The ADATA XPG SX950 480GB SSD Review: In Search of Premium
by Billy Tallis on October 9, 2017 8:00 AM ESTConclusion
At no point in our testing did the ADATA XPG SX950 convince us that it deserves to be regarded as a high-end SATA SSD, nor did it provide any evidence that the high-end SATA segment is still relevant. Under the right conditions, the SX950 can perform as fast as any other SATA SSD, but those are all the same tests where a low-end SATA SSD also performs fine.
Without the performance headroom that PCIe SSDs enjoy, a premium SATA SSD needs to distinguish itself by offering great performance in all conditions, under light or heavy workloads. The SX950 does the opposite. The aggressive SLC caching it uses to deliver high peak performance is a double-edged sword. When subjected to a large volume of writes, the SX950 accrues a large debt of cache flushing and garbage collection that have been deferred. Once the SLC cache fills up, the SX950's performance tanks. Both reads and writes suffer, though write performance much moreso. Worse, it takes the SX950 too long to finish cleaning up even when given the opportunity. The five minutes of idle time our test protocol reserves after filling the drive in preparation for some of the ATSB tests is clearly not long enough, and even during the ATSB Light test the SX950 can't finish catching up on its garbage collection.
The more recent Crucial BX300 uses the same Micron 32L 3D MLC and the same Silicon Motion SM2258 controller, but exhibits a completely different performance profile. Micron learned their lesson about taking SLC caching unnecessarily far on MLC drives with the Crucial MX200, and the BX300 has fairly small fixed-size SLC caches. This leads it to have lower performance than the SX950 under favorable conditions, but the BX300 holds up well under pressure.
The ADATA SX950 offers twice the warranty period of a typical budget SSD and a fairly high write endurance rating, but those are the only ways in which it can be regarded as a premium product. It doesn't even provide TCG Opal encryption support, a distinguishing feature that only a handful of SSD vendors implement for retail SSDs. Micron's first-generation 3D NAND is simply too slow to compete against Samsung's 3D NAND, and the SM2258 is a low-cost/low-power SSD controller that is ill-suited for competing against Marvell and Samsung controllers on performance. The result is a drive that not only falls far short of its lofty performance goals, but a drive that has unbalanced performance and makes poor use of the resources it has at hand.
| SATA SSD Price Comparison | |||
| 240-275GB | 480-525GB | 960-1050GB | |
| ADATA XPG SX950 | $135.22 (56¢/GB) | $269.99 (50¢/GB) | |
| ADATA SU800 | $89.99 (35¢/GB) | $158.65 (31¢/GB) | $274.99 (27¢/GB) |
| Crucial BX300 | $89.99 (38¢/GB) | $149.99 (31¢/GB) | |
| Crucial MX300 | $92.99 (34¢/GB) | $149.99 (29¢/GB) | $279.99 (27¢/GB) |
| Intel SSD 545s | $99.99 (39¢/GB) | $179.99 (35¢/GB) | |
| Samsung 850 PRO | $128.98 (50¢/GB) | $223.32 (44¢/GB) | $447.87 (44¢/GB) |
| Samsung 850 EVO | $99.95 (40¢/GB) | $159.99 (32¢/GB) | $327.99 (33¢/GB) |
| SanDisk Ultra 3D | $99.99 (40¢/GB) | $164.99 (33¢/GB) | $284.99 (29¢/GB) |
| WD Blue 3D NAND | $98.39 (38¢/GB) | $164.65 (33¢/GB) | $299.99 (30¢/GB) |
On a budget SSD, the problems with the ADATA XPG SX950 would be mildly disappointing but reasonable. For light desktop use, the SX950's weaknesses wouldn't come into play. But given the premium pricing, the SX950's failings are unacceptable. ADATA can't beat Samsung's 850 PRO on price, let alone the Crucial BX300.
As the Crucial BX300 shows, most of this could be fixed with radically different firmware. But ADATA can't get anywhere by trying to compete directly against the BX300 and its unbelievably low pricing. Instead, ADATA should take the lessons learned from the SX950 and prepare to offer a more sensible drive when they can get their hands on Micron's second generation 3D NAND, which the Intel 545s suggests will be far faster and more able to match the Samsung 850 PRO, especially if used with Silicon Motion's newest SM2259 SATA controller. However, that would still leave ADATA competing in a very narrow segment of the SSD market, as almost all premium products are now using NVMe and focusing more on performance than endurance and warranty period.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
45 Comments
View All Comments
meacupla - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
ADATA's pricing of their lower end is usually in line with the competition. Or, at least, the last drive I bought from them was.This one... not so much
KAlmquist - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
If the intention is for these drives to sell at well below MSRP, Adata is not getting off to a good start. Amazon and B&H Photo are both pricing the 480GB model $20 higher than the MSRP, and Newegg is not selling it at all. My guess is that something tipped the retailers off to the fact that there is not going to be a lot of demand for this product, so they either went for a high markup (to compensate for the cost of holding a low turnover item in stock), or in the case of Newegg, decided to pass on it entirely.I recently bought a Samsung 850 Pro, which proves that there is still at least one person who is (stupid? gullible? bat shit crazy?) enough to pay up for a premium SATA SSD. :-) With a premium SATA SSD, you are paying for:
1) Consistent performance. For example, in the Anandtech Storage Bench light test, the ADATA drive does well if the drive is empty, but performance plummets if the drive is full. The Samsung 850 Pro performs almost identically regardless of whether the drive is full or empty.
2) Reliability. I have no reason to believe the Adata drive is unreliable, but the Samsung 850 Pro has a 10 year warranty and, more important, a long track record in the field. So the 850 Pro wins this category as well.
IndianaKrom - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
A couple years ago when I picked up an 850 pro/1 TB, it was at the time the best SATA SSD. Today it is still the best SATA SSD, and it will probably always be. At this stage I would be surprised if anyone manages to extract any more performance out of SATA than what an 850 Pro can do._mb - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
Where is the "Performance Consistency" test?I hope you guys haven't stopped doing that one as that test is the most interesting one and sets you guys apart from other reviewers which don't do that.
Billy Tallis - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
The performance consistency test will be reintroduced soon. Since it was the least relevant to real-world desktop usage and the most likely to kill drives, it's been the lowest priority to run on the new 2017 testbed. Now that I'm pretty much done running all my drives through the 2017 test suite, I'll start going back and running the new performance consistency test on them. Those results will probably start being included in the SSD reviews in November, and they'll be added to the Bench database as they're available.Maleorderbride - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
I realize this is not on you Billy, but why is the Mushkin Enhanced Reactor series not part of the 2017 SSD bench? That series is one of only four that someone might actually purchase knowingly.xype - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
So, at which point will it become a waste of time to review SSDs? Unless such a review only takes 15 minutes, I’d assume there’s plenty of hardware where the conclusions is not a simple "Get a Samsung" >90% of the time — or am I being too optimistic?RaistlinZ - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
Q: "So, at which point will it become a waste of time to review SSDs?"A: 2016
xype - Wednesday, October 11, 2017 - link
Yeah :-/jabber - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
I don't care. The issue is that SATAIII is saturated and all we need now are reliable mainstream hum drum SSD drives for a cheap price. There is nothing else left to achieve on SATAIII. It's like RAM FFS it's all within a few % whether you spend $100 or $200. They get away with it by adding pointless crap like RGB. I bet by XMAS we'll see SATAIII SSD drives with built in RGB on the edges. Anything to cover up and distract from the fact they are no longer anything special and all the same for day to day purposes.