Intel 760P 512GB

The competition is hotting up.

Here

we have the outlier of our NVMe roundup - the Intel 760p we tested is the only 512GB drive in our roundup, and is clearly targeted at upgrading SATA users. SATA drives remain very popular, but NVMe drives are the future thanks to their far superior performance. Their weakness is still pricing, though - something Intel is attempting to rectify, firstly with the 600p series, and now the updated 760p series. The competition never sits still though, and 760p series drives need to offer both value and performance at their respective price points to compete in an increasingly cut-throat marketplace.

The 760p brings Intel right up to date with the latest SSD technologies. Like the other tested drives, it’s a standard form factor NVMe M.2 2280 drive that makes use of a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. The flash itself is Intel’s own 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. The Silicon Motion 2262 controller used in the 760p series offers all the key features you’d expect on a 2018 SSD, including AES 256-bit encryption, TRIM, garbage collection, and S.M.A.R.T. monitoring. Intel also deserves credit for its impressive SSD Toolbox software and data migration tool, which can be downloaded from the Intel website.

IMPRESSIVE READ PERFORMANCE

Intel’s first attempt at a budget NVME drive, the 600p was always good value, but in many cases, it was barely faster than a SATA SSD. The 760p is in a different league though, and offers vastly superior performance. It generally can’t match the overall performance of the top tier drives, but then they typically cost more. The 760p is particularly strong at read operations. It shares this characteristic with the Adata Gammix drive, which uses the same controller, and both offer nearly identical read performance. Intel obviously got this part right. Fast writes are important too, but it’s the reads that make the drive feel fast and responsive in your system, so good work Intel.

It’s no slouch with writes either, though during testing we did notice performance dropping away under heavily sustained load, likely due to cache saturation. It’s particularly noticeable during the very tough AS-SSD test. This is something that not many end users need to worry about with typical workloads though. Finally, it’s important to note that we are testing a 512GB drive against 1TB drives. Typically, larger capacity drives have a small performance advantage over their lower capacity siblings.

Intel also deserves credit for its impressive SSD Toolbox software and data migration tool.

IT’S A BIT TOO PRICEY TO RECOMMEND RIGHT NOW

The 512GB 760p is a decent drive performance-wise, but as we move towards late 2018, it needs to maintain its price advantage to stay competitive. In the 512GB range for example, the 500GB 970 EVO is only about $15 more - an easy amount to justify for a superior drive. Intel will need to drop the price of the 760p series drives in order to regain its position as the value king of NVMe SSDs. CHRIS SZEWCZYK