ADATA XPG Mars 980 Blade 2TB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. ADATA XPG Mars 98 Blade 2TB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. 128KB Sequential Performance8. 4K Random Read v QD Performance9. 4K Random Write v QD Performance10. 4K 70/30 Mixed Performance11. 4K Random Performance QD1-QD812. Throughput13. PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark14. 3DMark Storage Benchmark 15. Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark16. Temperatures17. Real Life File Testing18. Conclusion19. View All Pages

The PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The benchmark is designed to measure the performance of fast system drives using the SATA bus at the low end and devices connected via PCI Express at the high end.

The goal of the benchmark is to show meaningful real-world performance differences between fast storage technologies such as SATA, NVMe, and Intel’s Optane. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses 23 traces, running 3 passes with each trace. It typically takes an hour to run.

Traces used:
Booting Windows 10.
Adobe Acrobat – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Illustrator – starting the application until usable Adobe Premiere Pro – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Photoshop – starting the application until usable.
Battlefield V – starting the game until the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 – starting the game until the main menu.
Overwatch – starting the game until main menu.
Using Adobe After Effects.
Using Microsoft Excel.
Using Adobe Illustrator.
Using Adobe InDesign.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint.
Using Adobe Photoshop (heavy use).
Using Adobe Photoshop (light use).
cp1 Copying 4 ISO image files, 20 GB in total, from a secondary drive to the target drive (write test).
cp2 Making a copy of the ISO files (read-write test).
cp3 Copying the ISO to a secondary drive (read test).
cps1Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, to the target drive (write test).
cps2 Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
cps3 Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test).

Using PCMark10's Full System Drive Benchmark, the six Adobe startup traces produced an average of 249MB/s, with the fastest being the Adobe Premiere Pro startup trace at 328MB/s, the slowest, the Lightroom startup at 193MB/s. For the five usage traces, the drive averaged 467.8MB/s.  The fastest test was, as usual, the Photoshop heavy usage trace at 926MB/s, the slowest, the InDesign test at 180MB/s.

The three gaming traces produced an average result of 655MB/s, the fastest being Battlefield V at 856MB/s. Then came Call Of Duty Black Ops 4 at 736MB/s and finally Overwatch at 373MB/s. When it came to the six file transfers, the drive averaged 3,136MB/s with the fastest being the cp1 Write test at 6,197MB/s.

Looking at the overall bandwidth figure of 530.44MB/s, it appears that ADATA's XPG Mars 980 Blade drive doesn't handle the rigours of the PCMark 10 benchmark that well.

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