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3DMARK STORAGE GAMING BENCHMARK
UL Solutions has created a new storage gaming benchmark that we will start to use as new SSDs come in. The 3DMark Storage Benchmark DLC extends 3DMark Advanced Edition with a dedicated component test for measuring the gaming performance of SSDs and other storage hardware. It supports all the latest storage technologies and tests practical, real-world gaming performance for activities such as loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.
The Acer FA200 placed in the bottom third of 3DMark Storage Benchmark which is what might be expected as this benchmark is the trues real world type test available.
REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
I have spent countless hours in the past few weeks building systems and testing and retesting SSDs, some we can’t even speak of as yet. While most might not think such, I was particularly interested in testing this Acer FA200 Gen4 DRAM-less QLC 4TB SSD as it has been awhile since I have really dug into QLC on a test basis. Right beside this, we have seen immense success with modern DRAM-less SSDs using TLC NAND. We will typically see a QLC SSD per year and the last was the WD SN5000 where all capacities but the 4TB capacity were TLC. Only that 4TB capacity was QLC and its performance couldn’t match anything near the Acer FA200 we just finished testing.
The Acer FA200 Gen4 SSD reached speeds of 7127MB/s read and 6187MB/s write and over a million IOPS during our testing. This SSD comes uses the Maxio MAP1602 Gen4 SSD controller teamed with a thermal graphene branding pad for effective heat dissipation and, without a doubt, this combination is one of, if not the coolest Gen 4 SSD reaching 7GB/s speeds we have had in hand to date. Having said that, the real test of this SSD becomes very clear in true true data testing. While the FA200 did very well in synthetic tests like Crystal DiskMark, TxBench and Passmark Diskmark, it did not fare well in our PCMark 10, 3D Mark and true data testing as it typically placed in the lower half of all SSDs tested to date.
This is a great time to remind folks that the best choice of an SSD is through knowledge of its expected use. Would I buy this SSD with the expected use of media manipulation? No, of course not. Could you? Absolutely. This is an excellent SSD for the average PC user that doesn’t push their data as creators might, and we also never expected it to come with a 5-year global warranty. That is rather impressive. We can relate that this SSD is already hidden away in some fairly powerful gaming laptops. The need for QLC is to bring the price of SSDs down closer to that of a HDD. If you can find the FA200 at a steal of a price, that’s one great buy!
CHECK ACER FA200 AVAILABILITY AND PRICING AT AMAZON GLOBALLY
