This seems to be pretty common on these USB drives with SSD controllers, the Seq. Read/Write performance is excellent, often as advertised and close to low-end SSD perf, but the random I/O and smaller block writes are typically awful. This may be a limitation of the USB3.0 spec though.
That's not true. The comparison drives are both USB drives with SATA controllers, and as you can see they perform much better in the benchmarks where random I/O is a factor. But those drives are much larger, have a SATA to USB bridge, and run much hotter than this drive.
They don't have to be _that_ poor though. For instance if you compare the results with this 2 year old test here, http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-3.0-thumb-... this drive would have ranked near dead last both for 4kB random reads and writes. Particularly for writes even back then some of the (native USB 3.0) drives already were an order of magnitude faster (granted 60kB/s is still awful but at least would beat floppy disks...). So, considering this is using a very new controller, imho the results are extremely disappointing. And even the sequential write performance only earns a garbage rating (would have been 2nd last in that test from 2 years ago among the USB 3.0 drives).
Though something is strange about these benchmarks. Both ATTO and Crystal DiskMark get really poor sequential write performance (up to 60MB/s for ATTO, below 20MB/s for Crystal DiskMark) yet for some reason the application benchmarks hit up up to 150MB/s.
Good to see AT getting in depth again with thumb drives.
I've been using them as primary storage for about 3 years, and a pseudo-thumbdrive M-SATA SSD on a USB 3.0 adapter board for about 6-months. So thumb drives are an important part of the mix, and performance is critical.
I just ordered a Corsair CMFVYGS3B-512GB, and would be interested to see how that one does.
Also, for comparison, do you still have any of the old numbers that can be put in the charts from AT's previous review of the Patriot Magnum 256GB, so we can see if we are losing anything by going to the Rage 2 form factor?
Google is your friend :) If you understand Chinese, just go to the website indicated at the bottom of that screenshot - I don't understand Chinese, but I just used Google Translate and managed to download it without issues. Always be wary of malware on these download links - I use a sandboxing program to minimize / avoid issues with running unknown executables.
The download link at http://dl.mydigit.net/special/up/phison.html "ChipGenius.rar" inside of which is "ChipGenius_v4_00_0027_pre2.exe" dated 2013, which is an older version compared to the one in the article's screen shot. @Ganesh T S: please provide a download link for the version shown in your screenshot. Thanks.
Great article.. I love the Corsair flash drive... That's fantastic in overall performance.. I bought a 32GB USB 3.0 Corsair flash drive few months ago after read this http://www.toptenrange.com/2015/05/08/10-best-32gb... review and I just amazed.. I highly recommend anyone to but Corsair.
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22 Comments
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TechMaster52 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
The combo boxes to select the different graphs are not working.ats - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
I can confirm, same here, the switching between the images for the various drives doesn't work, tried in both Firefox and Chrome.vincentlaw - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
"perf_cons_img_src" is not defined is the javascript error. Looks like a small goof, they forgot to provide that variable.ganeshts - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Apologies guys, it is fixed now.hojnikb - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Wow, random and sequential write is super poor for a 256gb drive. Do not want.lilmoe - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
"rage"chizow - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
This seems to be pretty common on these USB drives with SSD controllers, the Seq. Read/Write performance is excellent, often as advertised and close to low-end SSD perf, but the random I/O and smaller block writes are typically awful. This may be a limitation of the USB3.0 spec though.kyuu - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
That's not true. The comparison drives are both USB drives with SATA controllers, and as you can see they perform much better in the benchmarks where random I/O is a factor. But those drives are much larger, have a SATA to USB bridge, and run much hotter than this drive.hojnikb - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Yeah, its the opposite. SSD controller based have decent random performance, while simple 8 bit flash controller ones are just plain awful.mczak - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
They don't have to be _that_ poor though. For instance if you compare the results with this 2 year old test here, http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-3.0-thumb-... this drive would have ranked near dead last both for 4kB random reads and writes. Particularly for writes even back then some of the (native USB 3.0) drives already were an order of magnitude faster (granted 60kB/s is still awful but at least would beat floppy disks...). So, considering this is using a very new controller, imho the results are extremely disappointing. And even the sequential write performance only earns a garbage rating (would have been 2nd last in that test from 2 years ago among the USB 3.0 drives).mczak - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Though something is strange about these benchmarks. Both ATTO and Crystal DiskMark get really poor sequential write performance (up to 60MB/s for ATTO, below 20MB/s for Crystal DiskMark) yet for some reason the application benchmarks hit up up to 150MB/s.cosmotic - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
I can't believe the business end of the business end of the article doesn't mention the absolutely terrible app performance.Impulses - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Would be great to see more tests for 64 or 128GB variants which are usually much more affordable...hrrmph - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Good to see AT getting in depth again with thumb drives.I've been using them as primary storage for about 3 years, and a pseudo-thumbdrive M-SATA SSD on a USB 3.0 adapter board for about 6-months. So thumb drives are an important part of the mix, and performance is critical.
I just ordered a Corsair CMFVYGS3B-512GB, and would be interested to see how that one does.
Also, for comparison, do you still have any of the old numbers that can be put in the charts from AT's previous review of the Patriot Magnum 256GB, so we can see if we are losing anything by going to the Rage 2 form factor?
rtho782 - Thursday, April 23, 2015 - link
Where can I get that version of chipgenius?ganeshts - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Google is your friend :) If you understand Chinese, just go to the website indicated at the bottom of that screenshot - I don't understand Chinese, but I just used Google Translate and managed to download it without issues. Always be wary of malware on these download links - I use a sandboxing program to minimize / avoid issues with running unknown executables.vailr - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
The download link at http://dl.mydigit.net/special/up/phison.html "ChipGenius.rar" inside of which is "ChipGenius_v4_00_0027_pre2.exe" dated 2013, which is an older version compared to the one in the article's screen shot.@Ganesh T S: please provide a download link for the version shown in your screenshot. Thanks.
ex_User - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
What does word 'capsule' in the title mean? This drive certainly doesn't look like a capsule. It sure is CAPLESS, though.ganeshts - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_reviewex_User - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Thanks. I must work harder on my reading comprehension, it seems.Kalista - Saturday, May 9, 2015 - link
Great article.. I love the Corsair flash drive... That's fantastic in overall performance.. I bought a 32GB USB 3.0 Corsair flash drive few months ago after read this http://www.toptenrange.com/2015/05/08/10-best-32gb... review and I just amazed.. I highly recommend anyone to but Corsair.50cent - Monday, January 9, 2017 - link
Hello annandtech something is wrong with your benchmarks, i will copy paste 2 links with minePatriot supersonic 2 v3.1
https://1drv.ms/f/s!AgWqrudmSOih5nEzl9Iqv9oBSuY-