By David Ramsey

Manufacturer: ADATA Technology Corporation
Product Name: XPG Gaming Solid State Drive
Part Number: ASX930SS3-240GM-C (240GB)
UPC: 4712366963290
Price As Tested: $99.99 (Amazon | Newegg)

Full Disclosure: ADATA Technology Co. provided the product sample used in this article.

With SSD prices falling under intense competition, and most consumer-level drives bumping up against the bandwidth limitations of SATA 6, how does a vendor distinguish their product? ADATA thinks their SX930 “Extreme Performance Gaming” (XPG) drive can do it, bolstered by features like enterprise-grade NAND, a JMicron JMF670H controller, hardware-based BHC error correction, pSLC cache technology, all supported with free application software and a five-year warranty. Benchmark Reviews runs the ADATA XPG SX930 Gaming SSD through our test suite to see how it performs.

No matter how fast your processor, memory, or video card is, your computer will still be limited by its slowest component: the hard disk. While hard disk speed has improved tremendously since the “early days”, with large caches and 10,000RPM spindle speeds, even the fastest hard disk’s performance is glacial compared to the rest of the computer. The situation only gets worse with modern pre-emptive multitasking operating systems, where dozens of threads are running simultaneously and competing for your disk’s limited response time and bandwith.

Consider: the average time to move a high-performance hard disk’s read/write head to a new track will be less than 10ms, which seems pretty fast. But your CPU is galloping along at billions of cycles per second, and will spend a significant amount of its time just waiting for the hard disk to fulfill its last request. Hard disk performance has plateued in the last few years, running up against the physical limitations of spindle speeds, magnetic media density, and head servomotor performance. At the end of the day, disks are limited by the fact that they’re comprised of physical, moving parts.

With no moving parts, Solid State Drive technology removes this bottleneck. The difference an SSD makes to operational response times and program speeds is dramatic: while a faster video card makes your games faster, and a faster processor makes compute-bound tasks faster, Solid State Drive technology makes your entire system faster, improving initial response times by more than 450x (45,000%) for applications and Operating System software, when compared to their mechanical HDD counterparts. The biggest mistake PC hardware enthusiasts make with regard to SSD technology is grading them based on bandwidth speed alone. File transfer speeds are important, but only so long as the operational I/O performance can sustain that bandwidth under load.

As we’ve explained in our SSD Benchmark Tests: SATA IDE vs AHCI Mode guide, Solid State Drive performance revolves around two dynamics: bandwidth speed (MB/s) and operational performance I/O per second (IOPS). These two metrics work together, but one may bemore important than the other. Consider this analogy: bandwidth determines how much cargo a ship can transport in one voyage, and operational IOPS performance is how fast that ship moves. By understanding this and applying it to SSD storage, there is a clear importance set on each variable depending on the task at hand.

For casual users, especially those with laptop or desktop computers that have been upgraded to use an SSD, the naturally quick response time is enough to automatically improve the user experience. Bandwidth speed is important, but only to the extent that operational performance meets the minimum needs of the system. If an SSD has a very high bandwidth speed but a low operational performance, it will take longer to load applications and boot the computer into Windows than if the SSD offered a higher IOPS performance.

ADATA’s new XPG line of SSDs is intended to appeal to the gamer and performance enthusiast. Apparently the hummingbird logo on previous ADATA drives wasn’t considered, well, “correct” for this demographic, so it’s been replaced with flames.

ADATA offers the SX930 series drives in 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB capacities, and we’re testing the mid-range 240GB unit. With market prices for drives in this price range falling below $100, it’s an excellent choice for a system drive.

SX930 drive are rated at 1.5 million hours MTBF, which is exactly what the ADATA Premier SP610 drive I tested a month or two back was rated at. One difference is the warranty: it’s 5 years on the SX930 drives compared to 3 years for the SP610 drives. While the $99.99 price of this drive (Amazon) would seem to be the same as that of the SP610, the latter’s price has dropped to $84.99 (Amazon) since my original review was published.

The SX930 240GB drive comes with a 2.5mm spacer for those installations requiring a 9.5mm thickness, a 3.5″ mounting adapter plate for desktop systems without a 2.5″ drive bay, and a quick start guide. On the back of the retail box is a QR code the buyer can scan to get a free copy of the Acronis True Image backup utility, which also allows users to easily migrate their systems to the new drive.

As shown above, the ADATA XPG SX930 SSD is enclosed in a plain black metal chassis with a metallic sticker denoting the model and capacity. The back of the drive sports a label containing the drive’s model, capacity, and warranty code.

The SX930’s aluminum chassis has a fine brushed finished. Although it’s subtle, it does stand out from the plastic or flat finishes of most other drives.

Like most sub-1TB drives these days, the 240GB ADATA drive uses a half-sized circuit board. One side is populated with 4 ADATA-branded NAND chips…

While the other side of the board has four more NAND chips, as well as the controller and cache RAM.

The JMicron JMF670H controller uses a single ARM9 core and is limited to controlling up to 480GB of data. The more robust error-correcting code– capable of handling up to 72 bit errors per kilobyte– is needed because as NAND cell size shrinks with each new process iteration, inter-cell leakage becomes more of a problem and more bit errors occur. Still, it seems odd that JMicron’s latest controller is limited to 480GB with plummeting prices makes 1TB consumer drives affordable. And it does look a little odd that the ADATA’s “value” SSDs (the SP6x0 series) do offer 1TB versions. Oh well…

With 240GB of synchronous multi-level NAND, ADATA specs this drive at 560MB/s reads, 460MB/s writes, compared to 560MB/s read and 290MB/s writes for the SP610. As you’d expect on any modern drive, TRIM and S.M.A.R.T. are fully supported, and BCH error-correcting code can handle up to 72 bit errors per kilobyte.

In the next few sections we’ll test the ADATA XPG SX930 SSD, and compare this solid state drive to other retail storage products intended for notebook and desktop installations.

Solid State Drives have traveled a long winding course to finally get where they are today. Up to this point in technology, there have been several key differences separating Solid State Drives from magnetic rotational Hard Disk Drives. While the DRAM-based buffer size on desktop HDDs has recently reached 64 MB and is ever-increasing, there is still a hefty delay in the initial response time. This is one key area in which flash-based Solid State Drives continually dominates because they lack moving parts to “get up to speed”.

When we test storage devices, the two main metrics to consider are access time and transfer rate. Simply put, access time is the time is takes the storage device to start delivering data once the request has been received, while transfer rate is how fast (megabytes per second) the data comes once the transfer operation begins. With a hard disk, data transfer cannot begin until the disk’s head servo physically moves the read/write head to the correct track. Although modern servos are very fast, in the best case you’re still looking at several milliseconds to do this, while an SSD’s access time is always under a millisecond. The disadvantage is even worse if the data isn’t all in a contiguous space on the disk, since the head will have to be repositioned on the fly, leading to more delays.

Early consumer SSDs actually had slower transfer rates than the best hard disks, although their instantaneous access times more than made up for it. The zenith of consumer hard disk performance was probably reached in 2012 with the release of the Western Digital Velociraptor 1 terabyte disk. Spinning at 10,000RPM, this disk could under ideal circumstances (i.e. a synthetic bandwidth test) reach a sequential transfer rate of over 230MB/s. Keep this figure in mind as you read this review.

Early on in our SSD coverage, Benchmark Reviews published an article which detailed Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing. The research and discussion that went into producing that article changed the way we now test SSD products. Our previous perceptions of this technology were lost on one particular difference: the wear leveling algorithm that makes data a moving target. Without conclusive linear bandwidth testing or some other method of total-capacity testing, our previous performance results were rough estimates at best.

Our test results were obtained after each SSD had been prepared using DISKPART or Sanitary Erase tools. As a word of caution, applications such as these offer immediate but temporary restoration of original ‘pristine’ performance levels. In our tests, we discovered that the maximum performance results (charted) would decay as subsequent tests were performed. SSDs attached to TRIM enabled Operating Systems will benefit from continuously refreshed performance, whereas older O/S’s will require a garbage collection (GC) tool to avoid ‘dirty NAND’ performance degradation.

It’s critically important to understand that no software for the Microsoft Windows platform can accurately measure SSD performance in a comparable fashion. Synthetic benchmark tools such as ATTO Disk Benchmark and Iometer are helpful indicators, but should not be considered the ultimate determining factor. That factor should be measured in actual user experience of real-world applications. Benchmark Reviews includes both bandwidth benchmarks and application speed tests to present a conclusive measurement of product performance.

Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 EVO (Intel P67 Sandy Bridge Platform, B3 Stepping)
Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4 GHz Quad-Core CPU
System Memory: 4GB Dual-Channel DDR3 1600MHz CL6-6-6-18
SATA 6Gb/s Storage HBA: Integrated Intel P67 Controller
- AHCI mode – Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver 11.7.0.1013
SATA 3Gb/s Storage HBA: Integrated Intel P67 Controller
- AHCI mode – Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver 11.7.0.1013
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition 64-Bit with Service Pack 1

The following storage hardware has been used in our benchmark performance testing, and may be included in portions of this article:

AS SSD Benchmark 1.6.4067.34354: Multi-purpose speed and operational performance test
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46: Spot-tests static file size chunks for basic I/O bandwidth
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1a by Crystal Dew World: Sequential speed benchmark spot-tests various file size chunks
Iometer 1.1.0 (built 08-Nov-2010) by Intel Corporation: Tests IOPS performance and I/O response time
Finalwire AIDA64: Disk Benchmark component tests linear read and write bandwidth speeds
Futuremark PCMark Vantage: HDD Benchmark Suite tests real-world drive performance

This article utilizes benchmark software tools to produce operational IOPS performance and bandwidth speed results. Each test was conducted in a specific fashion, and repeated for all products. These test results are not comparable to any other benchmark application, neither on this website or another, regardless of similar IOPS or MB/s terminology in the scores. The test results in this project are only intended to be compared to the other test results conducted in identical fashion for this article.

Alex Schepeljanski of Alex Intelligent Software develops the free AS SSD Benchmark utility for testing storage devices. The AS SSD Benchmark tests sequential read and write speeds, input/output operational performance, and response times.

AS-SSD Benchmark uses compressed data, so sequential file transfer speeds may be reported lower than with other tools using uncompressed data. For this reason, we will concentrate on the operational IOPS performance in this section.

Beginning with sequential transfer performance, the 480GB SX930 solid state drive produced speeds up to 510.45MB/s for reads and 443.83 for writes. This write speed distinguishes the SX930 from ADATA’s SP6x0 line, which only produced 285.35MB/s for writes. Both the read and write speeds are very competitive, but the drive’s performance in the “4K” tests is less so, coming in below the figures turned in by its value-oriented cousin SP610.

240GB ADATA XPG SX930 SSD AS-SSD Results

The chart below summarizes AS-SSD 64-thread 4KB IOPS performance results among a variety of enthusiast-level SSDs. The ADATA SX930 ranks below even value-oriented drives like the Crucial BX100 here, and this is a little disappointing considering that it’s marketed as a performance drive.The chart below is sorted by total combined performance, which helps illustrate which products offer the best operational input/output under load:

In the next section, Benchmark Reviews tests transfer rates using ATTO Disk Benchmark.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark program is free, and offers a comprehensive set of test variables to work with. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. There are some minor improvements made to the 2.46 version of the program that allow for test lengths up to 2GB, but all of our benchmarks are conducted with 256MB total length. ATTO Disk Benchmark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested. Please consider the results displayed by this benchmark to be basic bandwidth speed performance indicators.

240GB SX930 SSD ATTO Benchmark Results

The 240GB model provided to Benchmark Reviews for testing produced 557 MBps maximum read speeds that plateau when the file size reaches about 512KB, and 464 MBps peak write bandwidth that plateaus starting at 64KB. These numbers pretty much match ADATA’s claim of 560 MB/s sequential reads and 460 MB/s sequential writes.

As you can see from the chart above, most of the SSDs that Benchmark reviews has tested in the last couple of years have similar maximum sequential read speeds. The SX930’s sequential write speed is a little off the pace, but not egregiously so.

In the next section, Benchmark Reviews tests sequential performance using the CrystalDiskMark 3.0 software tool…

CrystalDiskMark 3.0 is a file transfer and operational bandwidth benchmark tool from Crystal Dew World that offers performance transfer speed results using sequential, 512KB random, and 4KB random samples. For our test results chart below, the 4KB 32-Queue Depth read and write performance was measured using a 1000MB space. CrystalDiskMark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested, and all drives are formatted with NTFS on the Intel P67 chipset configured to use AHCI-mode. Benchmark Reviews uses CrystalDiskMark to illustrate operational IOPS performance with multiple threads. In addition to our other tests, this benchmark allows us to determine operational bandwidth under heavy load.

CrystalDiskMark uses compressed data, so sequential file transfer speeds are reported lower than with other tools using uncompressed data. For this reason, we will concentrate on the operational IOPS performance in this section.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0 reports sequential speeds reaching 515.4 MB/s reads and 445.3 MB/s writes. 512K test results reached 342.2MB/s read and 434 MB/s write performance. 4K tests produced 26.64MB/s read and 88.76MB/s write performance. While the sequential read speeds were again very good, the 4K random transfer speeds with 32 commands queued up were in the bottom quarter of our results.

240GB SX930 SSD CrystalDiskMark Results

The chart below summarizes 4K random transfer speeds with a command queue depth of 32. The ADATA SX930 falls in the bottom quarter of results in this specific test, behind even “value” drives like the Crucial BX100 and ADATA’s own SP610. However, remember that consumer workloads are rarely (almost never) going to queue up 32 outstanding I/O commands, so this particular metric is really only relevant for servers.

In the next section, we continue our testing using Iometer to measure input/output performance…

Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. Iometer does for a computer’s I/O subsystem what a dynamometer does for an engine: it measures performance under a controlled load. Iometer was originally developed by the Intel Corporation and formerly known as “Galileo”. Intel has discontinued work on Iometer, and has gifted it to the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL). There is currently a new version of Iometer in beta form, which adds several new test dimensions for SSDs.

Iometer is both a workload generator (that is, it performs I/O operations in order to stress the system) and a measurement tool (that is, it examines and records the performance of its I/O operations and their impact on the system). It can be configured to emulate the disk or network I/O load of any program or benchmark, or can be used to generate entirely synthetic I/O loads. It can generate and measure loads on single or multiple (networked) systems.

To measure random I/O response time as well as total I/O’s per second, Iometer is set to use 4KB file size chunks over a 100% random sequential distribution at a queue depth of 32 outstanding I/O’s per target. The tests are given a 50% read and 50% write distribution. While this pattern may not match traditional ‘server’ or ‘workstation’ profiles, it illustrates a single point of reference relative to our product field.

All of our SSD tests used Iometer 1.1.0 (build 08-Nov-2010) by Intel Corporation to measure IOPS performance. Iometer isconfigured to use 32 outstanding I/O’s per target and random 50/50 read/write distributionconfiguration: 4KB 100 Random 50-50 Read and Write.icf. The chart below illustrates combined random read and write IOPS over a 120-second Iometer test phase, where highest I/O total is preferred:

The 256GB Samsung SSD 850 PRO produced our all-time best recorded score with 94,985IOPS, which is more than twice the performance we see with the ADATA SX930. What’s embarrassing here is that the only drives below the SX930’s score are much older drives that user controllers and flash memory at least a couple of generations behind.

Nearly all modern SSDs deliver I/O far beyond the needs of multi-tasking power users and hardcore gamers; SSDs that return very high IOPS scores would be ideal for servers or workstation systems running utilizing virtual machines.

In our next section, we test linear read and write bandwidth performance and compare the speed of the ADATA SSD against several other top storage products using the AIDA64 Disk Benchmark.

Many enthusiasts are familiar with the Finalwire AIDA64 benchmark suite, but very few are aware of the Disk Benchmark tool available inside the program. The AIDA64 Disk Benchmark performs linear read and write bandwidth tests on each drive, and can be configured to use file chunk sizes up to 1MB (which speeds up testing and minimizes jitter in the waveform). Because of the full sector-by-sector nature of linear testing, Benchmark Reviews endorses this method for testing SSD products, as detailed in our Solid State Drive Benchmark Performance Testing article. One of the advantages SSDs have over traditional spinning-platter hard disks is much more consistent bandwidth: hard disk bandwidth drops off as the capacity draws linear read/write speed down into the inner-portion of the disk platter. AIDA64 Disk Benchmark does not require a partition to be present for testing, so all of our benchmarks are completed prior to drive formatting.

Linear disk benchmarks are superior bandwidth speed tools in my opinion, because they scan from the first physical sector to the last. A side affect of many linear write-performance test tools is that the data is erased as it writes to every sector on the drive. Normally this isn’t an issue, but it has been shown that partition table alignment will occasionally play a role in overall SSD performance (HDDs don’t suffer this problem).

We run the AIDA64 linear read and write tests with a 1M block size. Charted above, read performance on the 240GB ADATA XPG SX930 SSD returned average speeds of 510.7 MB/s. Note, though, that at the beginning of the test, there is a dip down to the 466 MB/s range.

AIDA64 linear write-to tests were next…

After an initial spurt of performance as high as 427 MB/s, probably the result of caching, performance quickly drops down to a less impressive 305.5 MB/s average.

As you can see in the chart below, the SX930’s read speeds are within a few MB/s of the fastest we’ve ever tested, which simply means that like most modern SSDs, the ADATA drive’s read performance is limited by the bandwidth available on SATA 6. However, the relatively slow write speeds on this test place it well below the average of the other drives we’ve tested.

Linear tests are an important tool for comparing bandwidth speed between storage products, serve to highlight the consistent-bandwidth advantages of SSDs, which don’t suffer the performance drop-off that HDDs do as the test proceeds away from the fast outer edge of the disk.

In the next section we use PCMark Vantage to test real-world performance…

PCMark Vantage is an objective hardware performance benchmark tool for PCs running 32- and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 7. PCMark Vantage is well suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows 7 PC: from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops, to dedicated workstations and high-end gaming rigs. Benchmark Reviews has decided to use the HDD Test Suite to demonstrate simulated real-world storage drive performance in this article.

PCMark Vantage runs eight different storage benchmarks, each with a specific purpose. Once testing is complete, results are given a PCMark score while and detailed results indicate actual transaction speeds. The 240GB SX930 SSD produced a total PCMark Vantage (secondary) HDD Test Suite score of 73734, a very good score although still below that produced by its SP610 sibling. Here for comparison are the individual scores for both the SX930 and the SP610:

ADATA Premier SP610 PCMark Vantage Individual Scores (HDD Suite)

Note that the SP610 posts higher scores than the “performance” SX930 in every single individual PCMark Vantage disk suite test. That said, the SX930 is just 7% slower in this test.

In the next section, I share my review conclusion and final product rating.

IMPORTANT: Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, please be advised that every author perceives these factors differently at various points in time. While we each do our best to ensure that all aspects of the product are considered, there are often times unforeseen market conditions and manufacturer changes which occur after publication that could render our rating obsolete. Please do not base any purchase solely on our conclusion, as it represents our product rating specifically for the product tested which may differ from future versions.

The ADATA SX930 Gaming SSD is a bit of a puzzler, performance-wise: it has excellent sequential read and write speeds, but falls flat when IOPS come into play, with scores falling into the bottom half of the field in the ASSSD, CrystalDiskMark, and IOMeter benchmarks. This is probably why ADATA lists IOPS performance for many of its other SSDs, but not this one.

I chalk this up to the JMicron JMF670H controller, which is a little strange in its own right. JMicron hasn’t really been much of a presence in the “performance SSD controller” field, and the SMI SN2246EN controller used in the less expensive ADATA SP610 drives seems to provide better overall performance– as well as the ability to support TLC NAND and memory sizes up to a terabyte, neither of which the JMicron part can do.

But there are many other considerations to an SSD controller, and even most enthusiasts probably don’t understand just how much work this part does. In addition to managing reading and writing data, the controller must handle wear leveling, encryption (if supported), S.M.A.R.T., TRIM, power management, and other functions. Choosing the right controller for an SSD requires balancing all of these operational and performance considerations along with prosaic requirements like cost and availability.

As far as I can see, the only place the JMicron controller really stands out is its ECC handling, which can deal with up to 72 bit errors per kilobyte of data. This is a very high number in the consumer SSD space, and hopefully will make the drive more reliable over time than its competitors– this is probably one of the reasons ADATA feels comfortable offering a five-year warranty.

All this said, the IOPS performance deficit of the SX930 will likely be unnoticeable in consumer or even enthusiast use. After in, in PCMark Vantage, probably the most “real world” of these tests, the difference between this drive and the top-scoring SP610 is just barely over 7%, and that’s not something you’re going to see without a stopwatch. In the meantime the improvement in sequential write speeds is a reasonable tradeoff for most people.

Appearance doesn’t count for much in storage products: even if you have a windowed case, your drives probably are not visible. Still, ADATA went to the extra trouble of giving the SX930 a brushed aluminum enclosure, which does look nice and distinguishes the drive from most others.

By their nature– no moving parts– SSDs are all but immune to physical shock. While early SSDs had relatively high failure rates, modern SSDs are proving to be very reliable, often far surpassing their specified write lifetimes. With robotically-assembled circuit boards, there’s a very high level of overall physical quality in most SSDs these days. ADATA’s five-year warranty on this part shows that they have confidence in it.

The 240GB ADATA SX930SSD is available for $99.99 (Amazon | Newegg), which is towards the low end of “performance SSD” prices in this capacity. However, given the IOPS performance, it’s a reasonable, not great, price. ADATA’s own SP610 drive in the 256GB capacity is $15 cheaper, but you’d be trading better IOPS performance for much lower write performance.

SSDs are becoming commodity items, and competition has led to “price compression” at the lower end of the market: in many cases an entire class of drives can fall within a $15 window. Today’s “best buy” can become tomorrow’s “overpriced”, so it always behooves the careful buyer to do their research and select the best product for them based on current price and availability.

At the time of this review, the ADATA SX930 240GB drive is a good value, its deficiency in IOPS performance notwithstanding. The inclusion of Acronis True Image and the spacer and 3.5″ mounting tray are nice value-adds if you need them.

+ Very good sequential read.write speeds
+ Supports TRIM, NCQ, S.M.A.R.T., and robust ECC
+ 5-Year product warranty support
+ Lightweight compact storage solution
+ Resistant to extreme shock impact
+ Free copy of Acronis True Image included

– Poor IOPS performance
– Doesn’t stand out from competitive products

Performance: 8.00
Appearance: 8.50
Construction: 9.50
Functionality: 9.00
Value: 8.5

Recommended: Benchmark Reviews Seal of Approval.

COMMENT QUESTION: Which brand of SSD do you trust most?

By David Ramsey

240GB ADATA XPG SX930 SSD AS-SSD Results

240GB SX930 SSD ATTO Benchmark Results

240GB SX930 SSD CrystalDiskMark Results

ADATA Premier SP610 PCMark Vantage Individual Scores (HDD Suite)

Recommended: Benchmark Reviews Seal of Approval.

By David Ramsey

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