ADATA XPG SX930 (120GB, 240GB & 480GB) SSD Review: JMicron JMF670H Debuts
by Kristian Vättö on July 16, 2015 10:00 AM ESTFinal Words
To be frank, reviewing a SATA MLC SSD has gotten rather unexciting over the past year or so. On the performance side there are barely any areas where one can get enthusiastic about because the SATA 6Gbps interface and AHCI driver stack are both so saturated. It feels like the purpose of my testing is mostly to make sure that someone didn't totally screw up the product design because other than that the performance differences between modern SATA 6Gbps controllers are getting negligible. Only Samsung and SanDisk can provide performance that's distinguishably better than others, which leaves JMicron, Silicon Motion and Phison based drives fighting over the value segment.
This brings us to the SX930 and JMF670H. If I had to pick one word to describe the two, that would be 'average'. There is nothing that truly separates the SX930 and JMF670H from the drives and controllers that are already available. Performance wise the JMF670H is fairly similar to Silicon Motion's SM2246EN, but at the end of the day the SM2246EN wins in both performance and power efficiency, which makes it difficult for ADATA and JMicron to compete in areas other than price or features.
While utilizing higher binned MLC NAND (or "enterprise-grade" as ADATA calls it) could be considered as a differentiating feature, I don't consider NAND endurance to be a significant issue for client usage, so even though the NAND is likely higher quality than what you would find inside a BX100 for instance, it's not going to have any impact on the end-user. A five-year warranty is definitely a welcome addition, but that alone doesn't provide enough value to make the SX930 stand out, especially with Samsung offer a five-year warranty for the 850 EVO.
Amazon Price Comparison (7/16/2015) | |||
120/128GB | 240/250/256GB | 480/500/512GB | |
ADATA XPG SX930 (MSRP) | $80 | $110 | $200 |
ADATA Premier SP610 | $60 | $100 | $188 |
Crucial MX200 | - | $103 | $180 |
Crucial BX100 | $66 | $90 | $178 |
OCZ Trion 100 | $60 | $90 | $180 |
OCZ ARC 100 | $54 | $89 | $170 |
OCZ Vector 180 | $80 | $130 | $250 |
Samsung 850 EVO | $72 | $98 | $178 |
Samsung 850 Pro | $97 | $140 | $251 |
SanDisk Ultra II | $63 | $95 | $182 |
SanDisk Extreme Pro | - | $135 | $220 |
Transcend SSD370 | $58 | $90 | $176 |
Since the SX930 is ADATA's high-end drive, the prices aren't exactly cheap. You are looking at about $20 premium over the BX100, which is hard to justify given that the BX100 actually provides better performance. While street pricing tends to be lower than MSRPs, it's clear that the SX930 needs to be about $20 cheaper to be competitive. At equal pricing with the BX100, I might lean towards the SX930 and take a marginal hit in performance for two years of additional warranty, but I wouldn't pay $20 for the warranty alone because of the rapid developments in SSD performance and prices dropping about 20% year over year.
I did let JMicron know about my performance concerns when I tested the JMF670H reference design samples because sequential read performance in particular was below the average. JMicron promised an improvement through an upcoming firmware update and told me that the initial firmware mostly focused on optimizing performance for benchmarks such as CrystalDiskMark and AS-SSD, which typically use higher IO sizes and queue depths to extract the maximum performance out of an SSD. With a firmware better optimized for low queue depths and real world workloads, I see potential in the SX930 and JMF670H, but nevertheless it still needs to be more competitive in price in order to tackle the BX100 and 850 EVO.
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sonny73n - Sunday, July 19, 2015 - link
Oh really? Was it another firmware update for the 840EVO? When? I just threw my 840EVO out about 5 days ago after 2 firmware updates this year which did not fix the problem. The last update I had, Samsung had some kind of optimization in "Magician" (lmao) by moving all the old data to new blocks. Yeah ok, I had that 250GB EVO filled with about 190GB. It took like forever to finish and the optimization had to be run frequently in order to keep the 840EVO runs near advertised specs."Vitriol" or whatever, I would take any SSD with JMicron controller over the 840EVO in a heart beat. At least I wouldn't feel like being cheated out of paying for something that it's clearly NOT!
I'm thinking anyone that purchased the 840EVO should get together and file a class action lawsuit on Samsung for faulty advertising, consumer fraud or something like that.
voicequal - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Can you get a replacement under warranty?Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 19, 2015 - link
"Samsung has made 1 slip-up that was fixed with a firmware update."False. The 840 and 840 EVO drives reportedly have a permanent TLC-caused flaw. The only thing Samsung has managed to do, last I heard (and that was two "fixed" later) is re-write the data over and over again to paper over the problem.
The TLC is too weak to avoid voltage degradation so data needs to be rewritten to prevent massive slowdowns in read speed. I don't think Apple has ever bothered to release anything to fix the Samsung OEM drives they put their brand on either.
Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 19, 2015 - link
Interestingly, too, Apple decided to dump TLC, at least for its mobile line, sometime ago -- citing the inherent flaws. One could look at that move as being part of their feud with Samsung but I doubt that was the main motivation.zodiacfml - Sunday, July 19, 2015 - link
that's what truly happened. it only worked good when it was new.jabber - Monday, July 20, 2015 - link
Running SATA II? Buy the cheapest Kingston V300 as it will push 275MBps all day long.Running SATA III? Buy a BX100 and be done with it.
Saiyan32 - Sunday, November 27, 2016 - link
the firmware update really did the trick .. it has improved by a lot... I request anandtech to another review on this....