PC World - USA (2019-07)

JULY 2019 PCWorld 79

times, but it was much later in the process
and not permanently.
My best guess about the performance
dips is that Seagate, like other companies, is
employing some sort of smart algorithm to
determine how much of the TLC should be
treated as SLC, or possibly MLC. That is,
writing one bit or two bits to the cell rather
than the full three each cell may contain.
Writing fewer bits means much faster write
performance.
Whatever the explanation, while there’s a
dip in the short copy, I can’t say the FireCuda
510 isn’t good for long writes. Especially
when the few dips there are remain at or
above the 1GBps mark.

BOTTOM LINE
For everyday use, the FireCuda 510 is a
worthy competitor for the Samsung 970
Pro and especially appealing as it’s

Seagate FireCuda 510

M.2 NVMe

PROS

• Scintillating everyday performance.


• Very affordable.
  CONS


• Not as silky-smooth as Samsung’s 970 Pro with
  long writes.
  BOTTOM LINE
  The Seagate FireCuda 510 performs on a par with
  the outstanding Samsung 970 Pro the vast majority
  of the time—for considerably less money. That tells
  you all you need to know.
  $265

considerably cheaper. The odd slowdown

in the 48GB copy is apparently transitory

and not a major concern, especially

considering the drive’s strong result in our

450GB write,. It’s not quite as smooth at

the 970 Pro, but close enough. Hence...

Highly recommended.

This is the reason that we were surprised with

the 48GB single file write test. There are no dips

in the 450GB copy test until several hundreds

of gigabytes have been written, and they don’t

appear as severe.

We were a bit surprised that the FireCuda 510
dipped to around 1GBps during our 48GB
single large file write test. See the image to the
right for the reason.