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TSSDR TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL
SSD testing at TSSDR differs slightly, depending on whether we are looking at consumer or enterprise storage media. For our Crucial P2 NVMe PCIe 3 SSD testing today, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide. To see the best performance possible, the CPU C states have been disabled, C1E support has been disabled, and Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) has been disabled.
SYSTEM COMPONENTS
The components of this Test Bench are detailed below. All hardware is linked for purchase and product sales may be reached by a simple click on the individual item. As well, the title is linked back to the individual build article where performance testing can be validated.
TSSDR ASROCK Z370 TAICHI TEST BENCH (link)
| PC CHASSIS: | Corsair Graphite 760T Arctic White Window Chassis |
| MOTHERBOARD: | ASRock Z370 Taichi |
| CPU: | Intel Coffee Lake Core i7-8770K |
| CPU COOLER: | Corsair Hydro Series H110i GTX V.2 |
| POWER SUPPLY: | Corsair RM850x 80Plus |
| GRAPHICS: | MSI Radeon RX570 |
| MEMORY: | Corsair Vengeance RGB 32GB DDR4 3600Mhz C18 |
| STORAGE: | Intel Optane 900P 480GB SSD |
| KEYBOARD: | Corsair Strafe RGB Silent Gaming |
| MOUSE: | Corsair M65 Pro Gaming |
| OS | Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit |
BENCHMARK SOFTWARE
The software in use for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of Crystal Disk Info, ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Mark, AS SSD, Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AJA, and TxBench. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.
Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.
Crystal Disk Info validates that our SSD is running in PCIe 3.0 x4 (four lane), and also that NVMe 1.3 protocol is in use.
ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.
Sometimes benchmark software just doesn’t wrk properly with SSDs, and this is the perfect instance of that. You just might notice that top speeds of ATTO show 3GB/s read and write data transfer speeds. This is just a bit unusual as listed specs are 2.1GB/s read and 940MB/s write. While we did believe that the write listed specs might be a bit short, these numbers are just abit out there. Let’s try a few more tests.
The flash is QLC, not TLC.
The ‘E’ in this number ‘MT29F1T08EMHAFJ4-3R:B’ which is drawn from the FBGA code NX959 designated TLC as listed in this part numbering decoder:
https://dtsheet.com/doc/1384381/nand-flash-part-numbering-system
A request for clarification has been sent off to Micron but I would like to hear your reasoning.
I think that you are right. I always thought that P2 was a P1 with a new generation of QLC NAND, just like Intel 660p -> 665p. The simple facts that it is not the SMI controller and there is no DRAM should make it a TLC drive. Sorry for the confusion.
The 500GB SKU is rated as 96L QLC but currently it’s using TLC.
Yes. That is why we believe that the performance is underrated with 960MB/s write…in anticipation of.
Nope… that’s ok. been known to slip every now and then as well. I think that’s how i retain readership…
I still don´t own a NVME-SSD and I don´t know if I´m the only one in the world which use the capacity of SSD.
But after tried some actual SSD-drives with 1TB and 2TB (less is senseless for me, have enoght of smaller SSDs) I´m annyoed about the “performance” of the SSDs. My ten years old HDDs beat some of these SSDs if I fill the capacity.
So a review without a squential write test of whole capacity is useless for me, sorry.
I apologize in advance but your comparison between the HDD and SSD is not physically possible. There is no way possible that a HDD can come anywhere near close to the start times and typical operations of a PC, simply because of the massive difference in seek time. The SSD is .01ms compared to any typical HDD a 9ms. We appreiate your comment in any case; this is an entry level SSD and the only really fair comparison might be to any HDD.
How would this drive compare to streaming a game from something like the mx500 SSD drive? I wonder about getting one of these just to be able to have some game streaming capacity in something like Star Citizen. These just seem very cheap to get into the NVMe game but maybe the low read speeds at smaller file sizes is a deal breaker?
I am not an expert on gaming but streaming, for the most part, relies on seek time which is much the same for most SSDs. The key to gaming and SSDs is scene transition as the scene is loaded into RAM which puts more of the concern on CPU and RAM. When I speak of SSDs such as the P2 and the ADATA Swordfish, both of which we just reported on, I would put them more in the hard drive to SSD transition category and leave them there…typical system operation. Stay tuned for my next review this week on the Kingston KC2500. This is a dynamite SSD and perhaps one of the best on the market for PCIe 3 right now.
Really like the improvements to the site.
Been with you since the XP941 days.
Ready for new Vermeer builds this year, your reviews will help again.
Great hearing from you James.