The ADATA XPG SX6000 Pro 1TB SSD Review: Realtek's Entry-level NVMe Solution
by Billy Tallis on December 18, 2019 12:30 PM 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, 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. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The ADATA SX6000 Pro is a bit slower overall on The Destroyer than the Mushkin Helix-L, but is basically tied with the Toshiba BG4, so it's in the right ballpark for an entry level NVMe drive. The performance is much higher than the SATA drives or the QLC-based Intel 660p.
The SX6000 Pro's average and 99th percentile latency scores on The Destroyer are both clearly better than the other entry-level NVMe SSDs in this batch, and are not far behind some of the more affordable high-end drives.
The Toshiba BG4 and Mushkin Helix-L both have moderately better average read latency scores than the SX6000 Pro, but the latter is way ahead when it comes to writes—the SX6000 Pro's average write latency is competitive with several high-end NVMe drives.
The 99th percentile read latency score for the SX6000 Pro isn't as good as most of the other NVMe drives, but it's still clearly better than the SATA drives or the QLC-based Intel 660p. For writes, the 99th percentile latency can't match the top-tier high-end drives but it is competitive with the high-end drives based on the SM2262EN controller that takes a similarly aggressive approach to SLC caching as the Realtek RTS5763DL.
Several of the entry-level NVMe drives we've tested score very well for efficiency over the course of The Destroyer thanks to a combination of decent performance and power savings from the lack of onboard DRAM. This is clearly not the case for the SX6000 Pro. It does use less energy in total than the most power-hungry high-end drives, but the Toshiba BG4 and Mushkin Helix-L both complete the test with comparable overall performance while using less than half as much energy.
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otonieru - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link
Well, there's this scenario where in some region in the world, HP ssd is simply nonexistent in market, and when they do, the price is wayy higher compared to original price. So... ?rocky12345 - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
So basically if you just want more ssd storage that is more cost effective then go for one of these dram less drives. If you care about performance and don't mind a bit of a extra cost then pick up a drive with a decent dram cache.My own personal wants/needs require a drive with a DRAM cache and any of these drives with the realtek chipset and any other one with no dram cache support is a huge no go for me.
NewMaxx - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
Thank you for the review.Some reviewers have speculated that these newer Realtek controllers are using MLC rather than SLC mode. Your results to some degree support this conjecture. I personally did not expect to see that on a TLC drive, but what are your thoughts on the subject?
NewMaxx - Wednesday, December 18, 2019 - link
I'd like to add that I'm not supporting that viewpoint - full-drive SLC is in-line with ADATA's design principles on drives like this and the SU750 - but I'm curious about your take on those other reviews.Billy Tallis - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
The official spec sheet from ADATA says SLC caching, but I doubt those are actually written by people who would know better if it was MLC caching. The MLC caching hypothesis definitely explains why the cache is slower than usual for an SLC cache, and probably also why the folding process seems to be so slow. I'm not sure if it explains why the full-drive ATSB runs do comparatively well, and I'm still puzzled about the apparent lack of effect from HMB.NewMaxx - Friday, December 20, 2019 - link
Thank you for the reply. It'll be interesting to compare this to the RTS5762 drives.TheWereCat - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
It's only 10€ cheaper than SX8200 Pro where I live.127€ vs 137€ for 1TB.
LMonty - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Good thing I saw this review before buying one for my laptop! Battery life would have been impacted.The_Assimilator - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Simple maxim in the PC space: if you see "Realtek", avoid.crimson117 - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
Good luck buying a motherboard.