Previewing Silicon Motion SM2260 NVMe Controller With 3D MLC NAND (512GB)
by Billy Tallis on February 17, 2017 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage and unlike our Iometer tests, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, a few data points about its latency, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The SM2260 sample's average data rate on The Destroyer is just a hair slower than the Phison-based Patriot Hellfire. This makes the SM2260 sample the slowest NVMe SSD using MLC NAND, but it's still faster than any SATA SSD.
The SM2260 sample's average service time during The Destroyer is again in last place for NVMe/MLC SSDs, but the SATA SSDs and some of the TLC-based NVMe SSDs are trailing behind by a wide margin.
The SM2260 sample is not great at avoiding high-latency outliers above 100ms and ranks behind the Samsung 850 PRO. At the 10ms threshold, the SM2260 sample performs quite well with big advantage over the Patriot Hellfire, the Intel SSD 600p and the SATA SSDs.
The SM2260 sample with 3D MLC improves significantly over the poor power efficiency of the TLC-based Intel SSD 600p, but it still ranks poorly overall. It is tied with the Phison E7-based Patriot Hellfire.
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romrunning - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
You would have thought their design performance target would have been the older 950 Pro (not the newer 960 line) or the even-older Intel 750 . But no, it seems they are competing with Phison for the lowest-performing NVMe SSD award. Disappointing - just like that Intel 600p.ddriver - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
First look: slow. Second look: still slow. It is quite the feat they manage to make an nvme controller almost as slow as sata.jjj - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Guess it's a sub 200$ drive, we'll see how it does against WD's offering and Plextor M8Se.Not worth wasting the M.2 slot on such a drive, unless it's well bellow 200$. Right now on Newegg, the M8Pe without a shield is 220$.
kissiel - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Isn't the Z97Pro bottlenecking the drive?AFAIK it's pcie2.0 x 2 - > so sub 1GiB/s tops.
revanchrist - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
True that. It's a 10Gbps M.2 rather than the newer 32Gbps M.2 slot.fanofanand - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Nice catch! Strange for one of the top tech sites in the world to use old tech to test new tech. Very strange indeed. Ryan? Can you squeeze Purch to get some current equipment into your reviewer's hands?DanNeely - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
I don't think so. The last page of the article shows the card in a x4 PCIe adapter. AFAIK that's plugged into 3.0 lanes from the CPU both for performance testing and to monitor the power draw.Billy Tallis - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Exactly right. All PCIe SSDs are tested in the PCIe 3.0 x16 slot with a riser card that has the power measurement points on it. Although, I did also test the Intel 600p in the motherboard's M.2 slot to see how much the slowest NVMe drive would be affected.kissiel - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link
Thanks!Please consider pointing that out in a test bed info next time, so people will know what to expect with a similar combo (z97+m.2).
Keep up, the good work!
TelstarTOS - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Another piece of crap. This controller should be trashed away.