ADATA Premier Pro SP300 24GB mSATA Cache Solid State Drive Review

ADATA is targeting Intel Smart Response Technology users with its 24GB SP300 mSATA SSD. Can the SandForce SF-2141 controller and SATA 3Gb/s boundary-pushing speeds lure value-orientated and budget-conscious consumers? With an increasingly widespread adoption of the emerging mSATA interface by motherboard and laptop companies, many SSD manufacturers have designed low-cost options that make good use of the bandwidth-identical port. We were recently wowed by ADATA's XPG SX300 mSATA SSD, giving it our coveted 'Must Have' award, but now it's the value-orientated SP300's turn to endure our strenuous test procedures. ADATA rates the SP300's sequential speeds as 280MB/s read and 260MB/s for write. With claimed IOPS performance of 12.5k read and 46k write, the ADATA SP300's specification sheet makes it seem like a speedy and versatile drive. With a 24GB capacity, we feel that acting as a cache SSD using Intel's Smart Response Technology (SRT) is the perfect scenario in which the SP300 could be useful. Can ADATA's SP300 mSATA SSD impress us as much as its SX300 brother? Specifications: Capacity: 24GB/32GB/64GB Form Factor: Full-size mSATA Interface: SATA 3Gb/s NAND Flash: Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory Controller: LSI SandForce SF-2141 Weight: 7g Sequential Performance: (Read) 280MB/s, (Write) 260MB/s IOPS Performance: (Read) 12,500, (Write) 46,000 Warranty: 3 Years ADATA supplies the SP300 in a basic package that allows a glance at the SSD itself. SATA and Intel Smart Response Technology compatibility are outlined on the rear in many languages, as well as the built-in ECC and wear-levelling technology. Marginally larger than a £2 coin in size, the diminutive 24GB SP300 will fit in mSATA-supporting laptops and desktops without causing any interference issues. ADATA's product sticker partially conceals 2 of the 3 8GB Micron memory chips, the third of which resides on the PCB's opposite side. The LSI SandForce SF-2141 controller is located adjacent to the mSATA connector. 3 of Micron's synchronous 29F64G08CBAAB Multi-Level Cell NAND flash memory chips are used on the Premier Pro SP300. Each chip is 8GB in capacity and is built using a 25nm manufacturing process. Testing mSATA drives today on an ATX motherboard is not ideal, as many of them currently limit the mSATA port to 3.0Gbps speeds and can possess hefty latency hindrances. We want to the test the raw performance of the drive, not the port so we have adopted the Aleratec MiniPCIe mSATA to SATA SSD Adapter. For those interested, this Aleratec adapter can be picked up from Amazon for only £16. The ADATA SP300 fits perfectly in our adapter meaning that mSATA users will have no dimension-related problems. For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system. The test system was shut down between each test. This ensures that a drive's built-in cache doesn't have an effect on the results. According to Intel, Smart Response Technology works by caching data I/O blocks to the SSD that benefit the most from acceleration—for example, your most frequently used applications, games, and OS data. Intel's SRT technology requires more than 1 run of any task to offer its best performance. We accounted for this by measuring the initial performance (Run 1) and final performance (Run 3). Test System: Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k. Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V. Memory: Patriot Viper 3 IEM Limited Edition 2133MHz 8GB CPU Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems. Graphics card: Radeon HD 4870 1GB with Arctic Cooling Accelero Twin Turbo Pro. Power supply: Corsair TX650. OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Comparison Drives (synthetic benchmarks): 128GB Kingston V100 (Clean & empty). 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (Clean & empty). 24GB ADATA Premier Pro SP300 (Clean & empty). 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 & 24GB ADATA Premier Pro SP300 (OS installed & Intel SRT caching enabled). Comparison Drives (real world tests): 128GB Kingston V100 (OS installed). 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (OS installed). 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 & 24GB ADATA Premier Pro SP300 (OS installed & Intel SRT caching enabled). Software used: ATTO CrystalDiskMark IOMeter PCMark 7 Windows 7 Professional 64-bit 2x custom .BAT files Battlefield 3 We used a 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 HDD as the OS drive for testing the ADATA Premier Pro SP300 SSD in an Intel SRT caching configuration. This modern hard drive offers competitive speeds and represents good value for money - something that this review's readers will crave. For testing, we benchmarked the performance of our Seagate Barracuda HDD alone. We then configured the system for use with the ADATA Premier Pro SP300 SSD and Intel SRT (SSD Caching), before repeating the tests. This will allow us to accurately measure the performance differentials between a stand-alone hard drive and the HDD & SSD caching configuration. 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. ATTO allows the SP300 to make a flying start, flexing its wings at the once market-leading heights of 280MB/s sequential read. Sequential write throughput is equally impressive with the 250MB/s barrier being surpassed. Intel SRT caching does have a negative impact in comparison to the SSD's individual performance. Write speeds are firmly glued in the vicinity of the Seagate 7200.12 HDD's maximum throughput. This is a limitation of the Intel SRT functionality. The decrease in read speed is related to the added strain of a fully-fledged version of Windows and all of its components operating in the background. This is beyond our control. CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using V3.0.1 x64. ATTO's impressive performance, for a SATA 2 drive, is carried forward to the CrystalDiskMark benchmark. 200+MB/s sequential speeds are flaunted, once again. The 0x00 test proves that the SP300 is much better suited for use with compressible data - a known disadvantage to many of LSI's SF-2000 controllers. Above, results from the Kingston V100 and Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 comparison drives. IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology. We use a custom KitGuru configuration for 4k random write to measure performance. We use the same test, but for random read performance also. Chart-topping 4k random performance is accomplished by ADATA's 24GB SP300 mSATA SSD. A random write score in excess of 10,000 (or 10k, if you prefer) IOPS proves that this SSD has great potential. When used in conjunction with our Seagate 7200.12 HDD for Intel SRT performance figures, the configuration's write performance plummets to a HDD-limited sub-500 figure. Random read remains good at the 7k mark, allowing fast performance in an OS environment. PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use. PCMark 7 scores confirm the SP300's potential as a general usage device. The caching configuration's scores are just as impressive, proving that good system performance can be attained from an Intel SRT-based setup. It doesn’t matter how good any of the synthetic suites are, the meat of the testing has to be under absolute real world conditions. This proves difficult as to record results we have to narrow down fluctuation. Therefore, while we would say these are the most useful results to get from this review, there is always going to be a slight margin for error – it's not absolutely scientific. We installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Professional 64bit Edition with Service Pack 1 onto each of the drives. We then install a basic suite of software, such as Office, Chrome, Adobe Reader and Microsoft Security Essentials. We also installed our entire suite of benchmark software. To ensure that our test results would mirror a real world situation, some Word, Excel, PDF and JPG files were also loaded onto the machine. We used a digital watch for this start-up and repeated the test 5 times for each drive to ensure consistency. Our Kingston V100 SSD manages to pip the SP300 and Seagate 7200.12 combination for the 'Boot Time' chart's pole position. The performance difference is of sufficient quantity to observe a speed differential between the two combinations. Of equal importance is the 22 second or 37% speed gain achieved when switching from a fast HDD to a basic Intel SRT configuration. It's very difficult to accurately measure the time taken to load a single program. To circumvent such inaccuracies, we created a .BAT file that loaded 5 different programs, simultaneously. We chose to use Google Chrome, Microsoft Office 2007's Word and Excel, Windows' built-in calculator and Adobe Reader X. To fully push the drives' random read performance, we configured Google Chrome to load 3 webpages (KitGuru.net, BBC.co.uk and Hotmail.com), 2 Excel spreadsheets were launched, 3 PDF files got selected, 3 Word documents were chosen and last but not least, Windows calculator. Remember, as we were using a .BAT file, we click open and this whole process launches. Each file, webpage and program attempts to open simultaneously, putting a demanding load on our OS drive. This can represent the real world scenario of pay-day when you could be simultaneously opening your working hours and finances spreadsheets, word-based invoices, PDF-based pay slips, online banking and Windows calculator. A stopwatch was used to measure the time taken to load every last one of the programs and files/webpages. We measured the time taken from clicking open to the final file completing its opening procedure and displaying on our screen. This method provides a clear differential between the random performances of each drive, and, as the time taken is significantly longer than a single program, the margin of error in our timing method is drastically reduced. We repeated the test 7 times and, to reduce the performance differentials due to measurement errors, rounded the stopwatch value to the nearest second. Once Intel SRT dynamically memorises the commonly-used programs and caches them onto the SP300 SSD, an impressive 4 seconds is required to load every item from our demanding .BAT file. This result is even more remarkable when comparing it against the Seagate HDD's finishing time of 26 seconds - a 550% time increase and performance deficit. The 6 second result of Kingston's V100 drive also proves that a caching system is quite clearly capable of SSD-like performance. We created another .BAT file to open 26 different photos spread across 2 different folders. 18 of the images were of a 14 Megapixel .jpg specification, whereas the remaining 8 were Windows 7's sample images. This represents a real world scenario of simultaneously opening the snaps obtained during a short holiday or day out. Once again, we repeated the test 7 times and, to reduce the performance differentials due to measurement errors, rounded the stopwatch value to the nearest second. Performance between the SSD-based systems is much closer once the work load has decreased. Our time measurement method wasn't accurate enough to record a convincing and unambiguous difference between the SSD-touting contenders. A hard drive's performance is easily surpassed, yet again. For this test, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12's performance deficit is 75%. One of today's biggest uses for a Solid State Drive is as a crucial part of many gamers' machines. Whether gamers are looking to gain an advantage over their opponent by being the first to spawn in a map or just by reducing general load times to increase their playing duration, a fast storage drive is imperative. We used a stopwatch to measure the time it took for the Battlefield 3 game to load to its campaign menu screen and rounded the value to the nearest whole number. The results of Kingston's V100 and our Intel SRT-based configuration are sufficiently close to leave an outright winner as undeclared. Both setups achieve excellent sub-30 second load times, allowing enthusiasts to game - not wait. Over a minute wait is required for a HDD-based system - more than double that of its SSD counterparts. A 63% time reduction can be achieved by caching ADATA's SP300 SSD with the Seagate 7200.12. In the SP300, ADATA has produced a Solid State Drive that offers a good real world performance increase over a HDD-based system. For most of our testing, the mSATA SP300 was able to surpass the performance of Kingston's price vs performance designed V100 SSD. Some people may question the relevance of comparing the SP300 to such an old drive, but users looking to upgrade from a HDD are spoilt for choice when it comes to alluring deals on previous generation SSDs. If you have enough money to buy a modern, SATA 6GB/s 60GB+ SSD, there is little benefit in looking at a drive intended for caching. Readers that can't afford or justify a modern drive of sufficient capacity have 2 choices; buy a sub-60GB cache SSD or pick up a previous generation drive with adequate storage. For this reason, comparing the SP300 against a previous generation and now cheaply available SSD gives a good indication of each option's pros and cons. Random read scenarios are where the SP300 is able to offer a substantial and meaningful performance increase over even the fastest of hard drives. Windows and game load times were both decreased by an equally impressive margin, proving that a low capacity SSD used with Intel SRT is a feasible option for budget-conscious users craving a speed boost. Performance with incompressible data is lacking in comparison to the results obtained with compressible data. This is a clear weakness of the SF-2141 controller and may be enough to sway the purchase of users that demand peak performance in every scenario. Good sequential numbers make the SP300 a feasible option for a miniature portable storage device that is capable of rapid transfers. The increasingly popular mSATA connection is of great convenience to laptop users as well as buyers of modern mSATA-equipped motherboards from the likes of Gigabyte. The device's small form factor allows for clearance issues to be eliminated and makes mSATA drives perfect for users with a limited number of HDD/SSD bays in their mATX or m-ITX case. Pricing and availability are where the ADATA SP300 mSATA SSD clearly falls short. The drive is practically non-existent in the UK and US. European users can grab the 24GB variant for around €45, but at this price it is almost impossible to recommend to users that don't require the mSATA form factor when a 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 will cost just €5 more. At around €50, the 32GB variant is priced far more competitively than its 24GB sibling, but it still lacks a competitive price tag in today's cut-throat market. The 64GB version is almost identical in price to the superior XPG SX300 drive which also operates via the mSATA connection. If the mSATA connection and form factor aren't crucial, you are going to get better value from a 2.5" Solid State Drive. If an mSATA SDD that offers a good speed boost over a mechanical hard drive is what you're after, the ADATA SP300 is worth considering, but be aware, better deals are to be had. Pros: Minuscule non-restricting dimensions. Good real world performance. mSATA connector makes it an easy upgrade for laptop users. Good sequential performance. Cons: Currently non-existent in the UK and US. Price isn't competitive against opposing drives that offer a greater capacity. Poor incompressible data performance. KitGuru says: A conveniently-sized drive that offers good performance but is let-down by its price per GB ratio that restricts competition in such a crowded market.