WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB M.2 2280 Game Drive with Heatsink PCIe Gen4 NVMe up to 7300 MB/s

Product Information

To those that doubt the veracity of our assertion that BiCS 4 performs better than Micron B47R or Samsung V-NAND, we can and have demonstrated this on multiple occasions. Whenever everything is equivalent except the flash (same controller, same DRAM), good ole 96 Layer BiCS 4 arrayed SSDs easily outperform 176 Layer B47R arrayed SSDs. A good example is the M10P vs. S70 Blade or FX900 Pro. B47R is more prolific but has never outperformed BiCS, period - end of story. Half the layers, older and still the better performer; that's just how superior BiCS architecture has proven to be. And we don't even need to get into how much better BiCS 4 is than V-NAND because even B47R arrayed SSDs easily outperform Samsung's V-NAND arrayed 980 Pro. PCMark 10 Storage Test is the most advanced and most accurate real-world consumer storage test ever made. There are four different tests you can choose from; we run two of them. While SSD tuning software such as this often doesn’t show any noticeable real-world gains, it does allow users to perform firmware upgrades via the application (among other things), which is more functionality than many other companies provide. You can also see (at a glance) the drive’s overall health, interface speed, temperatures and capacity information. Overall the software is nice to have but won’t deliver “felt” performance to the end user. Warranty and Pricing WD improved performance in sequential read workloads, with a maximum of 7.3GBps from 7.0GBps, and sequential writes improved from up to 5.3GBps to 6.6GBps. Performance in random workloads has also improved significantly, up from a maximum of 1M / 720,000 read and write, respectively, to 1.2M / 1.1M. Today’s A-list titles can take up 200GB or more of storage. A range of capacities from 1TB to 4TB means you get to keep more games at the ready and get into the action fast.

WD’s new Game Mode 2.0 offers PC performance-boosting features via its management software to help improve in-game loading speeds. Using the bundled software, this can be set to auto, on, or off. When “auto” mode is turned on, your system will detect game launches and will turn gaming features on. It will then turn Game Mode 2.0 off once you exit the game. Users can improve the auto-launch detection by telling it to monitor specific folders. Nonetheless, the SN850X is an impressive drive that stands tall among the already vast selection of mainstream consumer SSDs. Adding the RGB lighting and heat sink option to the drive makes it stand out even further, adding a bit of gaming flair to PC rigs with glass cases. Soup up your gaming experience with extremely low latency that loads graphics fast with minimal stutter and lagging for smooth, satisfying action. The SN850's Gaming Mode worked by disabling lower power states, ensuring the drive would be more responsive. Game Mode 2.0 works differently with a three-pronged approach: predictive loading, adaptive thermal management, and overhead balancing. Predictive loading is an algorithm designed to detect upcoming low queue depth, sequential workloads - particularly the read workloads prevalent in many games. Adaptive thermal management works to improve average and sustained throughput via smoother throttling. Finally, overhead balancing seeks to improve read latency while gaming through I/O prioritization. Considering it and its predecessor both employ the very same SanDisk 8-channel controller with the only difference being 256Gbit BiCS 4 vs. 512Gbit BiCS 5, we find this result to be powerful evidence that 512Gbit BiCS 5 flash is indeed faster than 256Gbit BiCS 4, but slightly slower than 176L hynix. PCM10 Storage TestsThe 1TB and 2TB drives have an optional version with RGB lighting plus heatsink to help maintain peak performance through the most intense gaming sessions. (Please choose the heatsink model for this) When it comes to benchmarking storage devices, application testing is best, and synthetic testing comes in second place. While not a perfect representation of actual workloads, synthetic tests do help to baseline storage devices with a repeatability factor that makes it easy to do apples-to-apples comparison between competing solutions. These workloads offer a range of different testing profiles ranging from “four corners” tests, common database transfer size tests, to trace captures from different VDI environments. All of these tests leverage the common vdBench workload generator, with a scripting engine to automate and capture results over a large compute testing cluster. This allows us to repeat the same workloads across a wide range of storage devices, including flash arrays and individual storage devices. Our testing process for these benchmarks fills the entire drive surface with data, then partitions a drive section equal to 1% of the drive capacity to simulate how the drive might respond to application workloads. This is different than full entropy tests which use 100% of the drive and take them into a steady state. As a result, these figures will reflect higher-sustained write speeds. While we didn’t play around with the Game Mode app too much, these results indicate that results may vary depending on the application. Conclusion The SN850X is specced with PCIe Gen4 performance, quoting up to 7.3GB/s read and 6.6GB/s write in sequential transfer speeds for the 2TB and 4TB model. In random 4K performance, the higher-capacity models are expected to reach up to 1.2 million IOPS read and 1.2 million IOPS write.

Game Mode 2.0 also features an advanced “read look ahead” algorithm, which predicts and pre-emptively caches what is next in the game. WD indicates that this is done by allowing the SN850X’s controller to detect incoming low queue depth, sequential workloads, claiming that it will help speed up in-game loading of scenes, levels and other areas. Of particular note is the Game Mode 2.0 feature that's new with the SN850X. The original Gaming Mode could be turned on or off within the Dashboard, but Game Mode 2.0 has an additional Auto setting to detect game launches. You can also manually enter game folder locations so the software knows where to watch. Get the ultimate gaming edge over your competition with insane speeds up to 7,300 MB/s for top-level performance and ridiculously short load times. A new suite of features comes with the SN850X including Predictive Loading, Overhead Balancing and Adaptive Thermal Management 5. WD also implemented new updates to improve thermal consistency and energy efficiency via smoothing out the thermal throttling step function. WD Management DashboardWD's NAND technology still lags behind its competitors, with its 112-Layer BiCS5 flash competing against 176-Layer flash from Micron and SK hynix. However, this has advantages, as WD's mature flash can be carefully and reliably binned. BiCS5 also has 1Tb dies available for higher-capacity SSDs. Game Mode 2.0 serves up even more PC performance-boosting features like load prediction to ready game assets for fast in-game loading. The SN850X is competitive with other high-end PCIe 4.0 drives in sequential workloads, but it can’t quite match the SK hynix Platinum P41 in random IOPS. Pricing is a bit stiff, particularly at 4TB. The SN850X will have to impress to justify its MSRP. Game Mode 2.0, Software and Accessories

Extremely low latency loads graphics fast with minimal stutter and lagging for an incredibly smooth, satisfying gaming experience. Insane speeds up to 7,300 MB/s 1 deliver top-tier performance with ridiculously short load times for the elite gaming experience you’ve been waiting for. The 1TB model is quoted with slightly lower numbers in sequential writes with 6.3GB/s, while random reads are a bit lower as well with 800,000 IOPS. The endurance rating is 600 TBW (total bytes written) for the 1TB, 1,200 TBW (2TB) and 2,400 TBW (4TB) with an MTTF rating of 1.75 million hours. The latest version of Game Mode serves up even more PC performance-boosting features like load prediction to ready game assets for fast in-game loading.UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. We consider it superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs on the actual game itself. This test is in fact the same as running the actual game, just without the inconsistencies inherent to application testing. Moving onto sequential read 64K, the SN850X performed very well with 5.93GB/s (or 94,512 IOPS) with 337µs latency for second place. Again, this was an improvement over its predecessor, which posted a peak of 5.57GB/s (891K IOPS) at 354 µs. Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch. Insane speeds up to 7,300 MB/s deliver top-tier performance with ridiculously short load times for the elite gaming experience you’ve been waiting for. In short, we believe that this is the world's best way to test an SSDs gaming prowess and accurately compare it against competing SSDs. The 3DMark SSD Gaming Test measures and scores the following: