The ADATA XPG GAMMIX S10 (512GB) SSD Review: Entry-Level NVMe With Style
by Billy Tallis on October 25, 2017 8:30 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The ADATA XPG GAMMIX S10 delivers an average data rate on The Destroyer that is essentially tied with the Intel 600p. This performance falls within the range of mainstream SATA SSDs, while most other TLC-based NVMe SSDs can at least outperform SATA SSDs.
The average latency of the GAMMIX S10 on The Destroyer is substantially better than the Intel 600p, while its 99th percentile latency is only slightly improved over the 600p. On both metrics, the GAMMIX S10 still rates worse than many mainstream SATA SSDs.
The average read latency of the GAMMIX S10 on The Destroyer is better than any SATA SSD and better than the Intel 600p. The average write latency is a significant improvement over the 600p but is otherwise still quite bad, with latency twice as high as typical mainstream SATA SSDs.
The 99th percentile read latency of the GAMMIX S10 is great, but not quite fast enough to place it in the very top tier of drives along Samsung and Toshiba. The 99th percentile write latency ranks at the other end of the field, worse than most mainstream SATA SSDs, though trailing by a less embarrassing margin than the Intel 600p.
The energy usage of the ADATA XPG GAMMIX S10 on The Destroyer is typical for NVMe SSDs. It's a bit more efficient than the Intel 600p or WD Black, but still uses twice as much energy as a good SATA SSD.
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rrinker - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
For some reason I thought the black insert was plastic, but it actually doesn't say either way. If plastic, well... You pretty much said what I was skirting around, it's all cosmetic like so many of the weird and funky heat sinks/heat spreaders you see on "enthusiast" gear. There to look cool, doesn't actually do much of anything, either because it's not really needed, the device with the heat sink doesn't actually get all that hot, or it's no more effective than a plain old simple heatsink.Wwhat - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
I am absolutely perplexed that anandtech doesn't specify the material of that insert. I mean that is so goddamn relevant.And I'm actually wondering what adata's comment on that insert would be. They should have asked them.
As for needed, all tests have shown a good heatsink on the M2 SSD's does indeed do a world of good. And tests have also shown that half the companies in the world that supply such, either bundled or third party, can't figure out such a simple thing as a piece of aluminium on a freaking small rectangle. I mean how complex is it? But again it's been shown that if you put a good one on it it's always noticeably beneficial.
jjj - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
Don't understand how one imagines a product with that seq read perf.trparky - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
I went to go look at what you were talking about and my first reaction when I saw the graphs was "Ouch! WTF!". It barely matches the performance of a SATA SSD, putting it on NVMe is just a waste.r3loaded - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
If your product is going to get curbstomped in performance by the 960 Evo, at least try to price it at a significant discount vs the 960 Evo.ddriver - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
It is very hard to undersell samsung, they make the memory, they make the controller, they make the pcb. Vertical integration.Now imagine that you have to buy each of those components from someone else, pay profit margins on the components, then put work into making a product out of it, and sell that product with a profit margin for yourself.
It is a pointless endeavor. In a better world, they won't even bother to compete with a vertically integrated company like samsung. But in the world as it is, there are plenty of idiots who will buy this, one way or the other, either for the gimmicky but nice looking heatsink, or it will get it shoved down their throats by an OEM who has a deal with the manufacturer to bundle the product.
The negative aspect of this is that after so many years of domination, samsung will significantly cut on the purchase value of their products, because it still has tremendous lead and could let some of it melt in order to materialize as profits. Upcoming SSDs from samsung, even if a tad faster, will be disappointing compared to what we used to get in the past. Get ready for a slump of TLC and QLC, endurance and warranty period cuts.
Ratman6161 - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
People aren't idiots. They are just uninformed. There is a big difference. For my uninformed friends who either can't or don't want to do the research, my recommendation is always "just buy Samsung and don't worry about it". Or if they want reasonably priced but larger storage with "OK" performance then it's "just buy Crucial and don't worry about it.If you know specifically what you are looking for and know what trade offs you are willing to make there are other choices that fit certain niches. But even knowing what I wanted/needed I ended up with a 512 GB 960 EVO and a 750 GB MX300 (got on prime day last year for $139 :)).
ddriver - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
"People aren't idiots. They are just uninformed."Tomayto, tomahto... If you make a purchase uninformed, that's idiocy right there.
IMO everyone is an idiot, including me. It is not a matter of idiots or non-idiots, at this stage of evolution we are all idiots, it's just that some are more idiotic than others. And the first step to overcoming idiocy is to acknowledge it :) The gradation of idiocy is acknowledgement of it, ignorance of it, mistaking it for something else and finally taking pride in it.
Lolimaster - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
For sata the WD/Sandisk 3D SSD's seems a like a better option than the Crucials.KAlmquist - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
A vertically integrated company like Samsung still wants to make a profit on its investments into R&D, so the fact that all of the R&D is done by one company doesn't directly help costs. It does remove some of the costs associated with developing and maintaining relationships between companies. For example, Silicon Motion has to market its products to SDD manufacturers, which is an overhead that Samsung's controller development group doesn't have. Another possible cost savings for Samsung is that it knows it's controllers will never be used with anything other than Samsung flash, so it doesn't have to develop a controller that is compatible with multiple brands of flash.