ADATA XPG SX900 (128GB) Review: Maximizing SandForce Capacity
by Kristian Vättö on June 8, 2012 1:25 AM ESTFinal Words
If you've seen one SF-2281 drive with synchronous NAND, you've seen them all. From a performance perspective, the ADATA XPG SX900 is as fast as every other SF-2281 SSD with synchronous NAND. The only thing that separates ADATA from the competition is the fact that they have disabled RAISE and hence offer 8GB more capacity than other drives.
Since we are dealing with such similar drives, it all boils down to price. This is where ADATA appears to be making a mistake. With higher capacities than the competition, ADATA's advantage should be lower price per GB, but it's not. Instead, the SX900 series is either more expensive or equivalent to other SF-2281 drives.
The only scenario where I can see ADATA XPG SX900 being better than the rest is if you seriously need or want a SandForce drive with a tiny bit more capacity than the others. However, that's unlikely because if you know you need more than 120GB, then it's likely that 128GB won't suffice either. It's better to buy 180GB or 240GB straightaway so you won't have to deal with a constantly full drive.
In any other case, you will get a better dollar per GB ratio by going with another brand, and on other SF-2281 drives you also get support for RAISE (outside of the 60GB models). While RAISE may sound a bit useless, it's something you won't appreciate unless something goes bad. My feeling is that it's better to have it and not need it than to not have it and need it. It comes down to the importance you place on reliability and data integrity, and right now there's just not enough data to really let us know how non-RAISE SF-2281 will compare over the long haul. Ideally, RAISE would be something that the end-user could trigger on or off depending on one's workload and setup but apparently that is not possible, or at least no manufacturer has offered a tool for that.
At the end of the day the SX900's appeal is determined entirely by price. As noted in the introduction, keeping an eye on SSD prices for at least a few days before pulling the trigger is a good idea because prices fluctuate all the time. If price is a major factor, Crucial's m4 along with the asychronous NAND Mushkin Chronos and OCZ Agility 3 are generally the drives to beat. They may not be the fastest offerings, but unless you really need every last bit of performance, they're still substantially better than any HDD and nearly as good as other offerings.
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leexgx - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
use an usa vpn loads of free onesTujan - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
This is yes "nand",. What would be the complexity of simply creating a curcuit board,that fits regular DDR3 ,and places it into the PCI-e slot. Put a battery onto the board,with perhaps a simplified voltage regulator. Then this saves the state of the RAM when the board shuts off. Would be serous situation for such curcuit boards. Ho-hum save the state of the memory,where no change equals,saved state. Strobe etc,. Even the ideal of having RAM on the curcuit board w/o the saving is a serious relationship to performance 'in session' on a computer of course.Fail to understand reasons vendors would ask so much for such a PCI-e board. When I see a memory curcuit on a MB for example,a fraction of a whole MB,that would just as well be able to fit onto a removabl PCI-e board. For a PCI slot.
jabber - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
Gigabyte did this about 7 years ago.http://www.anandtech.com/show/1742
jabber - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
Just not through the PCI-e slot.Einy0 - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
Thanks for the trip down memory lane!!! I used to day dream for hours about how I would use one of those.Stahn Aileron - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
In one word: Capacity. Next issue would be power efficieny since you would always be feeding it power in some form (be it main power or battery power. And that battery will only last so long.) The power issue is relative minor point though.The other main power would be volatility. RAM drives are only useful when you absolutely, positively need high-speed, low latency read/write performance (like forcing cache to DRAM instead of the storage system.) As soon as you power them off, you lose all the data stored on them. Battery back-up systems can only go so far to retain your data. This type of storage is too risky for permanent data storage. Any loss of power to the RAM equates to losing all your data. Unlike non-volatile systems (HDDs, SSDs), you're not recovering that data either.
You're not gonna see RAM drive tech in the consumer space unless they can makes non-volatile RAM. Right now, it's mainly an enterprise thing. Even then, with the uptake of 64-bit software during the past decade or so in that market, there's very little need for RAM drives since a 64-bit OS will give you direct access to practically any and all RAM you have installed in a system these days. You don't need a RAM Drive workaround to access more RAM (32-bit OSes have and inherent 4GiB memory space limitation without workarounds.) I can only see RAM drives being used in the consumer/professional space if some software used explicitly required cache/scratch space on a drive. Something like Photoshop scratch space would be better served on a RAM drive, perhaps.
Past that, it's cost. Just the RAM itself is about $10/GB these days (give or take.) Fully assembled SSDs using a common interface (SATA) are averaging between $1 & $2 per GB.
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
I have a bricked Sandcrap drive that tells me all that RAISE crap is pretty useless so they may as well just use that NAND for more capacity.Hell, they should just advertise it as a 1TB drive. Once it is bricked, who can ever tell the difference?
DigitalFreak - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
U mad bro?Belard - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Sandforce has become the dominate player in the market. If their controllers were pure crap, then intel wouldn't have touched them. Notice how long intel's G2 drives were THE #1 drives to get, not just in performance but in reliability.I admit, I'm a bit confused that intel didn't continue to use their own controller in their top in drive (Their 320 series are like a "G3" and perform slightly better but cheaper than the G2s).
Also, what sandcrap drive did you get? OCZ makes about 4 different versions of any particular size. Even 6 months ago, you can pick up a 120GB OCZ for $95, but also spend $250... the cheap drive had a much higher failure rate, include DOA. Its performance was crap, becoming slower than a HD after a while.
Was talking with friends who are looking to upgrade soon. They are going over the various drive brands and pricing. I said, "I don't care... intel 320 or 520. Reliability counts. Saving $50 in exchange for BSOD / performance loss / lack of support isn't worth it".
I don't know about other brands, but OCZ has no tools for their drives, other than a firmware upgrader. That's it. Intel has a tool-kit, it tells you everything about the SSD, optimization, config, diagnostics and more.
I'm open to buy a drive from someone else, I'm NOT an intel fan. But I want quality over fandom first.
ImSpartacus - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
Knowing this was an SSD review, I assumed Anand wrote it. After I read the intro piece, I was CONVINCED that it was Anand. But lo and behold, when I glanced at the top of the next page, I did not see the name I was expected.Bravo, Mr. Vättö, bravo.