I use an ADATA budget SSD for my steam drive. It works fairly well, except random performance can suck sometimes (though I'm using it in a USB 3.0 enclosure, so that might be part of it). That being said, if ADATA can bring solid pricing to the M.2 market they might have a decent offering. However, right now, Samsung has a few awesome offerings that will make it very hard for ADATA to compete unless they compromise on price.
'the manufacturer also rates the XPG SX8000 for two million hours MTBF, 0.5 million (or 25%) higher compared to previous-gen XPG SSDs.' -- that's actually 33% higher.
"But what is noteworthy is that last month Micron (which co-owns IMFT with Intel) decided to cancel its 3D MLC/SM2260-based Crucial Ballistix TX3 M.2 SSDs for an undisclosed reason."
Pretty obvious that the reason is performance. It seems that the SM2260 is slowest of the bunch. Barely faster than the two year old Marvell 88SS9293. The SM2260 is not really meant for the high end. I wonder why anyone would chose it over the Phison PS5007-E7.
5 years warranty sounds good, but "them speeds" are more akin TLC than MLC. Not that sequential performance are a critical factor, not at those levels anyway, and it could make up on random access, which samsung ain't too great at despite their high sequential transfer rates.
The market needs competition, there are plenty of "competitors" but in reality samsung is like 50% of the market, pretty much dominating even in the presence of big boys like intel.
The reason Samsung dominates is because their performance is way higher. These ADATA chips can't even compete with the old 950 line M.2 chips (non-oem).
Still Samsung is only 35% in revenue, looking at units sold and silicon utilized they are worse than others, for example worse than Intel and Toshiba in fact they have a better utilization of involved silicon wafers. It is not all gold in Samsung house, and now they have a lot of new contenders in 3D drivers. Only OEM final prices will say who will be the winner in upcoming years. One thing is almost certain, their 3D NAND tech is not the denser of the market and this could give big problems in the upcoming price war. V-NAND is a bit faster but right now is a disaster in number of layers needed to be on pair with competitors.
Did ADATA release write endurance numbers as far as TBs written? A straight MTBF is kind of useless on a SSD, seeing as it's writing to the flash hat typically kills them, not run time.
Also, as a side note, has anyone noticed the ads on Anandtech get hilariously bad lately? They're not even close to being tech related.Revcontent seems to think your audience is interested in one weird old trick to "restore" 20/20 vision(they inserted the quote marks, not me).
FYI: Endurance is a useless number on SSDs these days. Don't worry about endurance, because unless you're using a consumer-drive for enterprise workloads (ie: 24/7 heavy I/O) then the drive's warranty will be out far before NAND endurance causes data loss.
These days, the best indicator of the actual use-life of the drive is the manufacturer's warranty time. They carefully pick this number to have warranty end, given average workloads and usage, so that the vast majority (~90%) of customers still have working drives before the warranty ends.
These are most definitely NOT high end Nvme M.2 sticks. They are for ADATA but not for the market. The Samsung 960 M.2 line absolutely crush these. These are not even a match for last years 950 line M.2. They are definitely superior to any M.2 stick that uses a SATA controller chip or any SATA SSD. Of course they will need to be priced in between an SSD SATA 6.0 Gbs drive and a true Nvme M.2. If they are smart they should be priced very close to the Sata drives and it will steal that market share.
Why are they not doing more U.2 versions? I just did a desktop build with the m.2 connector, and that 2mm screw is a pain to deal with. 2.5 format has much better mounting options.
Because U.2 versions are a larger size, and are only compatible with certain desktop motherboards at the moment, and many Skylake motherboards don't have a native U.2 connector.
Meanwhile the majority of mid-grade or higher Skylake motherboards have M.2 slot(s), and this form factor is also compatible with notebooks/laptops, and the form factor is enough to hold a reasonable amount of data.
U.2 isn't going anywhere due to low adoption, and while you might blame companies for not investing more into it, it's a problem that's blurred due to the chicken or the egg scenario.
Is U.2 not popular because motherboard and SSD manufacturers aren't supporting U.2 connectors?
Or is U.2 not popular because consumers aren't buying the U.2 drives available on the market?
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eek2121 - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
I use an ADATA budget SSD for my steam drive. It works fairly well, except random performance can suck sometimes (though I'm using it in a USB 3.0 enclosure, so that might be part of it). That being said, if ADATA can bring solid pricing to the M.2 market they might have a decent offering. However, right now, Samsung has a few awesome offerings that will make it very hard for ADATA to compete unless they compromise on price.Meteor2 - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
'the manufacturer also rates the XPG SX8000 for two million hours MTBF, 0.5 million (or 25%) higher compared to previous-gen XPG SSDs.' -- that's actually 33% higher.Chaitanya - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
eagerly waiting for review, especially with Samsung having recently announced their new 960 series of NVME SSDs.milli - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
"But what is noteworthy is that last month Micron (which co-owns IMFT with Intel) decided to cancel its 3D MLC/SM2260-based Crucial Ballistix TX3 M.2 SSDs for an undisclosed reason."Pretty obvious that the reason is performance. It seems that the SM2260 is slowest of the bunch. Barely faster than the two year old Marvell 88SS9293. The SM2260 is not really meant for the high end. I wonder why anyone would chose it over the Phison PS5007-E7.
ddriver - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
5 years warranty sounds good, but "them speeds" are more akin TLC than MLC. Not that sequential performance are a critical factor, not at those levels anyway, and it could make up on random access, which samsung ain't too great at despite their high sequential transfer rates.The market needs competition, there are plenty of "competitors" but in reality samsung is like 50% of the market, pretty much dominating even in the presence of big boys like intel.
AnandReader1999 - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
The reason Samsung dominates is because their performance is way higher. These ADATA chips can't even compete with the old 950 line M.2 chips (non-oem).Gondalf - Monday, October 3, 2016 - link
Still Samsung is only 35% in revenue, looking at units sold and silicon utilized they are worse than others, for example worse than Intel and Toshiba in fact they have a better utilization of involved silicon wafers.It is not all gold in Samsung house, and now they have a lot of new contenders in 3D drivers. Only OEM final prices will say who will be the winner in upcoming years.
One thing is almost certain, their 3D NAND tech is not the denser of the market and this could give big problems in the upcoming price war. V-NAND is a bit faster but right now is a disaster in number of layers needed to be on pair with competitors.
Mr Perfect - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
Did ADATA release write endurance numbers as far as TBs written? A straight MTBF is kind of useless on a SSD, seeing as it's writing to the flash hat typically kills them, not run time.Also, as a side note, has anyone noticed the ads on Anandtech get hilariously bad lately? They're not even close to being tech related.Revcontent seems to think your audience is interested in one weird old trick to "restore" 20/20 vision(they inserted the quote marks, not me).
JoeyJoJo123 - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
FYI: Endurance is a useless number on SSDs these days. Don't worry about endurance, because unless you're using a consumer-drive for enterprise workloads (ie: 24/7 heavy I/O) then the drive's warranty will be out far before NAND endurance causes data loss.These days, the best indicator of the actual use-life of the drive is the manufacturer's warranty time. They carefully pick this number to have warranty end, given average workloads and usage, so that the vast majority (~90%) of customers still have working drives before the warranty ends.
AnandReader1999 - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
These are most definitely NOT high end Nvme M.2 sticks. They are for ADATA but not for the market. The Samsung 960 M.2 line absolutely crush these. These are not even a match for last years 950 line M.2. They are definitely superior to any M.2 stick that uses a SATA controller chip or any SATA SSD. Of course they will need to be priced in between an SSD SATA 6.0 Gbs drive and a true Nvme M.2. If they are smart they should be priced very close to the Sata drives and it will steal that market share.docbones - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
Why are they not doing more U.2 versions? I just did a desktop build with the m.2 connector, and that 2mm screw is a pain to deal with. 2.5 format has much better mounting options.JoeyJoJo123 - Friday, September 30, 2016 - link
Because U.2 versions are a larger size, and are only compatible with certain desktop motherboards at the moment, and many Skylake motherboards don't have a native U.2 connector.Meanwhile the majority of mid-grade or higher Skylake motherboards have M.2 slot(s), and this form factor is also compatible with notebooks/laptops, and the form factor is enough to hold a reasonable amount of data.
U.2 isn't going anywhere due to low adoption, and while you might blame companies for not investing more into it, it's a problem that's blurred due to the chicken or the egg scenario.
Is U.2 not popular because motherboard and SSD manufacturers aren't supporting U.2 connectors?
Or is U.2 not popular because consumers aren't buying the U.2 drives available on the market?