Dell T7910 and Intel DC P3700 SSD

[ColB]

Hi. Pulling hair out over obtaining spec performance of Intel DC P3700 in T7910 with dual Xeon. Installed directly into Slot 1. Iometer set-up as per Intel testing but speeds are about half of claimed. Used Intel_SSD_Data_Center_Tool_3.0.19_Windows>isdct.exe show -a -intelssd - all looks ok. Identified as NVMe.
Any suggestions on what to check?
Ta

[frankr2994]

Possibly not running in pcie 3.0? Pull up hwinfo64 and look at the connection speed. Chances are it's not 3.0 at idle. Verify that it switches over to 3.0 when running say a crystal disk benchmark. You can always force link speed to gen 3 in the bios and take it off auto.

[ColB]

Thanks Frankr2994. I checked and it's already Gen3. I did notice that under Disk Drives that the P3700 uses a Microsoft driver. I heard that the Intel driver is faster. Do you know anything about that?

[frankr2994]

I do not know anything about that. If you have the Intel SSD toolbox you should be able to check for firmware updates. And an Intel driver would be worth a shot. I do not have an Intel nvme in any of my current systems here but I should be getting a PC back here soon that has one in it that I can check.

[ColB]

Thanks Frankr2994.
I have reverted back to Win 8.1 and did some IOMeter testing all with 4W & QD32 as per Intel's spec. Here are the results for the dual Xeon E5-2680 v3.

Intel Spec Result Test
150,000 IOPS 142,000 IOPS 4K Random 70/30 R/W
75,000 IOPS 98,000 IOPS 8K Random 70/30 R/W
450,000 IOPS 301,000 IOPS 4K Random Read
75,000 IOPS 86,000 IOPS 4K Random Write
275,000 IOPS 210,000 IOPS 8k Random Read
32,000 IOPS 59,000 IOPS 8k Random Write

Intel's spec was done with Win Server 2012. Big diff for 4k Random Read.

Would you be concerned with these results?

[frankr2994]

Personally no I wouldn't be concerned with those results. I haven't played with enterprise drives too much but I have had solid state drives perform well above and well below spec. That all seems close enough to be within a reasonable allowance. Something I haven't tried is checking nvme performance vs CPU clock speed. Don't know if that makes too much of a difference or not. But the 2680v3 isn't the fastest thing out there.

[ColB]

Thanks Frankr2994. I feel better now, knowing I've got something for my money.
Cheers