Corsair Neutron XT (240GB, 480GB & 960GB) SSD Review: Phison S10 Debuts
by Kristian Vättö on November 17, 2014 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
From the benchmark results, the S10 is a fair successor to Phison's S8 platform. However, in terms of overall performance against the compeition, it is difficult to be impressed. Despite the added processing power in the controller, the expectation of a big increase in performance over the S8 was a little misguided, and as it stands the S10 and Neutron XT are more mid-market products.
One result to point out is the performance consistency. One purpose of the extra CPU cores is to increase performance in steady-state by handling the flash management, but that does not seem to be happening as efficiently as one might hope. If this was a value-market drive, the consistency would be okay since the drive would be subject to mostly light workloads. The Neutron branding is a higher end product, which puts the performance directly against the branding. As the branding is marketed for enthusiasts and professionals, the consistency in harsher IO workloads does matter. Phison has told me that they have a more consistent firmware in development that is geared more towards the prosumer market, but it is possible that it will also find its way into high-end client drives (although I don't know if Corsair has any plans of adopting that firmware).
UPDATE: Corsair told me that while the samples we received are already production-level candidates, discussions about firmware updates are already ongoing with Phison. In other words, there is a chance that the final retail units will carry a newer firmware, but if that happens I will of course retest the drive and provide an update.
Aside from performance, the high idle power consumption due to the lack of slumber power support limits the S10's and thus the Neutron XT's market to desktop users. Mobile users are more geared towards low powered devices and there are drives with proper power management support available. As I mentioned on the previous page, the slumber power states will be implemented to the firmware in about a month, although it will be difficult to estimate when it will arrive to the Neutron XT as the new firmware must go through Corsair's validation as well before a public release.
As pricing has not been announced yet, it's hard to draw any final conclusions. The Neutron branding hints that it is aimed at the high-end market, but on the other hand Corsair must be competitive in price to provide any advantage over the other high-end drives (especially SanDisk's Extreme Pro and Samsung's 850 Pro). I don't want to speculate too much on the pricing or whether the Neutron XT is positioned competitively because we are only a couple of weeks away from the launch.
All in all, while it is an improvement over the S8, the S10 (and by extension, the Neutron XT) lacks a 'wow' factor that would really help it stand out from the rest. The TLC NAND support in the S10 is certainly a nice feature, but I don't want to praise the feature until I see a drive shipping with the S10 and TLC NAND. The lack of increase in consistency despite the increase in CPU power is one point of concern that Phison needs to address to have a competitive product at the higher end of the market. That being said, it is difficult for any SATA 6Gbps platform to provide a massive advantage over another because of the link throughput and AHCI software stack limitations. We are also still at least a couple of quarters away from seeing more PCIe solutions in the market. Once that happens, the doors for differentiation open up again.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
56 Comments
View All Comments
hojnikb - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
Because they are using samsung's controllers. And they already have pci-e controllers.close - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
Because Apple only has to worry about their own product, and their PCIe SSDs come attached to a device capable of using it. So you don't buy a PCIe SSD, you buy an Apple device that comes with a PCIe SSD inside. Other integrators/OEMs don't care to do it as it increases costs so it's suitable only for high end. For now. Apple is doing it because it would seem that their customers can afford to pay the premium regardless of other aspects.Kristian Vättö - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
There has been a handful of PCs with the XP941, but you are right that Apple is mostly the only one.The PC OEMs tend to cut in cost wherever possible because their margins are already razor thin. The XP941 is more expensive than SATA drives because it's the only PCIe x4 drive on the market and in addition the PC OEMs can use the same SATA drives in various models, whereas the XP941 would only fit in high-end models due to the cost.
For Apple this isn't an issue because the quantities they buy the XP941 in are so large and Apple also has a significant share of the high-end market, which is where the PC OEMs struggle. Plus Apple is one of the only companies that fully understand that it's the user experience that counts.
alaricljs - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
> Plus Apple is one of the only companies that fully understand that it's the user experience that counts.Have to point out here that Apple is one of the only companies where the hardware is just another piece of the user experience puzzle that they have control over. Whereas for PC manufacturers it's almost the only part of the user experience they have control over.
Mikemk - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
Apple needs to realize that again.warrenk81 - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
thanks! i've been wondering about this since the MacBook Airs started with the PCIe SSDs in 2013.Shiitaki - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
Apple produces the entire machine, so they don't have to worry about what the rest of the industry is or isn't doing. Because Apple can put the necessary driver support in their motherboard firmware to boot from a PCI-E drive. Apple also produces the operating system, so they can use a custom driver and not wait for 'official support'.Flunk - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
Oh god I hope not, SATA Express' cable standards are a huge mess I hope we never need to deal with. Why we need yet another standard where M.2 makes massively more sense I can't imagine.SleepyFE - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
Because of the cable. When you have a tower case you can fit 5+ drives in it and connect via cable. The M.2 is just for laptops as it has to be fixed at the end with a screw an therefor has to lay on something. To put it on an ATX motherboard would take up too much space or it would dangerously dangle from the board. You could use a M.2 to PCI-e connector, but why waste the PCI-e slot? And what's the point of M.2 if you're just gonna plug it into PCI-e anyway? For big cases you need cables. They might be a mess, but you can use the SATA-X (-X= Express) for the boot drive and put all your old drives into SATA ports, so you don't waste them.MrSpadge - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
It's a bit surprising that it takes so long - not because it would be easy, but because we've known since a long time this would be coming. The manufacturers should have known it long before us. And it's not like there has been any other significnat movement regarding SSD controllers in the past 2 years.On the other hand - I don't mind if they take their time and deliver polished products with firmware which is not in beta state any more!