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  • b1gtuna - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link

    Sorry noob here. If I had a choice between the Samsung 850 Evo, and this, what would give me a better performance?
  • Samus - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link

    I'm not even a fan of Samsung SSD's (mostly sour over their poor handling of the 840 EVO bug) but you'd be crazy to get any crap from ADATA over something from Samsung.

    Just the name and pricing of this drive alone lend to how clueless ADATA's marketing dept is. Calling a value drive "Ultimate" and pricing a it what their own MLC drives are still selling at...
  • Samus - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link

    Figured I'd chime in on a recommendation too. Although the 850 EVO is pretty much in a class of its own, it's also in a price of its own. You can get the 750 EVO, practically the same performance, for a little less, or look into the OCZ Trion 150 or the Sandisk X400, both good quality reliable TLC drives.

    My overall recommendation, though, is to avoid TLC for a boot drive. It's just too inconsistent with the SLC cache algorithm, and really just makes sense for a storage drive. Good, inexpensive MLC drives can still be found incredibly cheap. Sandisk Ultra II, Crucial MX100/M500, and even the newegg exclusive Mushkin ECO2 (Sandforce 2281-based) are all discontinued but still available, and incredibly reliable.

    I'm looking at a M500 480GB for $100 new on fleabay right now...
  • ClockHound - Thursday, August 25, 2016 - link

    Uh...the Sandisk Ultra II is TLC. Hence why it's both cheap and Ultra. ;-)

    The MX100/MX200 and M500 are MLC and great OS drives. The Kingston HyperX Savage, PNY 2211 and Zotac Premium are very good, affordable MLC options too.
  • Samus - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link

    Opps, meant Ultra PLUS :)

    Or SSD Plus for that matter.

    Sandisk has some questionable naming schemes as well, but at least offers decent warranties, an SSD toolbox and in my experience above average reliability. The only SSD brand I've seen fail more than ADATA is OCZ, and we're talking 4-5 years ago OCZ. Since Barefoot surfaced and throughout the Toshiba takeover, I haven't seen a single OCZ SSD fail, which indicates improved binning, QC, validation, and interestingly, support. I believe they are the only company that offers a no questions asked advanced RMA. Not that I know anybody that's ever needed it.

    Even anandtech agrees the Trion 150 is the best budget SSD.
  • Bulat Ziganshin - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link

    Ultra Plus is MLC, but being 3 years old, cannot be bought. SSD Plus is slowest TLC design possible, so hardly can be recommended, even Ultra 2 is much faster.
  • Samus - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link

    The SSD Plus isn't TLC. It is a recent economy MLC design (there are two versions, the old version was obviously MLC as well but with a different controller) based on a Silicon Motion controller. And no it isn't fast at writing because it is DRAMless so updating the indirection table has latency, but the firmware released early this year fixed the lag issues and most people noticed write performance go from the 200's to the high 300's.

    My point isn't to get specific about the drives so much that you can avoid TLC for the mean time, and buying today, you'd be crazy to get TLC unless it was actually that much cheaper. MLC drives, even discontinued, can be had for the same price and will always be faster and more consistent in general computing. AT reviews always place TLC drives (except 3D VNAND) at the bottom of the pack even behind ancient Sandforce drives.
  • hojnikb - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link

    That thing can't be using micron's 3D TLC flash, because that uses 384Gbit dies, which means 128GB capacity point is near impossible.

    My bet is either hynix or even toshiba (if they are already shipping their 3d to 3rd parties)
  • extide - Friday, August 26, 2016 - link

    Yeah, I was wondering about that, either they are using a ton of overprovisioning, or they are not using 384gb dies. If they are using flash from IMFT and SK Hynix that would potentially mean that they are using dies with two different capacities? That wouldn't make sense. Does SK Hynix have a 384gb die or did they go 256/512 with their 3D TLC? I didn't even know SK Hynix was even shipping 3D NAND yet! What about toshiba?

    Billy, maybe a quick article summing up the 3D NAND market.
  • Leyawiin - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link

    Having owned ten different SSDs with MLC and TCL from OCZ to Samsung I've resigned myself to getting whatever is cheapest. There isn't a dime's worth of difference for the average user (browsing and gaming). If this ADATA drops in prices... which it surely will... I'd buy it without reservation. My old Sandforce ADATA is still going strong.
  • shreduhsoreus - Sunday, November 13, 2016 - link

    There's only one test with this drive on UB but it greatly surprises their cheaper SSDs in speed, and is on par with everyone's beloved Samsung 850 Evo. Unless that one test was a fluke, I'd say this SSD is more "Ultimate" than some people are ready to admit.

    http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Adata-Premier...
    http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-850-P...

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