The test system used in this review is equipped with an Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-UD3 motherboard, 32GB (16GB x 2) of Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 memory, Samsung 960 PRO 512GB SSD and a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G graphics card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 Enterprise.
To test the performance of ADATA's FALCON SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark, HD Tach RW, ATTO Disk Benchmark, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro, Anvil's Storage Utilities, Iometer and PCMark 8. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Lexar NM610, Silicon Power P34A60, Patriot P300, Plextor M9PG Plus, Plextor M9PY Plus, ADATA XPG SX6000 Pro, Western Digital WD Black SN750, Samsung 970 EVO Plus, ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro, Crucial P1, ADATA XPG SX8200, Western Digital WD Black NVMe, Samsung 970 EVO, Samsung 970 PRO, Plextor M9Pe, Plextor M8Se, Patriot Hellfire, ADATA XPG SX8000, Samsung 960 PRO, Toshiba OCZ RD400, Samsung 950 PRO, Samsung 860 QVO, Samsung 860 PRO, Crucial MX500, Plextor M8V, Samsung T5, Crucial BX300, ADATA Ultimate SU900, Plextor S3C, Toshiba OCZ VX500 and ADATA Ultimate SU800.
As I mentioned earlier, the FALCON is based on Realtek's RTS5762DL controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 ADATA FALCON 1TB |
 Plextor M9PG Plus 1TB |
According to ADATA, the 1TB version of the FALCON is capable of reading at 3,100 MB/s and writing at 1,500 MB/s. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the drive had no problems reaching these speeds in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write tests.
 ADATA FALCON 1TB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 Plextor M9PG Plus 1TB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The FALCON performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 3,402 MB/s and write at 1,630 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the FALCON's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the FALCON had average read and write speeds of 1,567.2 MB/s and 502.5 MB/s, respectively, as well as a burst speed of 787.7 MB/s. The screenshot also shows that, like most other TLC-based SSDs, the FALCON uses some sort of SLC caching. The drive starts writing at about 800 MB/s and then drops to about 175 MB/s when the write operation exceeds the size of the cache.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the FALCON's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 ADATA FALCON 1TB |
 Plextor M9PG Plus 1TB |
When tested with ATTO, the FALCON's read speeds topped out at about 3,388 MB/s and its write speeds at 1,426 MB/s.
