The test system used in this review was an HP EliteDesk 800 G1. The computer is equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 16GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Plextor PX-256M5P 256GB SSD, PNY Quadro K600 1GB PCIe graphics card and Intel 1217-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 Enterprise.
To test the performance of ADATA's Ultimate SU800 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 Plextor S2C, Crucial M300, Plextor M7V, PNY CS1311, OCZ Trion 150, PNY CS2211, Plextor M6V, Crucial BX200, OCZ Trion 100, Kingston HyperX Savage, Crucial MX200, OCZ Vector 180, Kingston BX100, Samsung 850 EVO M.2, Samsung 850 EVO mSATA, AMD Radeon R7, Silicon Power Slim S80, Samsung SSD 850 EVO, OCZ ARC 100, SanDisk Ultra II, Crucial MX100, SanDisk Extreme Pro and Samsung SSD 850 PRO.
As I mentioned earlier, the Ultimate SU800 is based on SMI's SM2258 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 Ultimate SU800 512GB |
 Crucial MX300 1TB |
According to ADATA, the 512GB SU800 is capable of reading at 560 MB/s and writing at 520 MB/s when connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port. While the drive performed better than expected when writing, it came up a bit short in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read speed test.
 ADATA Ultimate SU800 512GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 Crucial MX300 1TB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The SU800 performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 562.7 MB/s and write at 520.7 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the Ultimate SU800's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
ADATA Ultimate SU800 512GB
The SU800's performance was hit and miss when tested with HD Tach. While the drive was able to read at 451.5 MB/s, its write speed averaged out at only 86.4 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the Ultimate SU800'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 Ultimate SU800 512GB |
 Crucial MX300 1TB |
When tested with ATTO, the SU800's read speeds topped out at about 563 MB/s and its write speeds at 518 MB/s.
