ADATA XPG SX900 (128GB) Review: Maximizing SandForce Capacity
by Kristian Vättö on June 8, 2012 1:25 AM ESTAS-SSD Incompressible Sequential Performance
The AS-SSD sequential benchmark uses incompressible data for all of its transfers. The result is a pretty big reduction in sequential write speed on SandForce based controllers. Read speeds are largely unaffected.
No real surprises here. The SX900 is slightly faster than the 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 and Corsair Force GT, but this is most likely due to a newer firmware version (it's been a while since we tested Vertex 3 and Force GT). As you may have noticed, NAND plays a big role in SandForce incompressible performance. 240GB Kingston HyperX and Intel SSD 520 are the fastest, followed by 120GB Patriot Wildfire and OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS, both of which utilize 3Xnm NAND. 3Xnm MLC NAND die tops out at 4GB, which means the Wildfire and Vertex 3 MAX IOPS have twice as many NAND dies as 120GB SSDs using 2Xnm MLC NAND. That gives them the benefit of interleaving.
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kevith - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
I'l second that, I had exactly the same experience.Proper good job, mate!
Whyaskwhy - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
My knowledge is very limited, can you show me how each SSD compares playing online games? I play Rift, SWTOR, World of Tanks,and will be playing GW2 when it comes out.JarredWalton - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
Generally speaking, SSDs only improve game and level load times, and even then the difference may not be that large. If you have a PC with 4GB RAM or more, SSDs are really about improving Windows performance and responsiveness as opposed to improving gaming performance.CeriseCogburn - Monday, June 11, 2012 - link
Buy a sata3 6.0 (no matter your board speed), and you'll be fine - your frame rate won't go up a lot in games, although it does rise substantially (10%-40%) in some like flight sim (lots of tiny files to be accessed) and a bit in all others...What's good about them is not waiting for drive swapping IN GAME - so they can make a difference in responsiveness, it will be noticeable.
If you are a benchmark freak make certain you buy a 120gig (or 128) not a 60gig (or 64) as the 60gigs bench poorly because of fewer ram chip channels, however windows 7 and all the general goodies and several (3) large games fit on a 60 or 64 just fine, but a 120/128 is barely 30 bucks more, so spend $100 and get a 120.
The samsung 830's are hot but costly, I prefer 2281 sandforce asynchronus as they have several brand choices at the lowest of prices with excellent speed.
If you have a single spindle drive non raid boot you won't be sorry at all. It appears on P45 chipsets and above, a triple raid boot zero stripe is required before equal performance responsiveness is met (on sata 2).
So there you are - use the egg to see speed and click the reviews tab there and sort by most helpful you will see actual purchasers being quite helpful and giving their tested stats.
jaydee - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
I don't know if it was really worth all the analysis on the pricing, as it fluctuates so much. At any given time, it seems that you can get a 120/128GB drive for ~$100-110, last week it was Samsung, this week it's Crucial, I've seen Plextor there too, and at least one SandForce drive seems to be there perpetually.Not that I'm complaining about the prices, its great for the consumers, but it places an impossible burden on a reviewer to evaluate the bang-for-buck, because it changes daily.
Mathieu Bourgie - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
Thank you for the review Kristian.On a related note, I'm curious as to what happened to the Plextor M3 Pro review?
You commented on May 14th, in the Corsair Performance Series Pro (256GB) Review article that the "review should be up next week at the latest." and yet here we are nearly a month later with a review of a different SSD.
Thanks,
Mathieu
Kristian Vättö - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
It's been ready for about a month now. Only pricing table and final words are missing, but those can't be done until just before publishing. I wanted to get this review out of the way because I've had the drive for months. I asked Anand to test an updated 120GB SF drive for comparisons (it's been a while since we reviewed a 120GB SF drive, that's why), which took a bit longer than I thought (Anand is a very, very busy man ;-)).I will finish the M3P review this weekend and it will hopefully be up next week, depending on Anand's schedule and what else we have for next week (we don't want to post five reviews at once and then have nothing for the rest of the week. It's problematic when there are NDAs because they must go live ASAP, whereas other articles can wait).
swx2 - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
Ah! I was looking for that review as well, but thanks for the explanation :)TwistedKestrel - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
I could have sworn that RAISE was disabled on the 120 GB Intel 520... and I thought I read that here, but I see no mention of it in Anandtech's review.Airkol - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
Reducing the over-provisioning and shutting RAISE off my give the consumer a few extra bytes of storage. But what it costs them is the life of the drive. The write amplification of the drive will increase since there is less area to manage wear leveling.
This could reduce the life of the drive by 50%-75% depending on what type of data is being written.