ADATA XPG SX900 (128GB) Review: Maximizing SandForce Capacity
by Kristian Vättö on June 8, 2012 1:25 AM ESTFinal Words
If you've seen one SF-2281 drive with synchronous NAND, you've seen them all. From a performance perspective, the ADATA XPG SX900 is as fast as every other SF-2281 SSD with synchronous NAND. The only thing that separates ADATA from the competition is the fact that they have disabled RAISE and hence offer 8GB more capacity than other drives.
Since we are dealing with such similar drives, it all boils down to price. This is where ADATA appears to be making a mistake. With higher capacities than the competition, ADATA's advantage should be lower price per GB, but it's not. Instead, the SX900 series is either more expensive or equivalent to other SF-2281 drives.
The only scenario where I can see ADATA XPG SX900 being better than the rest is if you seriously need or want a SandForce drive with a tiny bit more capacity than the others. However, that's unlikely because if you know you need more than 120GB, then it's likely that 128GB won't suffice either. It's better to buy 180GB or 240GB straightaway so you won't have to deal with a constantly full drive.
In any other case, you will get a better dollar per GB ratio by going with another brand, and on other SF-2281 drives you also get support for RAISE (outside of the 60GB models). While RAISE may sound a bit useless, it's something you won't appreciate unless something goes bad. My feeling is that it's better to have it and not need it than to not have it and need it. It comes down to the importance you place on reliability and data integrity, and right now there's just not enough data to really let us know how non-RAISE SF-2281 will compare over the long haul. Ideally, RAISE would be something that the end-user could trigger on or off depending on one's workload and setup but apparently that is not possible, or at least no manufacturer has offered a tool for that.
At the end of the day the SX900's appeal is determined entirely by price. As noted in the introduction, keeping an eye on SSD prices for at least a few days before pulling the trigger is a good idea because prices fluctuate all the time. If price is a major factor, Crucial's m4 along with the asychronous NAND Mushkin Chronos and OCZ Agility 3 are generally the drives to beat. They may not be the fastest offerings, but unless you really need every last bit of performance, they're still substantially better than any HDD and nearly as good as other offerings.
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vol7ron - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
If you're going to put Mushkin up there, you might as well put OWC there too. Their drives seem to perform fairly well and are priced "decent"Kristian Vättö - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
I only put Mushkin there because many have been asking for that since it appears to be one of the cheapest brands. OWC is not cheap, in fact even Vertex 3 is cheaper except the 480GB model. The table is endless if I start putting every brand there, plus checking the prices is PITA and already takes a decent amount of time.StevoLincolnite - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
Plus... Only 4.52% of the worlds population resides in the USA, so the prices are pretty much useless for the 95.48% of the Earths population that doesn't reside in the US.StevoLincolnite - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
To add to that, I don't mean to belittle your efforts, I just don't bother to look at the pricing on this site.jak3676 - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
% of world population is hardly a useful stat to toss out there - you could make a decent argument with % of SSD's sold by country/region, but lets face it 99.99% of the world population (to include the US) isn't buying SSDs.If he listed prices in Euro or CAD or Yen or anything else he'd just be favoring that market (which is probably smaller than the US market anyway). Even if he could list prices available by country for the top 10 markets, he'd just turn off all of us as people wouldn't want to scroll through 10x the number of charts.
nathanddrews - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
4.52% of the world's population, but 22% of the world's GDP. That's why US prices matter.JarredWalton - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
And let's not forget that our site's primary readership *is* in the USA. I'm not sure of the breakdown, but I'd guess close to half of all our traffic is US based. Even if it's only 1/3 (Kristian for example is based in Finland), I doubt there's any other currency where our listing SSD prices in that denomination would prove more useful to our readers.Jaybus - Friday, June 8, 2012 - link
Yes, but some two thirds of international trades are in US dollars and it is still the de facto exchange currency.Anyway, what difference does it make? The point is relative prices between drives from different manufacturers. I don't think the ratios would change for different currencies.
djboxbaba - Saturday, June 9, 2012 - link
You realize this is a US based website right? and that the majority of the readership is based in the US?Go to a website that caters to your country's currency if this is a problem for you.
lyeoh - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - link
Useless? Speak for yourself, some of us in the 95.48% know how to do currency conversion.Are you also going to claim the USD prices of oil, gold, silver, CPUs, DRAMs, etc are useless to the rest of the world?
There's plenty of stuff in the world that are priced in US dollars - as in the manufacturer's/producer's main selling price for the item is in US dollars. And the price in other countries is linked to that USD price. When the USD price goes up, their prices go up too.
If the petrodollar loses its hold (its slipping a bit) then it might make sense to use some other currency. That'll be bad for the USA as the US Gov will no longer be able "tax" other countries just by creating more US dollars.