SanDisk Ultra II (240GB) SSD Review
by Kristian Vättö on September 16, 2014 2:00 PM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2013
Our Storage Bench 2013 focuses on worst-case multitasking and IO consistency. Similar to our earlier Storage Benches, the test is still application trace based – we record all IO requests made to a test system and play them back on the drive we are testing and run statistical analysis on the drive's responses. There are 49.8 million IO operations in total with 1583.0GB of reads and 875.6GB of writes. I'm not including the full description of the test for better readability, so make sure to read our Storage Bench 2013 introduction for the full details.
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2013 - The Destroyer | ||
| Workload | Description | Applications Used |
| Photo Sync/Editing | Import images, edit, export | Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Dropbox |
| Gaming | Download/install games, play games | Steam, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Starcraft 2, BioShock Infinite |
| Virtualization | Run/manage VM, use general apps inside VM | VirtualBox |
| General Productivity | Browse the web, manage local email, copy files, encrypt/decrypt files, backup system, download content, virus/malware scan | Chrome, IE10, Outlook, Windows 8, AxCrypt, uTorrent, AdAware |
| Video Playback | Copy and watch movies | Windows 8 |
| Application Development | Compile projects, check out code, download code samples | Visual Studio 2012 |
We are reporting two primary metrics with the Destroyer: average data rate in MB/s and average service time in microseconds. The former gives you an idea of the throughput of the drive during the time that it was running the test workload. This can be a very good indication of overall performance. What average data rate doesn't do a good job of is taking into account response time of very bursty (read: high queue depth) IO. By reporting average service time we heavily weigh latency for queued IOs. You'll note that this is a metric we have been reporting in our enterprise benchmarks for a while now. With the client tests maturing, the time was right for a little convergence.
As the Ultra II is not geared towards heavy write workloads, its performance in our 2013 Storage Bench does not come as a surprise. However, it is one of the better value drives as it beats the MX100 by almost a 50% margin and is only slightly slower than the 500GB 840 EVO (unfortunately, I do not have the results for the 250GB EVO).
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maecenas - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
Interesting stuff, good to see that competition is picking up in this market. I think it will be a significant threshold moment when we see the 240gb SSDs drop below $100.NeatOman - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
I just saw an OCZ Vertex 460 240GB drive go for $104 the other day on newegg, and of course there sold out. Thats Nucking Futs, since i bought a 120GB 840 pro last year for $140 and the speed looks to be about the same, possibly faster in some ways on the OCZD. Lister - Sunday, October 12, 2014 - link
But then, it is OCZ, and many people who know their tech history, wouldn't take an OCZ SSD for free (regardless of whether they are right or wrong in doing so).simonrichter - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
I agree, really interesting to see and I'm looking forward to see what the future holds for SSDs. /Simon from http://www.consumertop.com/best-computer-storage-g...CamdogXIII - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
I bought my first SSD back in 08. 16GB for 80$ Second SSD was 32GB for 100$. Third SSD was 64GB for 100$. Just bought a 256GB 840 Pro for 160$. We have come a long way.PICman - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
Having an SLC cache is clever. I also like the low power consumption, reasonable performance, and especially the low price. I've had bad luck with the reliability of Samsung products, so it's great that they are getting some competition.Wixman666 - Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - link
I've had nothing but stellar performance from Samsung SSDs. I have dozens of them out in the field, and not one single failure. Sandisk is OK as well... OCZ might end up OK since Toshiba owns them now.Essence_of_War - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link
I feel like with every new ssd review I read, I grow to appreciate the fantastic value that the MX100 represents even more.frontlinegeek - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
Totally agree. We just outfitted our development PCs at work with MX100 256 GB drives and they are utterly fantastic for price/performance. I cannot at all get over how big an impact an SSD at work makes. FAR more than at home I can say. At least for average home use.We run multiple Visual Studio sessions and Oracle SQL Developer along with browsers and other misc apps so the impact has been just terrific.
fanofanand - Thursday, May 12, 2016 - link
I know this article is old, but I was researching SSD's and as I trust Anandtech over any other tech site, I came here for the truth. The sad reality is, the MX100 has been overly praised, and is now priced (on Amazon) $72 more than the Sandisk Ultra II at same/similar (512 vs 480) capacity. The MX100 isn't Ultra 2 good......