The ADATA GAMMIX S50 Lite 2TB SSD Review: Mainstream PCIe Gen4
by Billy Tallis on April 30, 2021 8:00 AM ESTBurst IO Performance
Our burst IO tests operate at queue depth 1 and perform several short data transfers interspersed with idle time. The random read and write tests consist of 32 bursts of up to 64MB each. The sequential read and write tests use eight bursts of up to 128MB each. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.
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The ADATA XPG Gammix S50 Lite performs well on most of the burst IO tests, especially when the test is confined to a narrow range of the drive so that it won't overflow the SLC and DRAM caches. When the test ranges over 80% of the drive, the S50 Lite's write speeds are much lower (due to less available SLC cache) and the random read performance is also a bit lower (due to insufficient DRAM).
Sustained IO Performance
Our sustained IO tests exercise a range of queue depths and transfer more data than the burst IO tests, but still have limits to keep the duration somewhat realistic. The primary scores we report are focused on the low queue depths that make up the bulk of consumer storage workloads. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.
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Adding in some slightly higher queue depths and longer test durations doesn't substantially change how the S50 Lite ranks. Its peak performance is still competitive with the best PCIe Gen3 drives, but as the drive fills up and the locality of the workload drops, it loses more performance than those 8-channel Gen3 drives with the full amount of DRAM.
The power efficiency score on these tests generally look better for the S50 Lite than the energy usage scores from the ATSB tests. Its efficiency is generally at least middle-of-the-road except in the situations where performance starts seriously dropping.
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Looking across the full range of queue depths shows the same performance patterns for the S50 Lite continuing and amplifying. Except on the sequential read test, the S50 Lite shows huge performance disparities between the narrow 32GB range test runs and those that cover 80% of the drive. The lower DRAM ratio is a handicap on the random read test, and the SLC cache often overflows when testing writes against an 80% full drive. But when the tests are only covering a small slice of the drive, the S50 Lite shows good performance scaling that is comparable to the best gen3 drives.
Random Read Latency
This test illustrates how drives with higher throughput don't always offer better IO latency and Quality of Service (QoS), and that latency often gets much worse when a drive is pushed to its limits. This test is more intense than real-world consumer workloads and the results can be a bit noisy, but large differences that show up clearly on a log scale plot are meaningful. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.
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The ADATA S50 Lite starts out with decent random read latency at low loads, but the 99th percentile latencies climb quite a bit during the early part of the test. The S50 Lite ultimately fails to make it to the high IOPS range we expect from such a drive, and instead loses control of its latency around 150k IOPS—behavior that's more fitting of a QLC drive.
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FunBunny2 - Wednesday, May 5, 2021 - link
"every dollar spent on QLC is a dollar not spent on TLC -- nor MLC."it's been ages since I looked, but I'd wager that not even Enterprise RDBMS Storage Appliances are built with SLC any more. where did it all go? :)
Oxford Guy - Thursday, May 6, 2021 - link
SLC is an extreme example for most workloads. MLC is a far more enlightening one for consumers, as is the transition from planar to 3D TLC.Wereweeb - Saturday, May 1, 2021 - link
That is not economies of scale, that is market share. What you want is not to make TLC cheaper, but to boycott QLC.I wouldn't have disagreed with you when QLC came out. But right now I'd consider it good enough for most consumers, regardless of it being technically inferior to TLC.
The truth is, there just isn't any real world difference in performance between modern SSD's when it comes to the tasks a typical consumer faces. Only gamers and workstations benefit from TLC, and while it's natural to want to prevent it from becoming a "Luxury product" like MLC did, I think that there will always be demand for SSD's with higher endurance and throughput than QLC.
If you want to spread awareness about the negative aspects of QLC, do it intelligently, instead of acting like a conspiracy theory weirdo.
Wereweeb - Saturday, May 1, 2021 - link
Actually, to correct myself: there are SSD's that are objectively bad and should be banished from this dimension, they're called DRAMless SATA SSD's. But thankfully, that issue has already has been sorted out by history.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, May 3, 2021 - link
That exact same argument was sued for MLC when TLC came out, and we all saw what happened to MLC.QLC is "cheaper" and more importantly has far less endurance then TLC. Built in obsolescence. It's a horrible product for consumers, slower then TLC, especially when the drive fills up, and isnt noticeably cheaper for th econsumer then TLC is.
QLC is garbage, and outside of extreme capacity drives like sabarent's rocket q 8TB, makes no sense.
Wereweeb - Wednesday, May 5, 2021 - link
A 2TB TLC SSD's warranty can cover for 667 Gigabites of writes per day for 5 years. Which consumer will exceed that? Chia miners? How much data have you written into your computer today?The existing MLC capacity has merely been redirected to enterprise consumers, who actually DO need to entirely rewrite their SSD's daily. And for those cases there's also Optane and the new low-latency SLC (Z-NAND).
Give QLC SSD's some dedicated SLC + a tiering software and it beats TLC drives in endurance. The Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 does exactly that and ot has an endurance of 3,600 TBW, or 1 DWPD. Two to three times the warrantied endurance of your typical TLC drive.
That's the future we're headed towards. QLC for bulk storage, tiered with SLC or an NVRAM (Optane or competitor) for hot storage.
Plus, IIRC there is a 8TB QLC SSD that refuses to fold data from the SLC cache into QLC until it *needs to*, so if you fill less than 2TB of data it essentially behaves like a pSLC SSD. You might have to ask NewMaxx for the details (And to fact-check me) tho.
Wereweeb - Wednesday, May 5, 2021 - link
Plus, the warrantied storage is typically VERY conservative, and is only supposed to stop the enterprise people from buying the cheaper and lower-binned consumer SSD's.So I expect that in most consumer workloads the FuzeDrive is going to roughly match the endurance of TLC, which itself is more than sufficient for your typical consumer to use for over 10 years - at which point the SSD will either have failed from other problems, or be old outdated garbage that might not even fit in a modern computer.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, May 6, 2021 - link
I expect the Zip drive and the Deathstar hard drive from IBM.The Zip drive was a massive market success despite being an extremely shoddy and unreliable design. It should be unbelievable (and isn't) that a product that bad was allowed to become so common.
Expect the worst. Companies are in business to 'sell less for more'. If they could sell you an old boot fished out of a toxic lake rather than a computer, for the same money, they would -- in a New York minute.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, May 6, 2021 - link
When you end up with bits of tech that are better than half-baked trash like the Zip drive then be pleasantly surprised. Don't be surprised when tech like the Zip drives gives you the click of death. Inadequate product quality is one of the results of inadequate regulation.GeoffreyA - Thursday, May 6, 2021 - link
"Deathstar hard drive from IBM"I believe you're referring to the Deskstar's famous temperatures?