SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD (240GB, 480GB & 960GB) Review: The Fastest Just Got Faster
by Kristian Vättö on June 16, 2014 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- SanDisk
- Extreme Pro
AnandTech Storage Bench 2013
Our Storage Bench 2013 focuses on worst-case multitasking and IO consistency. Similar to our earlier Storage Benches, the test is still application trace based - we record all IO requests made to a test system and play them back on the drive we are testing and run statistical analysis on the drive's responses. There are 49.8 million IO operations in total with 1583.0GB of reads and 875.6GB of writes. I'm not including the full description of the test for better readability, so make sure to read our Storage Bench 2013 introduction for the full details.
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2013 - The Destroyer | ||
| Workload | Description | Applications Used |
| Photo Sync/Editing | Import images, edit, export | Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Dropbox |
| Gaming | Download/install games, play games | Steam, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Starcraft 2, BioShock Infinite |
| Virtualization | Run/manage VM, use general apps inside VM | VirtualBox |
| General Productivity | Browse the web, manage local email, copy files, encrypt/decrypt files, backup system, download content, virus/malware scan | Chrome, IE10, Outlook, Windows 8, AxCrypt, uTorrent, AdAware |
| Video Playback | Copy and watch movies | Windows 8 |
| Application Development | Compile projects, check out code, download code samples | Visual Studio 2012 |
We are reporting two primary metrics with the Destroyer: average data rate in MB/s and average service time in microseconds. The former gives you an idea of the throughput of the drive during the time that it was running the test workload. This can be a very good indication of overall performance. What average data rate doesn't do a good job of is taking into account response time of very bursty (read: high queue depth) IO. By reporting average service time we heavily weigh latency for queued IOs. You'll note that this is a metric we have been reporting in our enterprise benchmarks for a while now. With the client tests maturing, the time was right for a little convergence.
Given that the Extreme II was already dominating the Storage Bench 2013, it doesn't come as a surprise that the Extreme Pro is the new crownholder. Even the SSD 730 and Vector 150 can't challenge the Extreme Pro despite the fact that in terms of pure random write performance they are better. I think SanDisk's strength lies in mixed read/write performance because write performance alone does not yield good results in real world workloads, which tend to be a mix of reads and writes.
In fact, client workloads (like our Storage Benches) are usually more read-centric anyway and in the case of the Extreme Pro, the drive spent over three times longer processing read IOs than write IOs, which makes sense because there are nearly four times more read IOs than there are write IOs in the trace (even though in terms of gigabytes the difference is only twofold).
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
85 Comments
View All Comments
binarycrusader - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Thanks, that explanation makes the comparison seems a lot more reasonable.By the way, NewEgg is selling the 480GB model for $379.99 today, which makes the Intel one slightly more appealing.
binarycrusader - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
There's still a DRAM cache though, so I'd like to see a torture test on SanDisk's drive before I could be confident. But I'm aware that's potentially bricking the drive so I can understand why you might not be able to do that.I agree that what SanDisk has done seems like it would help mitigate the need for a capacitor, but I just can't be confident about it until some tests are done.
brucek2 - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
Can anyone recommend a simple Windows utility for profiling your storage usage? I'm picturing something that runs in the background with an icon in the system tray I could mouseover to get a quick take on average daily data written, QD histogram, maybe read/write and/or size mix. It'd be great to be able to take a look at it when I'm reading articles like this to figure out which stats matter most to me.matthew5025 - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
I recommend diskmonhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-sg/sysinternals/bb...
Essence_of_War - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
Wherein SanDisk, not content with already having the top data rate and service time in the Destroyer benchmark, takes the title back from themselves.I'm very impressed with their commitment to product quality.
Antronman - Monday, June 16, 2014 - link
At 200USD for 240GB, I'm just not sold.2x HyperX 3K 120GB in your choice of RAID configuration and you've got it, for 40-50USD cheaper.
jameskatt - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Encryption is always going to slow down your drive. After all, it takes a lot of brute computation to do encryption.The biggest problem of hardware encryption is that you don't have the freedom to select your own encryption algorithm. For example, if the hardware encryption method is compromised then you are screwed if you rely on it.
I would rather keep whole disk encryption at the OS level.
TheWrongChristian - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
Encryption in hardware is easy (at least easier than software) and probably adds very little in terms of latency and power budget. AES is just multiple rounds of XOR, ROM lookups and bit mixing. Quite easy to do in hardware quickly.AES-128 (the minimum AES level) is a long way from being considered broken.
SirKronan - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Thanks for the review!! I am still going strong with my Extreme II and have yet to have any issues with it. Windows is still running fantastic, since the very first install on this drive. My dad's Extreme II is also running strong. I felt like I was taking a bit of a risk with an unknown when I got a somewhat less popular drive, but the current sale price back then was unbeatable, and to this day I have no regrets. Nice to see they are still coming to town and packing a punch!uruturu - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Why don't you test the drives in storage bench 2011-2013 with 25% OP???