The ADATA Ultimate SU750 1TB SSD Review: Realtek Does Storage, Part 1
by Billy Tallis on December 6, 2019 8:00 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, 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 Ultimate SU750 comes in last place for overall performance on The Destroyer. The slower tier of drives also includes the QLC-based Samsung 860 QVO, the DRAMless Toshiba TR200 and the older, smaller SU800. The mainstream SATA drives with TLC NAND and full-size DRAM caches are about twice as fast overall as the DRAMless SU750.
The latency scores for the SU750 aren't as bad as the average data rate score. The SU750 is still clearly much slower than the mainstream SATA drives whether you look at the average latency or the 99th percentile latency, but in either case some of the other low-end SATA drives manage to score significantly worse.
The SU750 is essentially tied for last place for average read latency, though the TR200 and the smaller SU800 aren't much better. For average write latency, the SU750 ends up scoring better than the other entry-level drives, including the Intel 660p NVMe/QLC drive.
The Toshiba TR200 clearly beats the SU750 for QoS of read operations, but at the cost of having by far the worst 99th percentile write latency. The SU750 avoids being such an outlier and its QoS scores for both reads and writes are typical for an entry-level drive—and worse than any of the mainstream SATA drives.
Very slow drives have to keep sucking down power for a longer period of time before completing The Destroyer, so their total energy usage usually ends up being higher than that of faster drives. In this batch of drives, the ADATA SU750 is second only to the 860 QVO for high energy consumption, with both requiring at least 50% more energy than the mainstream SATA drives.
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sonny73n - Friday, December 6, 2019 - link
Realtek does audioRealtek does networking
Realtek does storage
Debbie does Dallas
RadiclDreamer - Friday, December 6, 2019 - link
Realtek may do all of these things, but it does them all poorly.FunBunny2 - Friday, December 6, 2019 - link
"Realtek may do all of these things, but it does them all poorly."Debbie wasn't so hot either. :):)
boozed - Friday, December 6, 2019 - link
I don't know that I'd call them poor. Good value, reliable (in my experience) and good enough for the vast majority of users.Other options are available for enthusiasts.
eek2121 - Friday, December 6, 2019 - link
The trouble is that you are talking about a few dollars for a much faster and more power efficient drive. This controller appears DOA as it brings nothing unique to the table.Samus - Saturday, December 7, 2019 - link
With what Intel charges for network controllers, it’s astonishing Realtek is in business when you consider how superior an Intel NIC is while being a few dollars more. And wireless is a whole different story. I’d put Realtek at the absolute bottom of the list. Atheros/Qualcomm, Intel, Agere, Lucent, Broadcom, all have better reliability, support (which is shocking when you consider how vastly used Realtek products are) and generally - performance, than competing Realtek solutions.I think where Realtek scores is availability. Their volume shows commitment to OEM’s that require dependable shipping schedules. This can be as important is BOM pricing, and when you look at the numbers, it seems (and I’m speculating) Realtek designs products for volume production more than anything else. The incredibly low pin count and a 2 channel controller back this up. We are talking about possibly the most basic SATA SSD controller in production and that means they will be able to make a shitload of them really fast really cheap.
And unfortunately OEMs will bite because they know 90% of the people buying this crap don’t care about the inner margin performance of an SSD. Most people buy on price, reliability and warranty.
This shitty SSD May have all 3 bases covered considering the quality binning of Micron NAND.
close - Saturday, December 7, 2019 - link
"a few dollars more" adds up when buying by the truckload. With millions of devices that have a network chipset that's quite some money.jabber - Sunday, December 8, 2019 - link
Yeah amazing how many people don't realise how shaving just 50 cents off a product that will sell hundreds of thousands to millions will save a company a fortune and help with profit.A good example is to watch the documentary "Building a Faster Horse" on how Ford designed and built the 2016 iirc Ford Mustang. Every single part and component was scrutinised to see if it could be either removed/simplified or made cheaper.
That's why Realtek exists still. Their parts are 50c cheaper than Intels.
Manch - Monday, December 9, 2019 - link
Ford been making the Mustang cheaper and cheaper while charging more and more. Started with the Getrag MT-82 grenade and got worse with the crap IRS, corner cutting everywhere. Add on top of it a horrid design (Looks like a 2 door Focus) and they wonder why they're losing customers.hanselltc - Saturday, December 7, 2019 - link
Killer