The HP EX920 M.2 SSD Review: Finding the Mainstream Sweet Spot
by Billy Tallis on July 9, 2018 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The average data rates from the HP EX920 on the Light test aren't particularly impressive, with most high-end NVMe SSDs turning in higher scores. But the EX920 doesn't fall behind by enough to worry about-it's still several times faster than SATA drives, and close enough to the fastest drives that the difference isn't noticeable during ordinary usage.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores from the HP EX920 on the Light test aren't the best, but they're definitely good enough. Even the full-drive latency is not a problem, unlike for the smaller Intel 760p or 600p.
Average read and write latencies from the HP EX920 are good, especially when the test is run on a full drive. Both latency measurements stay at just a fraction of the latency of the Crucial MX500 SATA SSD.
The 99th percentile read and write latency scores from the HP EX920 are great, especially for the full-drive test run where the EX920 keeps tighter control on read latencies than any other flash-based SSD we've tested.
On the Light test, the HP EX920 doesn't fall quite as clearly into the power-hungry club. Its total energy usage on the Light test is still a bit above average, especially for the full-drive test run, but it is clearly using less energy than the M9Pe or 970 EVO.
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olderkid - Monday, July 9, 2018 - link
When is the last time you bought a hot cake?SanX - Monday, July 9, 2018 - link
Who here remembers two decades ago history when DRAM prices dropped 5-6 times in a matter of few months and no one got bankrupt?Yes, the electronic industry is screwing people for decades. In the brain of salespeople the 10nm Apple A11 4.3 billion transistor chip can cost $25 but similar transistor count some Intel Xeon processor made even by ancient 20-30nm tech by their crazy logic can not cost less then $1000-2000
Adramtech - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link
SanX, All these companies from 20 years ago are not in the game because there are not enough profits to go around....and there were many more from this time period that went out of business.Samsung
NEC
Hitachi
Hyundai
Toshiba
LG Semicon
TI
Micron
Mitsubishi
Fujitsu
Adramtech - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link
Extra Credit: what companies from this 1990's list make DRAM today?Totally - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link
I'll playSamsung
TI <- technically still does since it is partnered with Micron
Micron
Dr. Swag - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link
Surprise surprise, cost/transistor went down from 20-30nm to 10nm, and also the xeon has a much bigger die size and so had lower yields.Totally - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link
You're speaking words that one doesn't understand.SanX - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link
Rotfl rotflnao Swag and Totally. You made my day...how poor anandtech readers degraded so miserably.... Oh, yea, sure, Intel is that dumb company which makes potato chips. It also as a complimentary business makes retarded design processors on older tech because wants more defects on the yield, low margin, and has no brain, no money and no advanced factories. Sure, it can not lower the production cost to $10-20 bucks like all others obviously do.Lololololol. Congrats, you two made the most stupid comment of the year.
Hectandan - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
Xeons are likely to cost less than $1K.But production cost is nothing in this industry. R&D, demand, etc almost always drive the prices. Otherwise why are iPhones selling for $1K with a $25 chip?
FullmetalTitan - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
Cause Samsung charged them $124 a piece for the OLED display and driver IC assembly for one. That is compared to ~$30 for the LCD displays used in the iPhone 9.