discussion SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB SSD Review

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SATA 2 Performance

SATA 2 Performance

In a perfect world everyone investing in a new solid state drive would have access to a SATA 6GB/s controller which could pass on the TRIM command. In reality not everyone has this and for many the decision comes down either giving up TRIM – never a good idea with most controllers – and running it off a secondary controller; or taking a performance hit and running in SATA 2.0 mode.

These tests will consist of some of our real world and synthetic benchmarks run on our standard 1155 test-bed; but the drive will be attached to an SATA 2 port.

For synthetic we have opted for the newcomer to our charts: Anvil Storage Utilities Pro. For real world we have opted for our Adobe test. These two tests should give you a very good idea of the level of performance impact you can expect from running a modern SATA 6 drive in compatibility mode.

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This drive certainly would not be our first choice for SATA 2 environments. As with all SATA 6Gb/s controllers there is a certain performance impact from running in SATA 2 compatibility mode and the Ultra Plus takes a hit as a result. With that being said, the relative impact from running in SATA 2 mode is smaller than many on the market.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

By creating the Ultra Plus, SanDisk certainly deserves some credit. They have engineered a versatile drive which implements some innovative engineering alongside respectable performance and wraps it up into a package that costs less than $225. It works extremely well in some cases but is some room for improvement.

SanDisk’s innovative design begins with a controller / NAND combination that provides some surprising benchmark numbers given its pedigree. At face value the cut down version of Marvell’s high end Van Gogh controller isn’t particularly enticing but when paired up with eX2 ABL NAND ICs, we can see flashes of absolute brilliance.

The versatile NAND’s ability to be used as an on the fly virtual caching partition allows the Ultra Plus to avoid the messy process of over provisioning. In plain English this means it provides slightly more capacity than its immediate competition since it doesn’t need to lay aside masses space to ensure long term performance. While 16GB may not seem like much when comparing a 256GB drive to 240GB alternatives, it can make a world of difference when trying to fit one more Steam download onto a limited capacity SSD.

From a performance standpoint the Ultra Plus may firmly sit within the mid-tiers but lacks the overall consistency of several competing solutions. For example, Kingston’s V300 and Sandisk’s own Extreme series both provide top-level performance across every domain at a very similar price point but this drive tendss to take a major hit in certain key areas. Write speeds are a definite sore spot. We also noticed a pronounced degradation in system load times as its 256GB of space began to fill up, a hurdle that was more easily masked by drives with over provisioning.

Ironically, some potholes in the Ultra Plus’ performance spectrum meant very little in real world applications where it was able to hang tight against some of the current market’s best sub-$250 drives.

SanDisk’s Ultra Plus 256GB has all the hallmarks of a great budget-friendly drive. We just can’t help but gravitate to towards similarly priced alternatives like SanDisk’s own Extreme series which provide better all-round performance. With that being said, SanDisk’s use of eX2 ABL NAND points towards an exciting future, albeit one that hasn’t quite come to fruition yet.