The ADATA GAMMIX S50 Lite 2TB SSD Review: Mainstream PCIe Gen4
by Billy Tallis on April 30, 2021 8:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
Our AnandTech Storage Bench tests are traces (recordings) of real-world IO patterns that are replayed onto the drives under test. The Destroyer is the longest and most difficult phase of our consumer SSD test suite. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.
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| 99th Percentile Latency | 99th Percentile Read Latency | 99th Percentile Write Latency | |||||||
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On The Destroyer, ADATA's S50 Lite offers similar overall performance to good PCIe Gen3 drives and the early Gen4 drives based on the Phison E16 controller. The power consumption is also similar to the Phison E16 drives, which is a bit disappointing since the S50 Lite's SM2267 controller is just a four-channel design, which should save a bit of power.
AnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
The ATSB Heavy test is much shorter overall than The Destroyer, but is still fairly write-intensive. We run this test twice: first on a mostly-empty drive, and again on a completely full drive to show the worst-case performance.
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| Average Latency | Average Read Latency | Average Write Latency | |||||||
| 99th Percentile Latency | 99th Percentile Read Latency | 99th Percentile Write Latency | |||||||
| Energy Usage | |||||||||
As with The Destroyer, we see the S50 Lite's performance on the Heavy test falling in the same general range as the top PCIe Gen3 drives, and it is clearly slower than top of the line Gen4 drives. The S50 Lite also has somewhat disappointing performance on the full-drive test runs, with higher write latencies than we'd like to see from a TLC drive. Power efficiency continues to be poor, though it is within the normal range for high-performance drives.
AnandTech Storage Bench - Light
The ATSB Light test represents ordinary everyday usage that doesn't put much strain on a SSD. Low queue depths, short bursts of IO and a short overall test duration mean this should be easy for any SSD. But running it a second time on a full drive shows how even storage-light workloads can be affected by SSD performance degradation.
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| Average Latency | Average Read Latency | Average Write Latency | |||||||
| 99th Percentile Latency | 99th Percentile Read Latency | 99th Percentile Write Latency | |||||||
| Energy Usage | |||||||||
On the Light test, the S50 Lite appropriately does well, with slightly better overall performance than any of the PCIe Gen3 drives, and decent full-drive performance with no concerning latency scores.
PCMark 10 Storage Benchmarks
The PCMark 10 Storage benchmarks are IO trace based tests similar to our own ATSB tests. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.
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| Full System Drive | Overall Score | Average Bandwidth | Average Latency | ||||||
| Quick System Drive | Overall Score | Average Bandwidth | Average Latency | ||||||
| Data Drive | Overall Score | Average Bandwidth | Average Latency | ||||||
The ADATA S50 Lite underperforms on all three of the PCMark 10 Storage tests. The most important comparison here is probably the Intel 670p, which uses basically the same controller and theoretically inferior QLC NAND. But the 670p's firmware is tuned so that it gets the most benefit out of its SLC cache on all three of these tests, which clearly isn't happening for the S50 Lite.
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Qasar - Monday, May 3, 2021 - link
" Not a fan of freedom of speech/expression/press? " that what it is, its just his bias opinion, for some reason, he hates QLC, and seems to go to great lengths to say how bad it is.Linustechtips12#6900xt - Monday, May 3, 2021 - link
I love seeing the fights in the comment sections, honestly makes my day lolFunBunny2 - Monday, May 3, 2021 - link
" " Not a fan of freedom of speech/expression/press? " "a frequent complaint, esp. the Lunatic Right. the text of the US Constitution *only* promises that the Damn Gummint cannot, arbitrarily, shut you up. they can if your calling for insurrection, for instance. and it says nothing about what a private entity can do. you remember seeing signs on retail doorways - 'no solicitation allowed'? that means union organizers can't say what they want on or near the premises. it also means that Big Bad Tech can monitor and quash speech/text they find objectionable; no reason need be given. the list goes on forever.
GeoffreyA - Tuesday, May 4, 2021 - link
Qasar, I think he's making a valid complaint, and fears, like many of us do, that Q will become the standard soon and T the costlier "pro" variant. QLC began with a dubious reputation and so we're resistant to its replacing something we trust. For one thing to replace something else, it must be better, not equal or weaker. Q's argument is better size and price; but, as it stands, doesn't seem to be delivering much in those areas, yet wants to usurp the throne from TLC.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, May 4, 2021 - link
'Qasar, I think he's making a valid complaint, and fears, like many of us do, that Q will become the standard soon'Just wait for PLC. It's coming, apparently.
romrunning - Tuesday, May 4, 2021 - link
I'm inclined to agree also. I've seen the transition from SLC to MLC to TLC, and I have no doubt that soon QLC will replace even TLC (at least for consumers). TLC wasn't too far a drop-off performance-wise from MLC, but QLC is quite a bit less.I don't doubt that most consumers won't be able to see the difference, but I'm disappointed that we're going down the spec-tree instead of up (a lower baseline now), primarily because the mfgs want to save money.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, May 4, 2021 - link
It's amusing to see how, despite the many comments condemning QLC from other posters on this site in very recent articles, I am suddenly being singled out.Ad hominem won't change the facts:
Every dollar spent on QLC is a dollar that reduces TLC production, raising TLC prices by increasing TLC scarcity. The same thing happened with MLC.
QLC has double the voltage states for only 30% more density. That's diminished returns.
TLC was made much more viable via the change from planar to 3D production. Remember how the Samsung 840 (planar TLC) was so unstable from voltage drift that the only solution was a kludge: re-writing the data again and again? That very serious symptom of a very troubling problem (due to the increase in voltage states in going from MLC to TLC) was solved via the introduction of 3D lithography. Where is the silver bullet for QLC? It has been produced in 3D from the beginning and yet its flaws are still quite evident.
Samus - Wednesday, May 5, 2021 - link
I'm kinda with Banshee here, spreading nonsense like this is not just ignorant and counterintuitive, but dangerous. People stupid opinions can be protected by free speech but outright lies shouldn't be.GeoffreyA - Wednesday, May 5, 2021 - link
"protected by free speech but outright lies shouldn't"Like any principle taken too far, free speech can certainly be abused, and sow lies, discord, or hatred. That's why it's got to be bound by other rules.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, May 6, 2021 - link
Free speech is a myth. All speech is subjected to censorship, including by the mind of the person producing it. The key here is that echo chambers (which aren't difficult to find on tech websites like Ars and Slashdot) are not the only solution to having community feedback.