ADATA are renowned for top drawer memory solutions and with some serious figures being touted by ADATA we test their latest SSD: The Premier Pro SP920.
Product on Review: SP920 SS
Manufacturer and Sponsor: ADATA
Street Price: £111.65inc. VAT (At time of review)
It’s been a while since we last reviewed an ADATA product so when we were asked to take a look at their new Premier Pro series drive we were very enthusiastic. ADATA have a range of SSD’s available to suit both pocket and usage from server grade products to entry level. The drive on test today, unimaginatively called the SP920SS is a high end product aimed primarily at multimedia users. Obviously, all home users make use of multimedia so this, it appears is the SP920’s market.
ADATA are throwing out some very impressive figures with 560MB/sec read and 500MB/sec write along with 98,000/88,000 IOPS on their 1TB drives. The 256GB drive we have on the review test bed today however is most likely to be the popular choice among consumers due to the inflated price of 1TB SSD drives. Costing around £110, the 256GB Premier Pro SP920SS is well positioned and should provide excellent price/performance if the 256GB drive is comparable to the 1TB figures advertised.
ADATA talk about their product
The Premier Pro SP920 series SSD is designed to meet the high-performance requirements of multimedia file transfers It is equipped with the latest generation Marvell controller, implementing the SATA III 6Gb/sec specification. Strict selection of flash memory chips allows for the enhancement of overall system efficiency and speed, especially for the transmission of multimedia files (uncompressed data). 4KB random read / write speeds of up to 98,000/88,000 IOPS provide rapid loading and multimedia playback, making this SSD an ideal option in terms of performance, data security, and stability.
Specification
Capacity 128GB/256GB/512GB/1TB
Form Factor 2.5″
NAND Flash Synchronous MLC
Controller Marvell
Dimensions (L x W x H) 100 x 69.85 x 7.0mm
Weight 70g (2.5oz)
Interface SATA 6Gb/sec
128GB Performance (ATTO) :
Read : Up to 560MB/s
Write : Up to 180MB/s
Maximum 4K read/write IOPS up to 80K/45K
256GB Performance (ATTO) :
Read : Up to 560MB/s
Write : Up to 360MB/s
Maximum 4K read/write IOPS up to 96K/80K
512GB Performance (ATTO) :
Read : Up to 560MB/s
Write : Up to 500MB/s
Maximum 4K read/write IOPS up to 98K/88K
1TB Performance (ATTO) :
Read : Up to 560MB/s
Write : Up to 500MB/s
Maximum 4K read/write IOPS up to 98K/88K
Power Consumption 0.067W ldle / 0.15W Active
Operating temperature 0~70 °C / -40~85°C
Storage temperature 5 ~ 95% RH (0 ~ 55°C)
Shock resistance 1500G / 0.5ms
MTBF 1,200,000 hours
Accessories
2.5” to 3.5” Bracket
7mm to 9.5mm holder
Acronis ATI HD 2013
ECC Recovery
Form Factor 2.5″
NAND Flash Synchronous MLC
Controller Marvell
Dimensions (L x W x H) 100 x 69.85 x 7.0mm
Weight 70g (2.5oz)
Interface SATA 6Gb/sec
Performance(Max)
128GB Performance (ATTO) :
Read : Up to 560MB/s
Write : Up to 180MB/s
Maximum 4K read/write IOPS up to 80K/45K
256GB Performance (ATTO) :
Read : Up to 560MB/s
Write : Up to 360MB/s
Maximum 4K read/write IOPS up to 96K/80K
512GB Performance (ATTO) :
Read : Up to 560MB/s
Write : Up to 500MB/s
Maximum 4K read/write IOPS up to 98K/88K
1TB Performance (ATTO) :
Read : Up to 560MB/s
Write : Up to 500MB/s
Maximum 4K read/write IOPS up to 98K/88K
Power Consumption 0.067W ldle / 0.15W Active
Operating temperature 0~70 °C / -40~85°C
Storage temperature 5 ~ 95% RH (0 ~ 55°C)
Shock resistance 1500G / 0.5ms
MTBF 1,200,000 hours
Accessories
2.5” to 3.5” Bracket
7mm to 9.5mm holder
Acronis ATI HD 2013
ECC Recovery
Features
Evolution of Speed and Performance
The Premier Pro SP920 solid state drive has sequential read and write speeds of up to 560/500 MB/sec, great for video editing and fast data backups. 4KB random read/write speeds of up to 98,000/88,000 IOPS mean faster system starts, program loads, and great action in the most demanding next-generation games.
Consistent Transfer Performance
Some SSDs suffer a performance drop as drive usage nears its capacity in terms of data stored. The SP920 maintains consistently high read and write speeds even when the disk is 90% full.
Full Capacity up to 1 Terabyte
The Premier Pro SP920 comes in a wide range of capacities: 128, 256, & 512GB, and a massive 1TB. The optimized firmware allows for full utilization of the NAND flash chips, resulting in a 7% increase in the usable space of the drive over many other models.
Fits 7mm & 9.5mm Bays
The SP920 has a thickness of 7mm, to fit 7mm SATA bays. It also comes with a 2.5mm holder, for use with 9.5mm bays.
Desktop Pack
Comes with a 3.5-inch conversion bracket to help you mount the SP920 when you are upgrading a desktop computer, allowing you to immediately enhance the performance and transmission speed of your operating system.
Packaging & First Look
The product arrives in a standard sized SSD cardboard box with a window cut-out allowing you to see the SSD design. Basic features are printed on the front of the box along with the overall design being attractive yet simple.
The rear of the packaging features multiple languages explaining some of the SSD’s features. There is also a small sticker which gives us the specific specifications of all the drives in this product line. The 256GB drive we are assessing today has sppeds advertised as 560/380 MB/Sec Read/Write.
A very good selection of accessories is included with this drive. Both a desktop pack with 3.5″ adaptor and 9.5mm adaptor are included so whichever device you have, this drive has everything you need get you started. Also included is a downloadable copy of Acronis True Image HD 2013 disc cloning software. We could not think of anything extra we would like to see so ADATA deserve recognition for the included accessories.
The drive itself is a replication of the product packaing with the humming bird motif only this time on a black background. The SSD itself is framed in an aluminium case and measures 100 x 69.85 x 7.0mm and weighing just 70g.
Closer Look
It is strange that ADATA have not protected thier product with a warranty seal however we feel there is no need for such a seal as there really is no need to take a peek inside as nothing can be modified to any useful extent that we are aware of.
The ADATA SP920 looks strikingly similar to the Crucial M550 both in layout and component choice right down to the last capacitor.
The PCB is made up of eight 20nm 32GB Micron Synchronous MLC NAND FLASH chips. 128Gbit NAND chips may work very well for high capacities but can often effect lower capacity drives due to the effect of having decreased NAND parallelism.
Controlling the drive is the Marvel 88SS9189 Controller. This controller and flash NAND are accompanied by Micron DRAM Cache. Both the Cache and Controller receive cooling via a thermal pad.
Test Setup & Methodology
Our test system is formatted and a fresh version of Windows is installed with just drives in place – no additional applications. Windows is then updated to the latest release and the drivers are installed. Included in the list of benchmarks are the following applications:
Benchmarks
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
AS SSD
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
Iometer
SiSoftware SANDRA 2012
HDTune Pro 5.5
AS SSD
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
Iometer
SiSoftware SANDRA 2012
HDTune Pro 5.5
Test system
CPU Intel Core-i7 4770K
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z87X-OC
Graphics MSI R7970 Black Edition
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro (2400MHz) CL10
HDD
– ADATA Premier Pro SP920SS 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 460 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 730 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 150 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 500GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 250GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K Na’Vi 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 450 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO 750GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Toshiba 256GB THNSNH256GCST (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force GS 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA S510 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 520 480GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 830 Series 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung HD103SJ 1TB (Sata 3Gbps)
PSU Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z87X-OC
Graphics MSI R7970 Black Edition
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro (2400MHz) CL10
HDD
– ADATA Premier Pro SP920SS 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 460 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 730 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 150 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 500GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 250GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K Na’Vi 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 450 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO 750GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Toshiba 256GB THNSNH256GCST (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force GS 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA S510 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 520 480GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 830 Series 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung HD103SJ 1TB (Sata 3Gbps)
PSU Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Benchmarks: ATTO
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
Benchmarks: AS SSD
AS SSD Benchmark is a straightforward tool for measuring the speed of your SSD drive.
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Benchmarks: CrystalDiskMark 3.0
CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software that analyses different types of hard drive. Giving sequential benchmark write and read statistics in MB/s. A simple program that is very useful.
Benchmarks: Iometer
Iometer is based on a client–server model, where one instance of the Iometer graphical user interface is managing multiple ‘workers’ (each one representing a separate Dynamo.exe process) which are doing the I/O. Iometer performs Asynchronous I/O – accessing files or block devices (later one allowing to bypass the file system buffers).
Iometer allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file.
Iometer allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file.
For the purpose of this test. The 4K 50%/50% read/write file will be under the examination with 100% Random Distribution – reporting back on IOPS and MBs per Second.
Benchmarks: Iometer (Sustained Test)
This is a new test for us but we have found that over a period of time, performance of SSDs slows down dramatically. For many of us this won’t be such a problem as it is unlikely we will be dedicating our PCs to small write over such a long period of time on a sustained basis however, it is a very valuable test which shows the sustainable performance of the drives with continuous small (4K)random writes in mind.For this test we again run IOmeter only this time we set it to 4K Random Write but over a 12 hour period. IOP readings are taken at 15 minute intervals throughout the 12 hour test to see how durable and sustainable the performance of the drives on test really are.
*Note* as this is a new test we have not had time to add all of the drives on test however more drives will be added when time allows.
Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Benchmarks: HDTune Pro
A new utility we have added to our line-up of benchmarks is the ever popular HDTune Pro. HD Tune Pro is a hard disk / SSD utility with many functions. It can be used to measure the drive’s performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more.
Conclusion
When we first heard of the specs of the ADATA Premier Pro SP920 we were eager to get it on the test bench. We were however left a little disappointed.
We have no issue at all with the read speeds which were better than average however, it is the write speeds that let this drive down. Like most manufacturers, tactical advertising can often be misleading as larger drives generally have much better drive speeds and this is no more apparent than with the ADATA SP920. The 1TB drive may well have write speeds of 500MB/s but the lower down the capacity ladder you go, the lower the write speeds get so when we double checked our speeds against the actual specification of the drive and not the bold print advertisements, we found that the 256GB drive has a rated write speed of 360MB/s which was more in-line with our own results. We urge you not to make the mistake of assuming the drive will have the same speeds across the range.
With that said, the SP920 is not a bad drive by any stretch of the imagination. It has the best accessory list of any drive we have tested, certainly looks the part and can keep up with most any SSD we have tested with regard to read speeds. IOPs were not brilliant with the drive scoring low on our sustained 12hr 4k IOPs write test. Clearly, if write speeds are a concern for you then you should consider one of the higher capacity ADATA drives. The SP920SS is however priced very aggressively and is one of the cheapest 256GB SSD’s available which is to it’s credit because while there are faster drives on the market, few offer similar read speeds at this price point which is the SP920SS’s main selling point – ‘bang per buck’.
An excellently packaged SSD with fast read speeds only to be let down by below par write speeds and IOPS.
Pros
+ Great all-round package
+ Fast Write speed
+ Good Price
Cons
– Mediocre Write speed
+ Great all-round package
+ Fast Write speed
+ Good Price
Cons
– Mediocre Write speed
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
