performance on the 480GB model which has twice as many NAND dies per controller channel. It's also worth pointing out that Samsung's SSD 840 Evo drives have a TurboWrite buffer, and if this is filled by a continuous write operation speeds will drop. In the case of the 250GB model, speeds fall to 270MB/sec.


The SSD 730 240GB manages 35.08MB/sec for 4KB random reads in AS SSD, which is almost 10MB/sec faster than the SSD 530 240GB and only slower than Samsung's drives. However, the SSD 530 is faster in CrystalDiskMark. As for write speeds, there are small gains over the SSD 530 in both AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark, but Samsung, OCZ and Crucial all have an advantage with their latest drives.

At higher queue depths, random read speeds are decent but not the fastest – the drive manages 348MB/sec in AS SSD and 372MB/sec in CrystalDiskMark. Meanwhile, write speeds just manage to trump those of the SSD 530 but still aren't overly impressive. Again, this is a limitation of the NAND layout, and performance will be higher in the 480GB model. Even so, it's worth noting that in both synthetic tests OCZ's Vector and Vertex SSDs are almost 100MB/sec faster at the competing capacities.

As we mentioned, we also ran our synthetic tests on a RAID 0 array of two SSD 730 240GB drives. The results show that the drives scale very well in sequential and high queue depth random workloads (RAID 0 has no impact on single queue depth random performance, which is still limited by the controller). However, the same can be said of the SSD 840 Evo 250GB drives that we also tested, and these are on par or better than the Intel set-up in almost every test. However, it's again important to bear in mind that SSD 840 Evo performance will drop if a write operation exceeds the TurboWrite buffer.


Real world performance from the SSD 730 240GB is very strong. It has a middling result in the PCMark 7 gaming test that is similar to the SSD 530 240GB and slower than the Samsung drives. However, it's second best in the Starting Applications workload, where it loses only to the SSD 840 Pro. It's also the fastest drive on test when it comes to Windows boot times, as it narrowly trumps the SSD 530 240GB to the top spot.

Conclusion

Enterprise SSDs typically have to sacrifice peak performance to achieve higher levels of endurance and sustained performance. Our tests show that burst performance, which is more important for the average SSD user, favours more mainstream drives like Samsung's SD 840 Evo. While the SSD 730's factory overclocks do bring it up to speed in some metrics, it still cannot hide its enterprise roots. The high endurance rating (and price tag) as well as power failure protection are features well worth having for professional users with write intensive workloads, and the controller inside the SSD 730 is renowned for sustaining performance over time too. Therefore, while widened support for hardware encryption protocols and better idle power consumption would make the SSD 730 a more attractive product, it remains a relatively niche SSD that straddles the line between the consumer and enterprise markets.