so this is the Western Digital p50 game drive now you might be thinking to
yourselves Eber what's so special about this drive well it's one of the first
external SSDs to incorporate USB 3.2 gen 2x2 and I know that might confuse a
lot of people but it's simply the fastest USB interface that's available
in the market right now but before you go out and get
one of these new drives there are a few things that you need to know about
because since it is using a new interface we did run into a few issues
that are certainly a bit concerning so let's talk about those and of course
talk about the drive itself right after quick message for our sponsor the Razer
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down below alright so let's talk about that USB 3.2 gen 2x2 interface at 20
gigabits per second I repeat 20 gigabits per second it's double the speed
compared to a standard USB 3.0 gen 2 which is rated at 10 gigabits per second
now naturally with every new USB interface is geared to be backwards
compatible so if you are running a system with a 10 K bits per second port
or a 5 gamers per second port this Drive should work just fine right now there
are a few AMD TX 40 motherboards that support USB 3.0 gen 2x2 interface as
well as a few x29 a motherboards but unfortunately notebooks are completely
are the equations so if your main primary machine is a laptop well you are
most likely not gonna have a 2x2 port because it's it's such a brand-new
interface gigabyte has also announced an add-in
card so from a speed perspective why would you want something like a 3.2 gen
2x2 at 20 gigabits per second instead of Thunderbolt 3 which gives twice as much
as bandwidth first of all Thunderbolt is owned by Intel so what do you know
AMD boards certainly take a lot longer to get certified with Thunderbolt 3
which is why we only have a few Indy motherboards floating in the market
with that certification also Thunderball three drives are just ridiculously
expensive I mean it just it's not even funny compared to a standard USB
external drive so with that out of the way let's quickly talk about the Western
Digital p50 so from the outside it looks amazing I mean I love this matte black
finish but unfortunately it does show fingerprints I also really like the font
choice engraved at the top it really suits the design it's also super durable
as it comes with the shock resistance certification all in all this is one of
the best if not the best looking external drives that I've ever seen what
do you guys think Western Digital is targeting the p50 and gamers and that
makes sense because with modern titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 it can easily
eat up a hundred and twenty gigabytes on your local disk so it's better to have
something like that on an external storage solution because you can use it
on multiple computers and ideally this is exactly what we were looking for
especially here in the office because when we're doing benchmarking it's
easier for us to have our game libraries on an external drive without having to
redownload all the files again for console gamers the p50 is both Xbox one
and ps4 certified but all of this does come at a cost as you can see compared
to some of the other gentle drives available market you are paying a little
bit more but it's nor closer to the accountable three tax that's involved in
some of the other drives that are available in the market alright so I
think it's time to talk about some of the issues that we encountered on the
p50 game drive from Western Digital we encountered some of these problems as we
were using it on a regular basis so I'm gonna invite Mike over to talk about
some of these issues in three two one this you oh yes you you clap - that
afraid you gotta move I got a more dammit no you're taking over the frame
alright so what are some of the issues that we experienced with the p50 what's
yeah so for me this is probably one of my most frustrating experiences
benchmarking a long long time the main reason for that is the problems that we
found were so randomized but they only came up when we were using it in its
native 20 gigabits per second well that's true yeah now one of the things
that I noticed was that there was transfer errors on random files for
example some video files transferred totally
okay while others they went almost to 100% and then we started airing out on
the drive another thing that we noticed is the steam library folder that we
wanted to transfer to the drive it never got past like 10% it kept on airing out
at the same time every single time but when we finally got that steam library
to transfer over the 10 gigabit per second port mind you some games just
refused to load so sieve and Warhammer they just aired out completely steam
crashed its steam crash on the other hand grand theft auto and absolutely no
problems with that game none at all on the blizzard side modern warfare went
off without a hitch as well so we have no idea there's no rhyme or reason to
any of these problems it's so weird another thing we noticed was drive speed
inconsistencies so the first time you plug it in it runs at its full speed
then the next time you plug it in it runs at a completely different speed
that's lower and then we had two replug it in yeah and I mean I know what you
guys are typing on your keyboard right now it is not due to our test system
because we had an insanely fast raid array that was feeding this so it's not
I mean that would have been a bottle a we're just gonna post a screenshot of
crystal diss mark on that raid array it is insanely fast exactly so another
thing that we did is first of all we reach out to Western Digital we reached
out to other all the motherboard vendors and they said look there's all these
things that you can try and that's exactly what what we did so we tried
changing motherboards we try changing platforms cables we even have two of
these drives we picked up another one it was the same thing over and over over
again I'm talking about fresh Windows install old windows installed different
BIOS is absolutely everything we've been testing this thing for better part of
two weeks now yeah the other thing that we want to point out is that we're not
pointing the finger here at Western Digital the one commonality between all
of this is the as media three-two four-two controller that everybody is
using right now to power everything from the next $2.99 system to the external
cards to the TRX 40 platform so again we don't want to point fingers at either as
media or Western Digital but that is the one commonality between all this so
hopefully as time goes on they're gonna figure out these issues there's probably
some platform incompatible so on Western Digital sparked and then
everybody else is it's very very hard to diagnose this because it's so random I
mean heck we're ant crystal disk info after this thing aired out and it didn't
pick up any errors and that's about the first time that I seen a drive air out
and crystal disk info not pick up the information so with that I think we're
gonna sort of move on to the benchmarks starting off with synthetics it's pretty
obvious that when the Western Digital black P50 isn't having any problems it's
ridiculously fast it's almost fast to a point where it
almost matches our go to Thunderbolt 3 Drive honestly we've seen a lot of
external USB drives over these years and this is by far the fastest one by a long
shot even if you don't have a 28 bits per
second port it's just as fast as the SanDisk pro xstream SSD moving on to our
transfer tests here's where things start to go wrong a full steam library
transfer as I mentioned earlier failed every single time
sure it transferred over that 10 gigabits per second port but that's not
what I really wanted to test as for gaming well it was pretty interesting
modern warfare shader loading usually takes forever but there really wasn't
much difference between the external drives the only true winner was that
corsair and GME SSD the same thing goes for Warhammer 2 other than the fact that
the p50 couldn't actually load the game when it was in gen 2x2 mode what about
SIF well the WD P50 is fast as an external drive but it could have been so
much better if the game would actually load at that full speed finally there
was one game that performed without any problems and that was Grand Theft Auto 5
we were finally able to see what this thing could offer and it was pretty
amazing shaving off almost 10 seconds of the same game loading time alright so
you've seen the numbers this drive is fast when it's fast it's fast guys
exactly but I want to know I'm gonna end this conclusion with a quick question
would you buy the P 50 right now no because to me I actually prefer using
that rog ariane drive because that enclosure itself is like $60 and it can
populate that with a traditional nvme SSD which i'm sure you can find on sale
maybe Friday or anything and like you've got yourself a really fast portable and
mrs. Dean not only that you can upgrade it down the line so if you pick up a one
terabyte and eme drive you can swap it out and bring it 4 terabyte drive if you
want to so user upgrade ability is certainly there and that's what I love
about that rog ariane drive or just any other external enclosure I'm gonna show
you I'm gonna say that I would buy it so there's only a certain amount of time in
my belief until the issues are ironed out either on as media side or the
motherboard vendor side and at that point in time you're gonna have an
ultra-fast drive at the same time you can pick it up right now and it would
still operate in that 10 gigabits per second mode yeah and it's still one of
the fastest drives on the market right now for the USB 3.2 interface on the
flip side I wouldn't need the proof that the issues have been fixed that's true
you're basically paying for a future tech that's built in that necessarily
isn't working but you're hoping that will get solved in the future so that's
what I'm gonna draw the line thank you so much for watching let us know what
you think about the Western Digital p50 we have two of these I have two of these
I don't know what you want to do with with them but thank you so much for
watching I'm Heber I'm Mike and I've been
frustrated at this thing for two weeks but I'd still buy it
we'll see you in the next one guys