ZOTAC SONIX 480GB
Zotac’s hot new NVMe is go for launch. But is it ready…?
AFTER YEARS of SATA-bound stagnation in solid-state storage, something is finally happening. That’s thanks to a new generation of drives powered by the lightning-quick PCI Express interface, and bolstered by the NVMe control protocol.
But when it comes to SSDs, even the fastest drives can be undone by patchy product development. Enter the exciting new Zotac Sonix. Like Intel’s 750 Series SSD, the Sonix is a pure PCI Express card that slips into a 4x PCIe slot, so doesn’t require an M.2 port on your motherboard.
The Sonix is based on the new cuttingedge Phison PS5007-E7 controller, with a quad-core processor, and support for the aforementioned NVMe protocol. The Sonix runs over a quad-lane PCIe connection, and packs 512MB of DDR3 DRAM cache. The upshot of all that involves some pretty staggering performance claims.
Peak sequential throughput is pegged at 2.6GB/s for reads, and 1.3GB/s for writes, while the read and write IOPS come in at 350,000 and 250,000 respectively. In our best QuakeIII voice, that’s impressive. But reports indicate that Zotac launched the Sonix with a release candidate of Phison’s controller firmware for the E7 chipset, rather than waiting for the final production build. Hold that thought.
UP TO SPEED
Initial benchmark impressions are awesome. The Sonix vaporizes ATTO sequential bandwidth tests, notching up 3.1GB/s reads and 2.3GB/s writes. From there, things get complicated. Our first few runs of the AS SSD benchmark spat out results that looked all wrong, with sequentials in the hundreds of MB, and 4K writes way down at sub-10MB/s. Not good. A spot of research suggested turning off write cache buffering, and checking that box did the trick, with sequentials of around 2.2GB/s and 1.3GB/s. The 4K randoms look competitive with this class of drive, too, at 50MB/s for reads and 153MB/s for writes. Our real-world tests look decent, as well, if not quite best-in-class. One minute and three seconds for our 30GB internal file copy test is a fair distance behind the 43 seconds achieved by the fastest drive we’ve ever tested, namely the Samsung 950 Pro.
All of which makes the Sonix a tempting option. The new Phison controller clearly has some serious horsepower, but we have concerns about Zotac’s competence in this part of the market. Zotac doesn’t make the controller chip, and it doesn’t code the firmware. Being first out the door with the new Phison NVMe chipset is no doubt attractive for marketing purposes, but it’s not necessarily a good thing for customers.
This an exciting new SSD, and Phison will no doubt mature into a solid controller. It’s early days for NVMe, but we’d hold off that Sonix purchase for now, and allow a few firmware updates to cycle through before pulling the trigger. –JEREMY LAIRD