ADATA Swordfish 1TB NVMe SSD Review – The Last Word in Value

There is no question that, unless there is a specific task required for a new SSD, the consumer looks at the price.  It’s no different than any other product really where a quality product and low price will always be a top seller.  In the electronic world, SSDs haven’t really gained the notoriety that the hard drive has, which is unfortunate. Flash media has affected most of what we do daily.   That, along with the price difference between an SSD and the all to the familiar hard drive, has really held the SSD in the background even though the performance jump of the SSD is incredible. Until now.

ADATA has just introduced two new NVMe SSDs named the ADATA Falcon and the ADATA Swordfish.  The Falcon speaks to performance and the swordfish value. The ADATA Swordfish is an M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 x 4 SSD that is available in capacities of 250GB, 500GB and 1TB and comes with a 5-year limited warranty.  Specifications speak to read speeds of 1800MB/s read and write speeds of 1200MB/s with expected IOPS of around 180K read and write.

Taking a closer look at the ADATA Swordfish, we see that it is a single-sided SSD, meaning that all components are on only one side of the SSD, and also that it is the only the second that we know of to incorporate a metal heatsink (or heat plate) on the SSD, as can be seen in the photo above.  This heatsink is grey and black with the ADATA logo and affixed to the drive and its job is to move heat away from the SSD.  If one were to try to remove this, it could not be replaced in the same fashion and the warranty would be forfeited.

On the bottom, we see the ADATA branding sticker which displays the information of this drive and can validate that this black PCB is void of any components whatsoever on this site.

When the heatsink is removed, we get a look at the ADATA Swordfish components.  It contains a Realtek RTS 5763DL entry-level NVMe controller, along with four packages of ADATA branded memory, which ADATA will only reveal to be 96-layer TLC NAND flash memory.  This is a DRAMless SSD as can be seen in this picture above.  There is no physical chip that enhances performance as we might see typically in other SSDs.  In DRAMless SSDs, there is a Host Memory Buffer (HMB) that is a feature of NVMe SSDs that stores the drive translation tables in host DRAM.

The ADATA Swordfish SSD is compatible with the latest ADATA SSD Toolbox which can be downloaded from the ADATA website here.

Also, a quick look at Amazon shows the ADATA Swordfish with a price of $39.99 (250GB), $64.99 (500GB), and $114.99 for the 1TB version we are reviewing today.  At 12 cents/GB, this is one of the lowest-priced SSDs on the market.

TSSDR TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL

SSD testing at TSSDR differs slightly, depending on whether we are looking at consumer or enterprise storage media. For our ADATA Swordfish NVMe PCIe 3 SSD testing today, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide. To see the best performance possible, the CPU C states have been disabled, C1E support has been disabled, and Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) has been disabled.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

The components of this Test Bench are detailed below.  All hardware is linked for purchase and product sales may be reached by a simple click on the individual item. As well, the title is linked back to the individual build article where performance testing can be validated.

TSSDR ASROCK Z370 TAICHI TEST BENCH   (link)

PC CHASSIS: Corsair Graphite 760T Arctic White Window Chassis

MOTHERBOARD: ASRock Z370 Taichi

CPU: Intel Coffee Lake Core i7-8770K

CPU COOLER: Corsair Hydro Series H110i GTX V.2

POWER SUPPLY: Corsair RM850x 80Plus

GRAPHICS: MSI Radeon RX570

MEMORY: Corsair Vengeance RGB 32GB DDR4 3600Mhz C18

STORAGE:Intel Optane 900P 480GB SSD

KEYBOARD: Corsair Strafe RGB Silent Gaming

MOUSE: Corsair M65 Pro Gaming

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software in use for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of Crystal Disk Info, ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Mark, AS SSD, Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AJA, and TxBench. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to the results already obtained.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER. 8.3.1

Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.

Crystal Disk Info validates that our SSD is running in PCIe 3.0 x4 (four-lane), and also that NVMe 1.3 protocol is in use.

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.05

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

Listed specifications for the ADATA Swordfish are 1800MB/s read and 1200MB/s write.  These results are pretty much bang on, but just as importantly, there is a very steady speed progression with data size increase.

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Performance is virtually identical, regardless of data sample so we have included only that using random data samples.

THROUGHPUT

IOPS

Crystal DiskMark results are fairly consistent with ATTO, at least with respect to the high sequential read and writes.  Random 4K IOPS of 262K read and 214K write is higher than expected.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.9

The toughest benchmark available for solid-state drives is AS SSD as it relies solely on incompressible data samples when testing performance. For the most part, AS SSD tests can be considered the ‘worst-case scenario’ in obtaining data transfer speeds and many enthusiasts like AS SSD for their needs. Transfer speeds are displayed on the left with IOPS results on the right. The AS SSD results aren’t as appealing as we might like to see but do get a first look at reading and write IOPS which appear to be in the general ballpark of listed specs.

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL

Anvil’s Storage Utilities (ASU) are the most complete test bed available for the solid-state drive today. The benchmark displays test results for, not only throughput but also, IOPS and Disk Access Times. Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and use in our benchmark testing.

ADATA Swordfish 1TB NVMe SSD Review – The Last Word in Value

There is no question that, unless there is a specific task required for a new SSD, the consumer looks at the price.  It’s no different than any other product really where a quality product and low price will always be a top seller.  In the electronic world, SSDs haven’t really gained the notoriety that the hard drive has, which is unfortunate. Flash media has affected most of what we do daily.   That, along with the price difference between an SSD and the all to the familiar hard drive, has really held the SSD in the background even though the performance jump of the SSD is incredible. Until now.

ADATA has just introduced two new NVMe SSDs named the ADATA Falcon and the ADATA Swordfish.  The Falcon speaks to performance and the swordfish value. The ADATA Swordfish is an M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 x 4 SSD that is available in capacities of 250GB, 500GB and 1TB and comes with a 5-year limited warranty.  Specifications speak to read speeds of 1800MB/s read and write speeds of 1200MB/s with expected IOPS of around 180K read and write.

Taking a closer look at the ADATA Swordfish, we see that it is a single-sided SSD, meaning that all components are on only one side of the SSD, and also that it is the only the second that we know of to incorporate a metal heatsink (or heat plate) on the SSD, as can be seen in the photo above.  This heatsink is grey and black with the ADATA logo and affixed to the drive and its job is to move heat away from the SSD.  If one were to try to remove this, it could not be replaced in the same fashion and the warranty would be forfeited.

On the bottom, we see the ADATA branding sticker which displays the information of this drive, and can validate that this black PCB is void of any components whatsoever on this side.

When the heatsink is removed, we get a look at the ADATA Swordfish components.  It contains a Realtek RTS 5763DL entry level NVMe controller, along with four packages of ADATA branded memory, which ADATA will only reveal to be 96-layer TLC NAND flash memory.  This is a DRAMless SSD as can be seen in this picture above.  There is no physical chip that enhances performance as we might see typically in other SSDs.  In DRAMless SSDs, there is a Host Memory Buffer (HMB) that is a feature of NVMe SSDs that stores the drive translation tables in host DRAM.

The ADATA Swordfish SSD is compatible with the latest ADATA SSD Toolbox which can be downloaded from the ADATA website here.

Also, a quick look at Amazon shows the ADATA Swordfish with a price of $39.99 (250GB), $64.99 (500GB), and $114.99 for the 1TB version we are reviewing today.  At 12 cents/GB, this is one of the lowest-priced SSDs on the market.

TSSDR TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL

SSD testing at TSSDR differs slightly, depending on whether we are looking at consumer or enterprise storage media. For our ADATA Swordfish NVMe PCIe 3 SSD testing today, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide. To see the best performance possible, the CPU C states have been disabled, C1E support has been disabled, and Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) has been disabled.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

The components of this Test Bench are detailed below.  All hardware is linked for purchase and product sales may be reached by a simple click on the individual item. As well, the title is linked back to the individual build article where performance testing can be validated.

TSSDR ASROCK Z370 TAICHI TEST BENCH   (link)

PC CHASSIS: Corsair Graphite 760T Arctic White Window Chassis

MOTHERBOARD: ASRock Z370 Taichi

CPU: Intel Coffee Lake Core i7-8770K

CPU COOLER: Corsair Hydro Series H110i GTX V.2

POWER SUPPLY: Corsair RM850x 80Plus

GRAPHICS: MSI Radeon RX570

MEMORY: Corsair Vengeance RGB 32GB DDR4 3600Mhz C18

STORAGE:Intel Optane 900P 480GB SSD

KEYBOARD: Corsair Strafe RGB Silent Gaming

MOUSE: Corsair M65 Pro Gaming

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software in use for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of Crystal Disk Info, ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Mark, AS SSD, Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AJA, and TxBench. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to the results already obtained.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER. 8.3.1

Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.

Crystal Disk Info validates that our SSD is running in PCIe 3.0 x4 (four-lane), and also that NVMe 1.3 protocol is in use.

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.05

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

Listed specifications for the ADATA Swordfish are 1800MB/s read and 1200MB/s write.  These results are pretty much bang on, but just as importantly, there is a very steady speed progression with data size increase.

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Performance is virtually identical, regardless of data sample so we have included only that using random data samples.

THROUGHPUT

IOPS

Crystal DiskMark results are fairly consistent with ATTO, at least with respect to the high sequential read and write.  Random 4K IOPS of 262K read and 214K write is higher than expected.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.9

The toughest benchmark available for solid-state drives is AS SSD as it relies solely on incompressible data samples when testing performance. For the most part, AS SSD tests can be considered the ‘worst-case scenario’ in obtaining data transfer speeds and many enthusiasts like AS SSD for their needs. Transfer speeds are displayed on the left with IOPS results on the right. The AS SSD results aren’t as appealing as we might like to see but do get a first look at reading and write IOPS which appear to be in the general ballpark of listed specs.

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL

Anvil’s Storage Utilities (ASU) are the most complete test bed available for the solid-state drive today. The benchmark displays test results for, not only throughput but also, IOPS and Disk Access Times. Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and use in our benchmark testing.