Corsair Neutron XT (240GB, 480GB & 960GB) SSD Review: Phison S10 Debuts
by Kristian Vättö on November 17, 2014 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2013
Our Storage Bench 2013 focuses on worst-case multitasking and IO consistency. Similar to our earlier Storage Benches, the test is still application trace based – we record all IO requests made to a test system and play them back on the drive we are testing and run statistical analysis on the drive's responses. There are 49.8 million IO operations in total with 1583.0GB of reads and 875.6GB of writes. I'm not including the full description of the test for better readability, so make sure to read our Storage Bench 2013 introduction for the full details.
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2013 - The Destroyer | ||
| Workload | Description | Applications Used |
| Photo Sync/Editing | Import images, edit, export | Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Dropbox |
| Gaming | Download/install games, play games | Steam, Deus Ex, Skyrim, StarCraft 2, BioShock Infinite |
| Virtualization | Run/manage VM, use general apps inside VM | VirtualBox |
| General Productivity | Browse the web, manage local email, copy files, encrypt/decrypt files, backup system, download content, virus/malware scan | Chrome, IE10, Outlook, Windows 8, AxCrypt, uTorrent, Ad-Aware |
| Video Playback | Copy and watch movies | Windows 8 |
| Application Development | Compile projects, check out code, download code samples | Visual Studio 2012 |
We are reporting two primary metrics with the Destroyer: average data rate in MB/s and average service time in microseconds. The former gives you an idea of the throughput of the drive during the time that it was running the test workload. This can be a very good indication of overall performance. What average data rate doesn't do a good job of is taking into account response time of very bursty (read: high queue depth) IO. By reporting average service time we heavily weigh latency for queued IOs. You'll note that this is a metric we have been reporting in our enterprise benchmarks for a while now. With the client tests maturing, the time was right for a little convergence.
The Neutron XT offers a healthy performance boost over the Force LS in our 2013 Storage Bench, but overall ends up in the middle-class. The Phison S10 platform appears to be very competitive with Silicon Motion's SM2246EN (ADATA SP610 in the graphs), but it can't challenge the high-end drives from Samsung, SanDisk, and OCZ.
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lilmoe - Tuesday, November 18, 2014 - link
Sure, that's the best drive currently. But it's too expensive for the average consumer as of yet...Despoiler - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
I hope the Neutron GTX is sticking around as the flagship. The LAMD controller is absolutely fantastic and frankly this S10 controller seems like a step backwards from it. At least in its current state.creed3020 - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
I for one really miss designs around the LAMD controller. I previously owned a Seagate 600 240GB and that drive was fantastic regardless of the work load, and available last Christmas for great boxing day prices of $0.50/GB.extide - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
From what I can tell they are not and have not been making the old Neutron/GTX for quite some time. Really sad because it is honestly a really really great drive. I wish I got my hands on one back when they were more common.Kevin G - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
So was it Corsair or Phison that sent the crayon induced block diagram on page 1?Kristian Vättö - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
That would be Phison.creed3020 - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
Dinner napkin diagram? :pMikemk - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
+1LogitechFan - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
3 year warranty and not a full 1GB space? No thanks, SF3700 or 850Pro for me.eddieobscurant - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
the way it is, it's more probable that the 860pro comes before the sf3700