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 - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here. This test is run twice, once on a freshly erased drive and once after filling the drive with sequential writes.
Orange is for the new drives, Blue is for the previous generation models
The new WD and SanDisk SSDs offer improved average data rates on the Heavy test. Their peak performance when the test is run on an empty drive rivals Samsung's 850 EVO, but Samsung still has the clear advantage in performance consistency with the best performance on a full drive.
Average and 99th percentile latencies are both improved, placing the new WD and SanDisk SSDs in the top performance tier for SATA drives. The 99th percentile latency results in particular show improved handling of a full drive.
Average read and write latencies on the Heavy test have both been reduced by more than 10%, putting the new Western Digital SSDs on par with their modern 3D NAND competitors.
The 99th percentile read and write latencies show even larger improvement than the averages, with reductions of more than 20% for the WD and SanDisk 3D NAND drives compared to the preceding planar TLC drives. The 99th percentile write latency is now in the top tier, but the 99th percentile read latency has merely improved to average as the MLC SSDs all beat the TLC SSDs on that metric.
Energy efficiency on the Heavy test has clearly improved with Western Digital's switch to 3D NAND, but the Intel/Micron SSDs still come out ahead, and even the Toshiba OCZ VX500 with planar MLC is more efficient so long as the test is run on an empty drive.
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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.