The ADATA Ultimate SU800 SSD Review (128GB, 256GB, 512GB)
by Billy Tallis on February 1, 2017 12:01 PM 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.
On the Light test, all three capacities of the ADATA SU800 perform quite well when the test is run on an empty drive. The performance penalty from running the test on a full drive is still huge, though the 512GB SU800 doesn't fall behind all of its competition.
The smaller capacities of the SU800 have trouble keeping latency under control when full, but otherwise the average service times are normal for budget SSDs.
The percentage of operations that require more than 10ms to complete shows us that the high average service times when full are due to a very high number of outliers, rather than just a uniform slowing of operations.
Thanks to their good performance, the SU800s use less energy than most of the competition over the course of the light test, though the slightly slower Silicon Motion engineering sample with more overprovisioning and earlier firmware was a bit more efficient.
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RamIt - Wednesday, February 1, 2017 - link
Why is there no comparison to the Intel 600p recently reviewed?extide - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Probably because it is a PCIe drive. A shopper who is shopping for SATA drives is probably not interested in a PCIe drive.dj_aris - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Sorry, but since all SATA 3 drives top at theoretical 600MBs but SSD speeds are WAY faster than that, what is the point in testing them?Death666Angel - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
It might just be my eyes, but I see a lot of instances where the drives don't actually achieve the 600MB/s data cap of the SATA3 protocol....dj_aris - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Indeed, but who cares if it's 600 or 500 or even 300, when you can reach 2000+ using modern pcie storage (with similiar prices). SATA is dead, obviously will not be developed anymore, SATA express drives don't even exist. I mean we don't test DVD drives or floppies, right?doggface - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Sata is dead? Seriously?Also, similar prices?
So many things wrong with this post.
Sata SSDs will continue to thrive for years to come. No doubt about that, and while they do, we will need reviews on their performance to help differentiate the good from bad. Especially as the industry continues to peddle TLC and even possibly QLC drives.
vladx - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Upcoming QLC NAND is not something to scowl at. SSD drives using this technology will not be targeted to compete with MLC or even TLC instead they are planned for archival purposes: https://www.pcper.com/news/Storage/FMS-2015-Toshib...Billy Tallis - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
SATA isn't dead, but it is a dead end in the same sense that VGA ports are.extide - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Not everyone's system is compatible with and/or cannot boot from NVME drives. There is definitely still a need to have these data points.lopri - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Two of my boards refuse to accept any M.2 drive as a boot drive, leaving me no choice but to go with SATA. Plus SATA is nowhere near dead because it is still much more affordable. Plus there is no convincing argument as to why backups have to be saved in SSDs.