One Design, Two Products: The SanDisk Ultra 3D (1TB) and WD Blue 3D (1TB) SSD Reviews, with BiCS 3D NAND
by Billy Tallis on September 14, 2017 9:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
Orange is for the new drives, Blue is for the previous generation models
The new 3D NAND gives a minimal improvement in average data rate on The Destroyer for Western Digital's SSDs. SanDisk's 3D NAND is faster than Micron's first-generation 32L 3D TLC NAND as used in the Crucial MX300, but not quite as fast as the second-generation 64L 3D TLC in the Intel 545s. The Samsung 850 EVO remains the fastest SATA SSD with TLC on this test.
The new WD Blue and SanDisk Ultra 3D show substantial improvements in both average and 99th percentile latency, putting them on par with the Samsung 850 PRO and ahead of any other SATA TLC SSD.
The average read and write latency on The Destroyer have both improved with SanDisk's 3D TLC compared to the planar 15nm TLC, with the more significant improvement being to write latency, where the new Western Digital SSDs are at the top of the chart.
The 99th percentile latencies don't show quite as much improvement as the averages above, but there is still a clear improvement for both reads and writes that put the new WD and SanDisk drives ahead of anything else that uses TLC.
Energy efficiency is much improved with SanDisk's 3D TLC compared to their 15nm planar TLC. The Crucial MX300 uses a bit less energy despite being slower on The Destroyer, and the Intel 545s with its Silicon Motion controller still comes out on top. While Samsung's older 850 PRO and 850 EVO are still quite good in terms of performance, their energy usage now stands out as higher than the modern competition.
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TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, September 17, 2017 - link
Talk about mountains and molehills.the "performance bottlenecks" of SATA III are only of concern to .01% of buyers. For most tasks, your network interface will be the bottleneck. And when sata IS the bottleneck, the difference between PCIE and SATA are minimal at best.
As for price, I agree that prices are high, but I also know that, having built multiple SSD machines, you are overblowing the issue. 512GB drives can be had for $100 on sale, and that is more storage then 90% of users need.
A drive capable of 500MB/s speeds is hardly low performance.
Magichands8 - Sunday, September 17, 2017 - link
Actually SATA bottlenecks should be of concern for anyone who has to wait for their data to be moved, recovered or otherwise accessed. Which can easily happen if anyone transfers anything on the order of a few gigabytes. It's especially concerning when those bottlenecks are imposed by borderline obsolete technology which is absolutely, completely unnecessary. And the response as to why always seems to be "just because" as if in defense of tech companies dragging their asses. One of the reasons why SSDs were adopted as slowly as they were is because most users weren't even aware of the benefits. For people just checking their Facebook and reading e-mails why even care about SATA III? Just stick with SATA I. Or better yet just ignore SSDs all together and stick with spinning rust. Or hell just use a 15 year old computer. Or by a $200 smart phone and bypass computers all together. More and more it's the case that a smartphone is 'good enough' for most people such that more and more of those of us with actual computers are going to run into the limitations of SATA III. There's just no excuse. I'm aware of the better technology which is one of the reasons why I ignore every SSD release like these here with specs no different than any other SSD. Like I said, if someone is in desperate need of a replacement drive it makes some sense but by and large these releases are pointless. Companies SHOULD have an interest in giving us a reason to upgrade, a reason to buy their products.Slaveguy - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
You're crippled by your twisted little kid leg, slaveMajGenRelativity - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
What?MrSpadge - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
What's a "wrong" form factor, then?Bullwinkle J Moose - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
" the SanDisk Ultra 3D is a long-overdue replacement for the Ultra II. Both of the new products use the same technology under the hood; they differ primarily in the stickers on the outside of the drive and the retail packaging it arrives in. "-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yup, those new stickers are long overdue!
MajGenRelativity - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
The comment on the same tech is in comparison to the WD Blue 3D. The Ultra 3D is clearly different from the Ultra 2kmmatney - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
I bought my 1TB Ultra II 3 years ago for $219 - still running great. What is long overdue is lower pricing.ddhelmet - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Why buy this over 850 EVO for 250 and 500 GB? They're both the same price.MajGenRelativity - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Higher endurance and lower power consumption are the advantages the article mentions.