ADATA XPG SX300 128GB mSATA Solid State Drive Review

The mSATA form factor is rising in popularity and more manufacturers are releasing high performance drives to target the growing audience. Today we are looking at the latest drive from ADATA, the XPG SX300 128GB. In June we looked at the mSATA MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA and I was extremely impressed with the outstanding performance from the tiny drive. The ADATA XPG SX300 uses the same LSi Sandforce 2281 controller, so we should, in theory expect similar performance levels. We test mSATA drives with an Aleratec MiniPCIe mSATA to SATA SSD Adapter as many of the current desktop motherboards use an mSATA connector which will be limited to SATA 3.0Gbps speeds. After all, we are here today to test the raw performance of the ADATA XPG SX300, not a motherboard connector. You really need to see one of these drives in the flesh to really understand just how small they are. They measure 51mm x 30mm, considerably smaller than a standard 2.5 inch Solid State Drive. While we are reviewing the 128GB unit, ADATA also sell a 64GB and 256GB version. The company rate the drive at 550MB/s read and 500MB/s write. ADATA have incorporated 25nm NAND flash. The ADATA XPG SX300 128GB mSATA ships in a tiny little package with the product highlighted behind a clear plastic window at the bottom. After we remove the ADATA sticker we can see the LSi Sandforce 2281 controller, marked "SF-2281VB1-SDC". Above, the 2.5 inch Aleratec MiniPCIe mSATA to SATA SSD Adapter with the ADATA XPG SX300 128GB mSATA drive in place. Testing mSATA drives today on an ATX motherboard is not ideal, as many of them currently limit the mSATA port to 3.0Gbps speeds. 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. On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. 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. This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits. Main system: CPU: Intel Core i7 2700k Cooler: Thermaltake Frio OCK Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe Memory: ADATA DDR3 2000mhz 9-11-9-24 PSU: ADATA 1200W Graphics: Sapphire HD6950 Flex Edition Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise Monitor: Dell U2410 Other Drives (used in Core i7 2700k system above): Visiontek Racer Series 120GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 120GB Mushkin Chronos 240GB Kingston HyperX 3k 120GB OCZ Vertex 4 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSD Review (firmware 1.4 update) Transcend SSD720 128GB Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB OCZ Octane 512GB (V1.13 fw) Mach Xtreme MX-DS Turbo 120GB Corsair Performance Pro 256GB Samsung 830 Series 512GB Patriot Pyro SE 240GB Patriot Wildfire 240GB MemoRight FTM Plus 240GB SSD Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD OCZ Agility 3 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 240GB ADATA S511 240GB Corsair F100 100GB OCZ Vertex 2 120GB Crucial Real SSD C300 64GB MemoRight FTM.25 115GB SSD Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB PCIe drives test system: OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB HDD/SSD & OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB Test System: CPU: Intel Core i7 990x @ 4.8ghz Cooler: Corsair H100 Performance Liquid Cooler Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Black Edition Memory: 12GB Kingston DDR3 @ 1600mhz 9-9-9-24 PSU: ADATA 1200W Graphics: Nvidia GTX580 Chassis: Lian Li X2000F Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise Monitor: Dell U2410 Software: Atto Disk Benchmark CrystalMark AS SSD PCMark 7 IOMeter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call Of Pripyat All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active. Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.1 x64. Overall performance is promising, with sequential read performance just over 460 MB/s. The write performance is weaker, however this is a trait with Sandforce controlled drives when dealing with incompressible data. 4K QD32 performance is just slightly better than the MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA drive we tested a couple of months ago. We switch to 0×00 mode, which deals with compressible data. We can see the write performance increases significantly, along with the 4k and 4kQD32 read and write tests. Above, some included compares from other leading solid state drives which we have reviewed in recent months. 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. Sequential performance in ATTO Disk Benchmark is excellent, peaking at 552 Mb/s in the read test and 522 Mb/s in the write test. This is close to the fastest 2.5 inch Sandforce drives. Some comparison results from other leading products available on the market today. AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures. AS SSD only deals with incompressible data and as such this benchmark isn’t ideally suited to the Sandforce controller. For some reason we experienced a 'glitch' with the acc.time read test, failing to deliver any result. That said, it didn't effect the overall scores, which were quite good, and similar to the MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA drive. OCZ's Indilinx Everest 2 drives, such as the Vertex 4 dominate this benchmark. Some other comparisons from leading manufacturer drives, which we have tested in recent months. 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. Solid all round performance from the XPG SX300, scoring 5,129 points. It does score a little less than the MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA drive, which scored 5,316 points. 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. IOPS performance is actually a little bit stronger than the MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA drive, as you can see here. It doesn’t matter how good any of the synthetic suites are, the real 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 – its not absolutely scientific. Firstly we installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Edition onto each of the drives and performed a clean update from Microsoft with all patches and security fixes. We then install a basic suite of software, such as Office, Firefox and Adobe Design, then we install AVG free antivirus. We used a digital watch for this startup and repeated the test five times for each drive – once we had these five results we averaged the results and took that for the final figure. The ADATA XPG SX300 128GB mSATA drive scores the same as the MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA drive, with a final time of 22 seconds. The ADATA XPG SX300 took 18 seconds to complete the level load, the same time as the MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA drive. The ADATA XPG SX300 128GB is another very capable Sandforce 2281 powered unit targeting the latest motherboards released with mSATA support. The popularity of the mSATA interface is slowly rising, thanks to the release of portable computers such as the Dell Precision M6600 and IBM Thinkpad range. These machines have an accessible slot underneath the chassis for quick installation, allowing standard 2.5 inch drives to be used for mechanical storage demands. Additionally, many companies such as Gigabyte, Asus and MSI are including mSATA slots on their full sized desktop boards. This is perfect for attaching a boot drive directly to the motherboard and leaving all standard ports free for additional drives. The only issue we are finding is that many of the companies are restricting the mSATA connector speed to SATA 3Gbps, ensuring that the XPG SX300 128GB performance bandwidth will be effectively cut in half. It is not an ideal situation and is why we used the Aleratec MiniPCIe mSATA to SATA SSD Adapter today for our results today. There is absolutely no point testing this drive via a desktop mSATA interface and highlighting results limited by a motherboard bandwidth design decision. We are confident this will change over time and that more motherboards will offer mSATA 6Gbps connectivity. We are pleased to see that the ADATA XPG SX300 128GB doesn't suffer from a performance penalty due to the diminutive physical design. This drive is just as fast as many of the leading 2.5 inch Sandforce 2281 drives, delivering over 520 MB/s when dealing with sequential compressible data transfers. Obviously as this is an LSi Sandforce 2281 powered drive, incompressible data performance suffers. Nothing has changed in this regard over the last year. The greatest competition to the LSi Sandforce 2281 in the mSATA sector would come from OCZ, however they have yet to release an Indilinx Everest 2 powered drive. The Vertex 4 2.5 inch drive is my current favourite, delivering the most balanced performance levels with both compressible and incompressible data demands. We have no confirmed pricing for the ADATA XPG SX300 128GB unit, however there will be a price premium especially as the mSATA sector is in the early stages of development. Remember if you are buying this for a desktop mSATA slot - check for SATA 6Gbps capabilities in your motherboard manual, otherwise performance will be significantly reduced. Pros: ideal for a boot drive in either a laptop or desktop environment. compressible performance. decent IOPS results. Cons: incompressible data suffers a performance penalty. Many desktop motherboard mSATA slots are limited to 3Gbps. will be more expensive than a 2.5 inch drive with similar performance characteristics. Kitguru says: If you want to adopt an mSATA drive for your laptop or desktop system, this is a high performance product and an ideal size for a boot drive.