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ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL
Anvil Storage Utilities is essentially an all-in-one tool for all of your SSD benchmarking needs. Anvil can be used for basic consumer testing, as well as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests. It displays data regarding the SSD, and even about your system.
Anvil Storage Utilities (ASU) results are much the same as most of other tests. ASU did provide our high IOPS results of 59K which although higher than expected, is lower than the specified 80K IOPS. Once again, Novachips has stated that this is due to this early firmware release that we have been using and their posted specifications are valid.
The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The simulations are as follows:
- Windows Defender In Use
- Streaming Data from storage in games such as Alan Wake which allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action
- Importing digital photos into Windows Photo Gallery
- Starting the Vista Operating System
- Home Video editing with Movie Maker which can be very time-consuming
- Media Center which can handle video recording, time shifting and streaming from Windows media center to an extender such as Xbox
- Cataloging a music library
- Starting applications
NOVACHIPS SCALAR 4TB AND 8TB SSD VANTAGE TOTAL SCORE
PCMark Vantage is perhaps the only benchmark we used that we would have really liked to see a better result from. With 47509 points for the 4TB Scalar and 42800 points for the 8TB version, this performance brought us back to early release of SATA 3 SSDs where most of the tests resulted in SATA 2 speed results, as was the case with both SSDs. Considering that this is the only test that seemed to deviate from the others used, we might suggest that there is a bit of a compatibility issue with PCMark Vantage, at least in this instance.
4TB
8TB
You have to wonder if Samsung, Toshiba, Intel or Micron had an interest in this technology earlier but found issues with it and could not reveal them publicly due to nondisclosure agreements. With a 3-year warranty I have to wonder about the write life of these high-end SSDs. Do they wear level as well as the competition?
We ran the crap out of the 4TB sample and it is now in my base system as the boot drive. It is just as strong as before testing. We would expect a 3-year warranty from any new company, however your mentioning of wear leveling brings up a good point. We are unable to determine total writes as it is not in the SMART attributes and doesn’t appear in any software programs that we might typically use, although some of that same software identifies SSD health as excellent. I am very curious as to the write count of the 4TB drive as we ran it for so long and Novachips is looking into this for us.
what causes the s.m.a.r.t. attributes to not display? is it the firmware of the drives, the software program used, a combination of the 2 or something else?
It is the choice of the manufacturer, however, because HLNAND is simply more than one memory chip, there may be more in play here…waiting for an answer from the manufacturer.
why would a manufacturer not want s.m.a.r.t. attributes to display? also, in this review and others it seems like data is retrieved but, the attribute name is listed as vendor specific. do the vendors have internal names that are not the standard s.m.a.r.t. attribute name? s.m.a.r.t. is a standard that has many attributes covered, why not stick to it?
I cannot answer that and there are several SSD vendors that list only minimal SMART attributes….looking for that F1 value!
No reply from Novachips yet? Probably working up a new marketing spin for their questionable write durability. 🙂
Hi dravo1, I am a technical marketing director of novachips, and thanks for your interests in our SSDs. For the endurance, 4TB has 1.9 PBW and 8TB has 3.8 PBW based on JEDEC standards. For the SMART attributes, we are working on correct display of total writes, but as Les said, it is the choice of manufacturer. Some shows, some doesn’t. Thanks again, and if you have more questions, please contact me at “hakjune.oh@novachips.com” then I can give you some good DC for your continuous interests and for your test too.
Thanks for the speedy response. I noticed on the website that the price on the 8TB unit was dropped from $8000 to $6000 and is expected to ship in 4-6 weeks. Can you clarify how warranty support will be handled in the US? Since I couldn’t find a corporate physical address listed on the website I had some concerns.
Hi dravo1, all warranty support will be handled by either S. Korea HQ or USA office. Novachips has 3 locations. Please see here; https://www.novachips.com/contact_us.shtml
Any info on power consumption?
We haven’t tested power consumption just yet and, should we proceed with full enterprise reviews, it will be complete. Specifications are listed.
“NAND pricing aside, the difficulty with producing a higher capacity SSD has been the fact that higher volume chips were not yet available and too many memory chips were required to make a notebook SSD feasible.”
But there is plenty of room in a 3.5″ form factor.
There are a lot of systems out there with 3.5″ spinning rust that could accommodate a product like that.
Agree totally and we have seen similar out of AIC retail SSDs but…. the main consideration in the case of a notebook SSD is that of creating a single controller design. With what they have now, they could create a 32TB single controller SSD in the 3.5″ design..nobody else can do this. The problem previously was fitting the memory in a single controller design with acceptable heat dissipation and adequate performance…this would have meant a dual controller design.
Every thing looks good but are the 4k read speeds a little slow for the new ssds?
Your Nvidia GTX980 is very twisted under the load of the PCIX cables and you have nice but wrong wire management . It isn`t good for it for long time. Good luck . Nice review.
Explain further as i don’t see what you are speaking of whatsoever? Are you saying the physical positioning of the wires?
The video card is bended upwards from the PCiX cables from the pict with the case in page 3 in the review .
It is simply the look..card sits fine.
I agree, it looks like you have pulled your PCIex cables for the graphics card alittle to snug, and its bending the card ever so slightly upwards. Which will be pulling stress onto the PCIex slot on the motherboard.
If you mark me an email adress I can show your pictures with further explaining . Or let me put picture on disqus .