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The ADATA S599 256GB is a fantastic drive which will give your desktop or laptop system the performance boost it needs. It will also offer ample storage for users who find themselves limited by smaller boot drives.
As many already know, Sandforce controllers are some of the fastest on the market. They can often push the boundaries of SATA 3GBps to the limit, hitting peaks of around 290MB/s. That said, one of the downsides with the technology is the compression based logistics of the platform.
Most data they deal with will be compressed to various levels, such as operating system files and game data. There are times when the drives will have to deal with raw data and under these conditions they will perform slower than alternatives from Intel or Crucial. The AS-SSD tests are a good indication of what we mean.
One of the slightly annoying aspects of SandForce drives is that they require more Spare Nand space than previous SSD's, due to them having to store references for all the compressed data. The image above highlights a Crucial C300 256GB drive on the left, showing 238GB total storage. The SandForce S599 256GB drive only has 223GB free ‘out of the box', meaning you lose 15GB before you even get any data written to it.
Regardless, the ADATA S599 256GB is one of the best performing drives we have tested and offers huge storage for an asking price of around £360 inc vat in the UK. For the price it really is a great value for money product and ideal for the performance user who wants a fast performing, high capacity boot drive. They should arrive in the UK later this month.
Kitguru says: An excellent size, matched by great all round read and write performance. The price is good too.
