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3D MARK 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 SMI SM2504XT placed niinth of all SSDs tested to date on 3DMark Storage Benchmark.
3D MARK MS DIRECT STORAGE FEATURE TEST
As our engineering sample of the Silicon Motion SM2504XT Gen5 2TB DRAMless SSD is MS DirectStorage compatible, we thought we might take advantage of the 3DMark DirectStorage Feature Test and see how this SSD fared. MS DirectStorage, in very basic terms, allows direct transfer of data from your SSD storage directly to your GPU, eliminating its historical necessary passage from the SSD through the CPU to RAM, back through the CPU and finally to the GPU VRAM. This is, for the most part at this time, intended on increasing game load times,reducing CPU overhead and providing more detailed graphics.
In our testing, data transfer achieved a 124.4% faster transfer of data than with MS DirectStorage disabled.
PCMARK 10 BATTERY TESTING
PCMark 10 has a Battery Storage Test where an SSD can be installed as the system drive in a laptop and tested under a number of different scenarios to include Modern Office, Applications, Videos, Gaming, and Idle. For our testing, we decided to test the SMI SM2504XT against a number of the most popular SSDs, all with different SSD controllers as it is the controller that is responsible for SSD energy efficency. Simply, the more power it uses the lower the laptop battery life.
Our Test Bench for this benchmark was our Guiness Record holding 2024 LG Gram Pro 16″ 2-in-1 Convertible Ultrabook. Not only is this the thinnest 16″ laptop in the world, but it also contains the Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU 255H along with 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM running at 8400MHz. This system is only PCIe 4.0 with respect to SSD performance and that is perfect as we want all SSDs to exhibit battery life under the exact same conditions. It might be an unfair variable testing Gen4 and Gen5 SSDs at different speeds.
In testing the Silicon Motion SM2504XT Gen5 engineering sample 2TB SSD with this Benchmark, the ultrabook ran the Modern Office tests of PCMark 10 for 12 hours and 40 minutes before the system shut down. Quite frankly, that is rather amazing, especially considering this is a Gen 5 SSD that is capable of performance up to 11GB/s and 2 million IOPS. That is a world first we are certain. This is also better than any similar tests on the same laptop that we could find anywhere.
Having said that, we are in the process of testing this SSD in the exact same method against several other mainsteam SSDs, to include the Samsung 9100 Pro, Crucial T710, Phisons newest E28 Gen 5 engineering sample, the stock Samsung PM9A1a, and other SSDs with varying controllers. We didn’t concern ourselves so much with SSD identity as we did the SSD controller within. Stay tuned as this will be the subject of a follow-up article and tell the true tale of SSDs and laaptop battery life. We think you will be rather shocked at what we found!
REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
Perhaps the biggest downfall of the Silicon Motion SM2504XT Gen5 2TB DRAMless engineering sample SSD is that this SSD is not yet available for purchase. If you have an ultrabook or laptop and you want to squeeze all the performance as well as battery life out of it that you can, this SSD is going to be a must have! It’s performance is above 11GB/s and just below 2 million IOPS, all the while operating at a mere and unheard of 2.4 watts active and providing just under 13 hours of battery life on our Test Ultrabook. Quite frankly, we think our follow up article comparing several SSDs and controllers will stun you when we release it in a few days time.
Something we haven’t really addressed, especially with an ukltrabook this thin, is heat. If you throw the wrong SSD into it, it will become very hot on the bottom, which may be a concern when it sits in ones lap. We removed the original Samsung PM9A1a Gen4 SSD and replaced it with the BIWIN Black Opal 4TB NV7400 Gen4 SSD given respect to performance and its 4TB size. The NV7400 is not available in Canada and utilizes the Maxiotek MAP1602A ‘Falcon Lite’ 4-channel Gen4 NVMe SSD controller along with 4-pieces of NAND memory at 2400MT/s. We feel the SM2540XT sample, although having half the capacity and being a Gen5 SSD, runs cooler and has far better performance at Gen 4 than the NV7400.
The SMI SM2504XT engineering sample SSD was tested right beside upper tier DRAM based SSDs and time and time again returned better performance than many. It placed in the Top 10 of all SSDs tested to date in 3DMark Storage, PCMark 10, Final Fantasy Game Load Time Comparison as well as our True Data Transfer Benchmark…all this for a DRAMless SSD. Editor’s Choice.
CHECK AMAZON FOR SMI CONTROLLER BASED SSDS
Curious as to whether this SSD would be a good fit for one of the external USB5 enclosures currently on the market sold by OWC and Acasis. Interesting to see if there are notable differences between the PC and Mac USB5 ports in terms of performance.