Sandisk Extreme Pro 480GB Review

1. Introduction2. Sandisk Extreme Pro 480GB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

It has has been around a year since we last looked at a Sandisk Solid State Drive – the Extreme II … their ultimate performance model at the time. Today we look at their latest flagship drive – the Extreme Pro. This SSD is designed to deliver the fastest speeds possible, but with a focus on long term reliability. If you are an enthusiast gamer or media professional this may very well be the drive you will want in your next system build. The 480GB version we review today is priced around the £260 inc vat mark.

The Extreme PRO is available in three capacities: 240GB, 480GB and 960GB. Sandisk have decided not to deliver a 120GB model this time around.

Even more interesting is that the company quote 550 MB/s sequential read and 515 MB/s sequential write for both 480 GB and 960GB, but the 240GB drive is officially quoted to be slightly faster in sequential write tests – rated at 520 MB/s.

Sandisk Extreme Pro 480GB Specifications:

Interface: SATA 6Gbps.
Nominal capacity: 480GB.
Controller: Marvell 88SS9187.
Cache: Micron 512MB DDR3-1600.
Memory type/amount: 64 x 64Gbit SanDisk 19nm eX2 ABL MLC Toggle.
Endurance rating: 80TB total host writes.
Warranty: Ten years .


The SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB drive ships in a small but colourful little box. The product name and some specifications are clearly visible.

The bundle includes a 2.5mm adapter drive mount, literature on the product and information on the SanDisk SSD Dashboard software (which currently only supports Windows operating systems).

The drive is black from the front, with a focus on the company and product name. The rear sticker contains some technical data on the product. This sticker needs removed to get access to the drive inside.

The chassis is 7mm tall, meaning it is an ideal solution for the newest raft of super slim Ultraportable laptop systems. The drive weighs 61g.


The chassis actively cools the cache, controller and NAND memory. Only one side of the PCB is populated. The other side is more interesting.

Sandisk are using the Marvel 88SS9187 controller with 19nm MLC NAND flash. The 480GB drive has eight 64gb chips.

The Extreme Pro utilises the SanDisk nCache Pro feature – as part of the caching system. This tiered caching system supports a unique feature to improve random write performance and enhance long term reliability.

The SanDisk SSD has three storage layers:

• Volatile cache – DDR DRAM cache
• nCache – A non-volatile flash write cache
• Mass storage – MLC NAND flash.

The reason for this? Research quoted by SanDisk indicates that a modern operating system will primarily access the storage device using small access blocks, with the majority being 4KB in size. The small logical access blocks are said to conflict with the physical block structure (>1MB) for the newer generation flash memory technology.

Sandisk hold 32GB aside for overprovisioning and use by the nCache. When formatted, you have access to 446GB in the operating system.

The nCache is used to accumulate small writes at high speed and then flush, while consolidating them to the larger MLC sections of the NAND flash memory array.

The Extreme Pro also has support for DEVSLP however it doesn't support IEEE-1667 or TGC Opal 2.0 encryption standards. Samsung offer that with their latest 850 PRO drives.
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:
Kitguru Test Rig 3

Other Drives
OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB
Intel 520 Series 240GB
Intel 730 240GB
Samsung 840 EVO 1TB
OCZ Vector 150 256GB
OCZ Vector 240GB
OCZ Vertex 450 256GB
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (1.4 fw)
ADATA Premier Pro SP900 128GB
Intel 730 240GB
OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB HDD/SDD
SanDisk Extreme II 240GB
Corsair Performance Pro 256GB
OCZ Agility 4 256GB
SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB
Samsung 830 Series 512GB
Patriot Wildfire 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB MAX IOPS
ADATA S510 120GB
Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB
OCZ Octane 512GB (fw 1.13)
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB

Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark.
CrystalMark 3.0.3.
AS SSD.
IOMeter.

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 V3.0.3.

Overall performance is excellent, scoring close to the top of our chart.

The drive can deal with compressible and incompressible data equally – a good indication for those people who work with specific media types on a regular basis.


Above, some included compares from other leading solid state drives which we have reviewed in the last year.
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.

We noticed a little glitch in our result at 2,048. Sequential read performance would drop to around 515MB/s. This was repeatable.


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 deals exclusively with incompressible data and some drives score badly. No such concerns for the Sandisk Extreme Pro 480GB – the overall score of 1172 is one of the highest we have ever recorded from a single drive.

Some other comparisons from leading manufacturer drives, which we have tested in recent months.
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 test with both random read and write 4k tests, as shown above. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a Solid State Drive, so our results will often vary between the manufacturer’s quoted ratings.


Random 4K IOPS performance is strong, with the read results hitting over 96,000. There will be some variance between our findings and the manufacturer official claims as there are various methodologies of testing IOPS performance.
The Sandisk Extreme Pro 480GB has certainly not disappointed. Sequential performance is excellent and, like many of the latest drives is pushing the SATA 3 interface to the absolute limit.

Sandisk are not primarily focusing on just sequential performance however, because speeds well in excess of 500 MB/s are no longer talking points. The Sandisk tiered caching system is set not only to deliver ultimate performance, but ultimately long term reliability. Sandisk are standing beside this drive with a reassuring 10 year warranty.

The Marvel 88SS9187 controller deals exceptionally well with both incompressible and compressible data work environments and will suit the demanding enthusiast user who will appreciate the benefits – such as video editors.

Right now there is no shortage of competition in the Solid State sector, with a handful of drives vying for the most sales. A drive that frequently comes up in a discussion is the Samsung 840 Evo. In the last 6 months, prices have dropped from £510 to just under £300 (from Amazon). Crucial are also offering their M500 480GB and 960GB drives for £160 and £300 respectively.

Scan are currently selling the SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB for £257.38 inc vat. Cheaper high performance options are certainly available, but we are confident that the Sandisk Extreme Pro will appeal to the enthusiast audience who demand long term, sustained performance with enhanced reliability. The 10 year warranty is certainly proof that Sandisk are standing by their new flagship product.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

Pros:

• 10 year warranty.
• IOPS is strong.
• sequential performance.
• incompressible and compressible data

Cons:

• It isn't cheap by today's market pricing.

Kitguru says: One of the highest performance Solid State Drives that money can buy, backed up with a 10 year warranty.

Become a Patron!