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Real-World Software Performance
PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance
For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.
Transcend's SSD370S consistently appears toward the bottom of our charts. We expected it to deliver better performance than what we observed in our real-world software workload. At the very least, we thought it'd outmaneuver Adata's 480GB SP550, a TLC-based drive, in every test. However, the SP550 out-muscles the SSD370S in all but one benchmark.
Looking at the combined throughput results, Transcend's SSD370S barely manages to squeak past the SP550, but only because it performs better in the Photoshop-heavy test where sequential writes influence the outcome disproportionately.
PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance
To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.
The same workloads used in the previous section are also used for our advanced workloads, where we see how heavy writes rob you of throughput. When the drives are given time to recover (via five-minute pauses between each set of tests), performance improves. Some of the drives recover faster than others. In this price range, we're only really worried about recovery performance, since it best represents the loads we'd expect value-oriented builders to apply.
The SSD370S performs well against the other drives in its class, aside from the segment's leader, of course, Samsung's 850 EVO.
Total Access Time
Again, we really want to focus on the recovery phase. I consider this to be the review's most important test because I spend a lot of time on my PC and require fast access times while switching among applications. The line chart really quantifies what you'll perceive as a fast storage subsystem.
Notebook Battery Life
SSDs utilize a number of different power states, depending on what they're doing. After a write to the drive is completed, the controller shuffles data around to other cells. This operation can actually use more power than the original write transaction.
We measure power consumption over time, rather than taking a snapshot that'd yield unreliable results.
Firmware plays heavily into our power numbers. With the right optimizations, battery life can be extended by a large margin. This is illustrated by Crucial's BX100 and Transcend's SSD370S, which use the same controller and 16nm flash. Their DRAM caches are different, but we doubt that's the source of what we see in our chart.
