Intel’s Arrow Lake Platform Faces SSD Performance Hiccup
Intel’s upcoming "Arrow Lake," officially known as the Core Ultra 200S platform, is encountering another setback. Recent tests have revealed that high-speed solid-state drives (SSDs) operating through the M.2 slots on motherboards with the Intel X890 chipset are unable to reach their maximum potential. This discovery raises concerns for users planning to adopt Intel’s latest desktop platform and invest in cutting-edge storage technology.
The issue was first brought to light by The SSD Review, a respected publication specializing in storage device evaluations. Their comprehensive testing demonstrated that PCIe Gen 5 SSDs connected to X890 motherboards achieved sequential read speeds of approximately 12GB/s. While still incredibly fast, this falls short of the 14GB/s theoretical maximum that these drives are designed to deliver. This discrepancy represents a significant performance gap, especially for users who expect to leverage the full capabilities of their high-end SSDs.
Intel has acknowledged the issue, confirming The SSD Review’s findings. The company attributed the performance limitation to a "longer die-to-die data path" within the Arrow Lake platform. This internal communication pathway is crucial for data transfer between different components within the CPU and chipset. An increased latency within this pathway appears to be hindering the SSD’s ability to achieve its peak read speeds. The details of this longer path are not fully clear, adding to user frustration.
This limitation particularly affects consumers who are early adopters of the latest hardware technologies. PCIe Gen 5 SSDs are currently at the forefront of storage technology, offering blistering speeds compared to their predecessors. However, they also come with a premium price tag, often costing significantly more per gigabyte than PCIe Gen 4 SSDs. The performance limitation on the X890 platform diminishes the value proposition of these high-end SSDs, causing frustration to tech enthusiast and early adopters.
Currently, PCIe Gen 4 SSDs strike a better balance between performance and cost-effectiveness. These drives offer excellent speeds for the majority of users, and their lower price makes them a more attractive option. The appeal of PCIe Gen 5 SSDs lies in their superior performance, which makes them the preferred choice for demanding workloads such as video editing, content creation, and gaming. However, their full potential is only realized when the PC platform can support them.
PCIe Gen 5 SSDs are typically reserved for the latest generation of motherboards from both AMD and Intel. The X890 chipset, designed to power Intel’s Arrow Lake desktop chips like the Core Ultra 9 285K, is one such platform. The X890 chipset itself offers a substantial number of PCIe 4.0 lanes, providing ample connectivity for various peripherals and expansion cards.
The integration of the Arrow Lake CPU, part of the Intel 200S desktop family, further expands the available PCIe lanes to a total of 48. This includes 20 PCIe 5.0 lanes, which are routed through the processor’s I/O tile. The I/O tile serves as a central hub for communication between the CPU cores and the external world. However, it is this very architecture that appears to be the source of the performance bottleneck.
Intel has stated that the PCIe lanes may exhibit increased latencies due to the aforementioned longer die-to-die data path. This suggests that the physical distance and complexity of the communication pathway between the CPU and the SSD is contributing to the slowdown. The SSD Review’s testing methodology was straightforward. They tested two different Gen 5 SSDs on both the Intel Z890 and Z790 chipsets. On the Z790 platform, the SSDs achieved sequential read speeds of 14GB/s, consistent with their specifications. However, when the same SSDs were tested on the Z890 platform, the read speeds dropped to 12GB/s, representing a performance decrease of approximately 14 percent. This clear disparity highlights the impact of the Arrow Lake platform on SSD performance.
Prior to launch, Intel marketed its Arrow Lake chips as offering performance parity with the previous Raptor Lake generation while delivering significant improvements in power efficiency. However, early tests conducted by PCWorld revealed a different picture. The tests showed a 17 percent reduction in power consumption, which was positive, but also revealed poorer-than-expected performance. This discrepancy raised concerns about the overall effectiveness of the Arrow Lake platform.
Intel has spent the remainder of 2024 working to address the performance issues with the Arrow Lake chip. While the company has pledged to fix the problems, it remains unclear whether they will be able to fully resolve the SSD performance limitation. It is possible that the issue is deeply rooted in the platform’s architecture, making it difficult to overcome with software patches or firmware updates. The other alternative is Intel may take the lessons learned from the problem with the Arror Lake chip to work on their next projects.
The current situation leaves potential buyers in a state of uncertainty. The promise of cutting-edge performance from PCIe Gen 5 SSDs is diminished on the X890 platform. Users who prioritize storage speed may need to reconsider their upgrade plans. This situation highlights the importance of thorough testing and validation before adopting new hardware technologies.
