Adata launches the XPG SX9000 PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 SSD

[HEXUS]

The firm's fastest SSD yet benefits from a new Marvell controller and high TBW rating.

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[bitbucket]

XPG SX9000 PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280? Catchy.

[.havoc]

fast boot and game load times?

both been tested and debunked already as they can't saturate sata let alone pci bandwidth- particularly games...booo for marketing bs again

[LSG501]

fast boot and game load times?

both been tested and debunked already as they can't saturate sata let alone pci bandwidth- particularly games...booo for marketing bs again

the marketing is correct if you compare them to hard drives.. which I'm sure is the context the marketing team are using.

But as you said in the real world we'll see very little gain with pcie over sata ssd's except in very specific circumstances such as scratch disc for video editing etc.

[Wozza63]

fast boot and game load times?

both been tested and debunked already as they can't saturate sata let alone pci bandwidth- particularly games...booo for marketing bs again

Don't knock em till you try em. Night and day difference!

[.havoc]

Don't knock em till you try em. Night and day difference!

I run an SSD only system (M.2 boot drive, 2 SATA SSDs) - and yes it is spiffingly quick. But if anything its slower to boot than standard SSD because it has to initialise the PCI interface before it can boot (annoyingly on my motherboard it requires a double post because of it).

Like LSG said there is some validity sure when comparing against a HDD - but I wouldn't compare the two myself. I would compare against other drives in a similar price to performance ratio and the same technology - which means to me at least its marketing BS. Put "faster than traditional HDD's" then I have no issue with the statement. Also - I'm not knocking the drive itself, just the fluffy statements that go with it.

Couple of good testing videos to have a gander at too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdF_aerWcW8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIXSSOzyLbs

[philehidiot]

You guys seem to have more experience with these newer drives than I do. I got one of the first (decent) SSDs from Intel which was an upgrade from a WD Raptor HDD and obviously the difference was incredible to the point where I now have three SSDs. The poor Raptor is still choochin' away nicely as a backup drive to its eternal credit. The other SSDs are mid-high end SATA drives from a few years back.

In terms of real world performance for someone who just games and uses multimedia, is there any point in getting one of these silly fast M2 / PCI-e drives? Sure the benchmarks look impressive but I just have this feeling that when my PC boots in about 10 seconds and games load pretty damned quick that I've already seen the vast majority of the returns I'm going to get and I'd just be spending a load more for vastly diminishing returns (cash which would probably be best put towards a GPU or RAM). I don't do any serious image or video editing. I'd appreciate any input people have as, whilst the reviews often go on about benchmark scores, etc, it's much harder to get a real world, qualitative assessment of the value of these drives for the average gamer with a fairly mid range system.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You guys seem to have more experience with these newer drives than I do. I got one of the first (decent) SSDs from Intel which was an upgrade from a WD Raptor HDD and obviously the difference was incredible to the point where I now have three SSDs. The poor Raptor is still choochin' away nicely as a backup drive to its eternal credit. The other SSDs are mid-high end SATA drives from a few years back.

In terms of real world performance for someone who just games and uses multimedia, is there any point in getting one of these silly fast M2 / PCI-e drives? Sure the benchmarks look impressive but I just have this feeling that when my PC boots in about 10 seconds and games load pretty damned quick that I've already seen the vast majority of the returns I'm going to get and I'd just be spending a load more for vastly diminishing returns (cash which would probably be best put towards a GPU or RAM). I don't do any serious image or video editing. I'd appreciate any input people have as, whilst the reviews often go on about benchmark scores, etc, it's much harder to get a real world, qualitative assessment of the value of these drives for the average gamer with a fairly mid range system.

TBH,I tend to agree - I am more concerned about capacity and reliability when it comes to SSDs.

[Iota]

I am more concerned about capacity and reliability when it comes to SSDs.

I'm quietly happy with the reliability of SSDs so far (god I hope I don't jinx it). Compared to multiple drive failures over the years for HDDs in previous builds, my 4 SSDs in Raid 0 have been nothing but superb.

Now if they can get the cost per gb down further, that would be nice.

[LSG501]

snip

Personally I see no reason to go specifically for an M2/PCI-e drive over a normal sata unless you're doing something that specifically would benefit from more throughput (IOPS rather than raw speed in my case), so things like video editing where it can easily replace raid arrays, or you want to free up space in the case for other things. If the prices are the same however I'd probably pick the PCI-e one though assuming the board has enough PCI-e lanes etc.

In my own experience I've yet to see a game I play max out the bandwidth of a normal ssd yet alone a PCI-e one and boot times with windows 10 and an 850 evo is just a couple of seconds already. The benefit of the SSD over a normal hard drive is pretty noticeable but there doesn't seem to be the same performance jump between sata and PCI-e ssd's except when you look at benchmarks where they're very specific use case scenarios or like I said using it for something where bandwidth can make a difference.

As to reliability... I'm still using a 128GB Crucial M4 as a scratch/page file on one of my pc's, while not the absolute fastest it does the job better than the other hard drives and is separate from the main OS/program drive....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm quietly happy with the reliability of SSDs so far (god I hope I don't jinx it). Compared to multiple drive failures over the years for HDDs in previous builds, my 4 SSDs in Raid 0 have been nothing but superb.

Now if they can get the cost per gb down further, that would be nice.

I had a 480GB die recently(and know a few others with the same brand also have the same problem),so won't be touching anything other than a select few companies from now onwards.

[.havoc]

In terms of real world performance for someone who just games and uses multimedia, is there any point in getting one of these silly fast M2 / PCI-e drives?

In short - no. You will see no benefit if your primary usage is gaming. At all really. Have a look at my earlier post with the youtube videos (here for your convenience : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdF_aerWcW8 & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIXSSOzyLbs) and they will give you some real world loading tests between NVMe's and SATA SSDs on gaming and boot times.

[philehidiot]

Havoc, Cat the fith and LSG501 - thanks guys. I'm at work so I can't watch the youtube vids but I'll have a gander when I get home. At the moment I've a good 300GB going spare and I doubt I'll be chewing it up in a hurry so I'll probably only be upgrading when capacity is required or in the case of a failure. My GPU is a GTX 780 so that's probably next in line for an upgrade.

I think as suggested above, I'll try and aim for NVME / PCI-e if the price is equal (and at that point it most likely will be the case that NVME is just standard and not a luxury) but won't get too hung up on it. I think reviewers have got to find ways to differentiate these drives but for the average punter they do tend to fall a bit short - perhaps a standard boot time comparison / game level loading time comparison would be better but generally all I see in reviews is stuff that bears no relation to my kind of use. Also, some kind of responsiveness test such as a batch file which goes about loading Word, Chrome, a video file, etc all at once and times it all to see if there are any issues with muchos multitasking with certain drives might be something we can really relate to. The primary reason to have an SSD is responsiveness but this just doesn't seem to get tested.

Just as another question as I seem to have a knowledgeable and captive audience - I've got a reasonable 12GB of RAM so it's probably a non issue but would you expect any substantial improvements sticking the paging file onto a drive that isn't being used for OS or games? It's just a hangover I have from using multiple HDDs but this was in the era where the swap file was used quite a bit and so obviously made a difference.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Well PCI-E drives are out of the question for me as I use a mini-ITX system,and only if my next motherboard has an M2 slot will I use one.

[LSG501]

Just as another question as I seem to have a knowledgeable and captive audience - I've got a reasonable 12GB of RAM so it's probably a non issue but would you expect any substantial improvements sticking the paging file onto a drive that isn't being used for OS or games? It's just a hangover I have from using multiple HDDs but this was in the era where the swap file was used quite a bit and so obviously made a difference.

I've got 16GB ram and my page file on my m4 ssd (plus a small one on my evo due to certain programs needing it there...), honestly I can't say I've noticed any real heavy use of the page file if I'm honest. Unless you're doing something heavy like 3D or hi res graphic work etc 12GB is likely more than the pc will need etc.

[DevDrake]

The numbers aren't impresive as for m.2. So i wonder how much to beat Samsung 960 Evo