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
Final Words
The Extreme Pro is without a doubt the fastest SATA 6Gbps SSD in the market. As Anand said in the Extreme II review, SanDisk has picked an excellent balance of IO consistency and peak performance, resulting in high performance regardless of the workload. Too often I have seen manufacturers focusing on just one or the other, with the end result being an unbalanced drive. Intel's SSD 730 is a prime example of this -- its random write consistency is one of the best we have ever seen, but the lack of peak performance makes it a middle-class performer in our Storage Benches. In the end, real world performance is a mix of consistency and peak performance because the drive is not constantly hammered with high queue depth write activity (which is why peak performance matters) but on the other hand it must also be able to handle a constant IO load consistently.
My only real complaint is SanDisk's decision to not include TCG Opal 2.0 support in the the Extreme Pro. Right now there are no high performance client SSDs with proper encryption support, and I think that's a niche SanDisk should have taken onboard. Currently you can buy the Crucial MX100/M550 or Samsung 840 EVO to get proper encryption support, but that comes at the cost of performance. In my opinion a user should not have to decide between performance and encryption because both are vital. There is hope that the X300s fills the gap by providing Extreme Pro class performance with full encryption support, but I am afraid that the limited availability and the higher price would make it out of reach for most consumers. We will see when we get one in for testing.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (6/15/2014) | ||||
| 240/256GB | 480/512GB | 960GB/1TB | ||
| SanDisk Extreme Pro | $200 | $370 | $600 | |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $172 | $308 | - | |
| SanDisk Ultra Plus | $143 | - | - | |
| Crucial MX100 | $108 | $220 | - | |
| Crucial M550 | $157 | $305 | $496 | |
| Plextor M6S | $165 | $400 | - | |
| ADATA Premier Pro SP920 | $150 | - | - | |
| Intel SSD 730 | $219 | $445 | - | |
| Intel SSD 530 | $165 | $330 | - | |
| OCZ Vector 150 | $200 | $360 | - | |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $150 | $255 | $450 | |
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $199 | $437 | - | |
There is no way that the Extreme Pro can compete with Crucial MX100 and Samsung 840 EVO in price but it is a totally different animal with substantially higher performance. When the Extreme Pro is compared against other high-end SSD, namely Intel's SSD 730, OCZ's Vector 150 and Samsung's 840 Pro, the prices are quite competitive. NewEgg does not have any stock at the time of writing, but I would not be surprised to see the prices falling a bit once the drive becomes available later this month.
All in all, the Extreme Pro is the only no compromise high-end SSD in the market (aside from the Extreme II, of course). Its performance is unmatched by any other SATA 6Gbps drive and it is the only truly high performance SSD with proper power management, making it perfect for mobile use as well. It's also the first high-end SSD in 1TB-class capacity, so there is no longer a need to choose between performance and capacity. As long as you can live without hardware encryption support, I am comfortable with saying that the Extreme Pro is currently the best SATA 6Gbps SSD in the market for users who seek the highest performance with consistency.
SanDisk is turning out to be a very dangerous player in the client SSD space. With nearly perfect vertical integration model (they just lack client controller silicon and DRAM), SanDisk has the ability to put against Samsung and Intel who have traditionally held the performance crown. Before the Extreme II, SanDisk was fairly unnoticeable in the retail SSD market, but the Extreme II acted as a warning of SanDisk's skill and knowhow, and the Extreme Pro just further reinforces that. If SanDisk can keep their pace going with PCIe SSDs, others will have hard time keeping up with them.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
85 Comments
View All Comments
Solix - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
I get the enthusiasm for the increase in bandwidth by going PCIe, but there are other constraints for some of us. What about those of us that already have all of their PCIe slots crammed full to the brim with GPUs and Sound cards and stuff? Maybe vendors can put internal PCIe slots in without the need for using a chassis slot. After all, most of them just have a back plate with nothing right? Or something that lets me use a riser cable and mount it elsewhere instead of burning a precious one of my back panel slots.457R4LDR34DKN07 - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
That is essentially what M.2 does...TelstarTOS - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Thanks. I really needed to see the performance of the new model before buying the old one on sale :)mapesdhs - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Kristian, just curious, why did the Vector 512GB top the IOMeter Sequential
Write table? Just seems a bit of an oddity given where it ends up in all the
other tables.
Btw, your AS-SSD tables are amusing in this regard; I ran AS-SSD on my
Vector 512GB, it gave 516.94 seq. read, 502.78 seq. write (topping both
tables), overall score of 1091. Interestingly, although my Vector 128GB
drops its seq. write to 386, the seq. read still stays healthy at 515.18.
I do like the Vector series, they work very well. I bought a Vector-150
128GB; it's seq. write is 10% higher, but the 4K numbers are lower,
resulting in a reduced overall score (989 vs. 1040).
The highest overall score I've had so far was 1147 from an 840 Pro 512GB.
(all done via Intel SATA3 on Z68)
Ian.
mapesdhs - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Caveat: in general prefer Samsung models for C-drives, for better long termconsistency. Here's the 840 250GB in my 3930K setup:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/samsung_840_250GB_H...
Vectors are great for AE cache drives (ditto Vertex4), though my 2700K does
have a Vector 256GB for its C-drive; here's an HDTach:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/OCZ_Vector_256GB_HD...
Pretty decent; not as quick/smooth as my 3930K's 840 250GB, though an AS-SSD
run is good:
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/OCZ_Vector_256GB_AS...
These Extreme Pros look interesting. I might get one to see how they fare for AE, etc.
Ian.
KAlmquist - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
In case anyone missed it,the Sandisk Extreme Pro prices listed on the last page of the article are not real prices because the items were out of stock at the time the reviewer pulled the prices from Newegg. Now the 240 and 480 GB models are in stock for $270 and $400, respectively. All three models are in stock at Amazon.com with prices of $240, $430, and $700.The SSD market is looking like what we often see in the CPU market, with large price premiums for the fastest models. I won't be buying a Sandisk Extreme Pro, but there probably are people who could really benefit from the performance.
Xajel - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
Interesting, the price went up..The 240GB model is cheaper in Amazon now compared to newegg
( A vs. NE ) : $229.99 vs. $269.95 or $0.958/GB vs. $1.125/GB
The 480GB model is cheaper in newegg
( A vs. NE ) : $429.99 vs. $399.95 or $0.896/GB vs. $0.833/GB
The 960GB model is not available in newegg.. but it cost $699.99 or $0.729/GB in Amazon
milli - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
"SanDisk is turning out to be a very dangerous player in the client SSD space. With nearly perfect vertical integration model (they just lack client controller silicon and DRAM), SanDisk has the ability to put against Samsung and Intel who have traditionally held the performance crown."They actually do have their own controller. The U110 and the Standard (and maybe more) use Sandisk's own controller. Granted these are low end.
skarthikeyan - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
Hi, shouldn't writes be slower than reads in drives, more so in SSDs? For eg, on http://anandtech.com/show/8170/sandisk-extreme-pro... sequential read for the Extreme Pro 960GB is 438 MBps while sequential write is 371.4. But in the case of random read(98.5) vs write(257MBps for QD=1), write is faster. Why is that the case?skarthikeyan - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
Sorry, my comma broke the link, the correct link to that page is http://anandtech.com/show/8170/sandisk-extreme-pro...