Introducing the SSD720
Transcend is amongst the biggest manufacturers of storage products. Established in the late 1980s, Transcend’s product portfolio includes a bewildering range of devices and gadgets including flash drives, memory modules, memory cards and even digital audio players.
Unsurprisingly, Transcend has also dabbled in solid state drives (SSDs). SSDs have become increasingly popular in recent times thanks to its blazing performance and also because of the fact that prices of SSDs have come down to a point where it is acceptable for more consumers.
The SATA III SSD720 is Transcend’s latest SSD to hit the market and it’s targeted squarely at performance-hungry enthusiasts. Like most of the high-end SSDs available in the market now, the SATA III SSD720 from Transcend uses the SATA 6Gbps interface for speedy data transfers and the oh-so-familiar SandForce SF-2281 controller. The SATA III SSD720 drives from Transcend are available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities.
The name SSD720 is a bit misleading, however, since “720” says nothing about the product, nor is that number related to the drive in any way. Also, it could cause confusion with Intel’s eagerly-anticipated PCIe-based SSD, the SSD 720 series.
Physically, the drive looks just like any other SSD and it comes in at 7mm thick which means it will fit into your slim Ultrabooks with no problems.
Here’s a quick look at the drive.
The Transcend SATA III SSD720 looks just like any other SSD. It's 7mm thick so it should fit into all notebooks and Ultrabooks with ease.
Peeling the cover open we find eight 32GB SanDisk SDZNPQCHER-032GT memory chips.
Like many of the new high-end consumer SSDs, the Transcend SATA III SSD720 drive uses the popular SandForce SF-2281 controller.
Test Setup
The drives were tested on our new storage testbed, has the following system specifications:
- Intel Core i5-2400 (3.1GHz)
- MSI Z68A-GD80 (Intel Z68 chipset)
- 2 x 4GB DDR3-1600 RAM
- MSI GeForce 8600GTS
- Windows 7
The list of SSDs tested are as follows:
- Transcend SATA III SSD720 (256GB) (Firmware: 5.0.2)
- Kingmax SATA III SSD SMP35 Client (240GB) (Firmware: L0306)
- Intel SSD 520 Series (240GB)
- Intel SSD 510 Series (240GB)
- Crucial M4 SSD (240GB)
- Kingston HyperX SSD (240GB)
- OCZ Vertex 3 (240GB)
- Patriot Pyro SE (240GB)
The Transcend SATA III SSD720 will be pitted squarely against the current bumper crop of high-end SSDs, many of which, like the Transcend drive, make use of the same SandForce SF-2281 controller. It'll be interesting to see if the Transcend drive can take on the very competent Intel SSD 520 Series, which is one of the most complete of SSDs we've tested recently. We have also included the Crucial M4 and Intel SSD 510 series, both of which use the Marvell controller, for furhter points of comparison.
The list of benchmarks used are as follows:
AS-SSD benchmark 1.6.4
HD Tune Pro 4.6
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
PCMark 7
PCMark Vantage
Iometer (version 2006.07.27)
AS SSD
AS SSD is a benchmark that uses non-compressible and completely random data. What this means is that the drives using the SF-2281 controller cannot compress the data first, which takes away one of the strong advantages of this controller. Therefore this is a useful benchmark to test drives like the Transcend SATA III SSD720, Intel SSD 520 Series, Kingston HyperX, OCZ Vertex 3 and other such drives against SSDs that don't use the SF-2281 controller to gain an upper hand.
The Transcend SATA III SSD720 got off to a promising start posting the highest sequential read speeds and very competitive sequential write speeds. Its performance in the other categories was also very competitive, capable of matching the current crop of SandForce drives. But if we had to nitpick, we would say that overall, it lost out slightly to the Intel SSD 520 Series.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
CrystalDiskMark is an easy-to-run and quick utility to use to gauge a drive’s performance. It measures sequential read and write performance and random read and write speeds of random 4KB, 4KB (queue depth 32) and 512KB data.
The Transcend SATA III SSD 720 was pretty impressive on CrystalDiskMark, easily matching the fastest competitors in the market today. For most parts, it was on a par with speed kings such as the Intel SSD 520 Series and Kingston Hyper X. However, we observed that it was noticeably slower on the 4K, 32 requests queue depth run when compared against the Intel drive. Elsewhere, it had some of the highest read speeds for 4K and 512K blocks.
HD Tune Pro 4.6
HD Tune is one of the most popular and widely-used benchmarking tools for measuring the performance of storage drives. General read and write performance of the Transcend SATA III SSD720 was good and was amongst the quickest drives. Random access times was also not too shabby, though it recorded a slightly higher than average random read access time of 1.3ms. Again, random read speeds were a bit lower at 399MB/s, noticeably lower than the other SandForce drives which achieved above 450MB/s. However, it redeemed itself with very high random write speeds of 442MB/s.
PCMark 7
PCMark 7 is the latest benchmarking suite from FutureMark that evaluates the performance of Windows 7 machines. It tests a wide range workloads and aspects of the system ranging from computation, image and video manipulation and storage. We’ll be looking solely at the storage test here.
The Transcend SATA III SSD720 recorded a score of 5393 PCMarks, which puts it within close company of super fast drives like the Intel SSD 520 Series, Kingston HyperX and OCZ Vertex 3. Looking at the breakdown of the scores, it was mostly on a par with the drives except when it came to the “Starting Applications” test where it was significantly slower than the competition. On the upside, it was pack leader for video editing, running Windows Defender and in gaming. So far it sounds good.
PCMark Vantage
PCMark Vantage might have been around for quite some time, but it is still a fairly accurate representation of how the drives might be used in real-world scenarios. We are focusing on the hard drive test suite which comprises of tasks such as loading of applications to media creation.
On PCMark Vantage, the Transcend SATA III SSD720 recorded the highest score of 80478 3DMarks, slightly more than other previous high-scorer, the Kingmax SMP35 Client. This is not surprising if you look at the breakdown charts where it nearly topped every test.
Iometer Results (Part 1)
Lastly, we put the drives through the rigorous grind of Iometer, with different workloads and I/O queue depths. We have chosen to show results from a queue depth of 1 to 5 as this better represents the workloads a typical consumer might face.
The Transcend’s drive performance on Iometer is pretty decent. It’s total I/O for most runs puts it near the top of the pack, but its performance on the 64k streaming writes run was slightly below standard.
Iometer Results (Part 2)
Finally, we look at the I/O response times for the workloads reported on the previous page. The Transcend SATA III SSD720 recorded decent, albeit pretty average, response times. It was neither the fastest nor slowest, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Fast and Reasonably-Priced
The Transcend SATA III SSD720 has its work cut out if it wants to distinguish itself in this crowded SSD market, but we think that it has done admirably well. Where performance is concerned, the Transcend SATA III SSD720 proved itself to to be a very capable former with very solid scores across all benchmarks. Judging from our results here, it is definitely one of the quickest drives in the market right now.
While it cannot be faulted on the performance front, we would have preferred it to have come with some installation accessories. As it is, the Transcend SATA III SSD720 includes only screws installations - no brackets nor racks. Therefore, installing this drive could be a hassle for users whose casings do not have the appropriate brackets or racks as you would have to go purchase them yourself.
Fortunately, the Transcend drive redeems itself somewhat with its rather enticing price. At S$453 for the 256GB variant, the Transcend SATA III SSD720 series is one of the more affordable drives at this capacity point. In fact, a quick look around reveals that only the recently reviewed Kingmax SMP35 Client and the more mainstream-suited Kingston SSDNow V+200 are cheaper.
The Transcend SATA III SSD720 is one of the quickest drives in the market right now and comes with an attractive price tag.
However, the high-end market SSD market is currently a very competitive one as Intel has recently brought down the prices of their SSD 520 Series drives. The equally fast, if not faster, Intel SSD 520 Series has recently seen its price brought down to around S$488, which is only slightly more than what Transcend is asking for their SATA III SSD720 drive. With this in mind, while the Transcend drive might be more affordable, Intel’s claims of its drives being more reliable (thanks to its custom firmware) might win over users who don’t mind paying a bit more for a peace of mind.
To summarize, consumers who are in the market now for a ultra-quick high-end SSD are spoilt for choice. And the Transcend SATA III SSD720 makes a strong case for itself thanks to its very competent performance and attractive price.
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