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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Rictorhell - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
Samsung is slated to announce an updated line of new m.2 NVME SSD's at some point this month or in the 4th quarter. Their current m.2 lineup maxes out at 2tb and I've been wondering if they will release a 4tb m.2, even at a sky-high price.Smell This - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Sammy's 'Data Migration' & 'Magician' tools have been bullet-proof for me.Not sure about 'Acronis True Image WD Edition' ... Acronis True Image, surprisingly, has let me down on several occasions.
metayoshi - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
I can only speak for myself, obviously, but I've been using Acronis True Image for years with no issue. I only use the most basic features like cloning disks and scheduled backups of full disks, but for those it works just fine.mapesdhs - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Billy, any idea what causes those horrible latency spikes with the VX500? They're so big, I was surprised the commentary didn't mention it.Billy Tallis - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Toshiba won't disclose controller architecture details, but all of the smaller capacities of the VX500 have no external DRAM, and the 1TB has only 256GB of external DRAM. We don't know how much memory is in the controller package itself, but the 1TB VX500 certainly has less memory than a typical mainstream SSD even though it's not truly DRAMless. The VX500 also uses SLC caching even though it's a MLC drive, and that tends to lead to greater performance variability (see the Crucial MX200).Glaring_Mistake - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
If I remember correctly the VX500 is entirely DRAMless for the smaller capacities that instead use a small amount of SRAM (think it's 32MB).But that was not enough for the 1TB drive so it differs from the other capacitites in that it has a small amount of DRAM at 256MB.
That is still just one fourth of the usual amount of DRAM used for a drive of that capacity however.
At any rate I believe that is the reason as to why latency may suffer a bit; not enough DRAM.
eddieobscurant - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
"Meanwhile, the SanDisk Ultra 3D offers higher write endurance ratings and lower power consumption for a slightly lower price. The Ultra 3D makes more sense for most consumers."How does it make more sense? The average consumer won't even use the 1/5th of the endurance ratings, but choosing the extra 2 years of warranty of samsung makes a lot of more sense.
Adramtech - Sunday, September 17, 2017 - link
It's amusing to see people complain about the NAND & DRAM shortage and higher prices, and simutaneously say that there's "finally" something to compete with EVO. For years memory was so cheap it put scores of companies out of business and therefore less competition to compete with the EVO. If you want competitive products, these companies need to make money to drive multi-billion dollar Fab & R&D investments. Also, there is no price fixing, the AI revolution, big data, ADAS systems are eating up all the memory and storage. Not to mention HDDs switching over to SSD everywhere you look.kavita - Monday, September 18, 2017 - link
QA Testing the comments on Production.msroadkill612 - Monday, September 18, 2017 - link
Talk about tail wag the dog.That same expensive nand, can be rigged as 500MB/s sata ssd, OR, at about 5x+ that speed if the nvme (aka pcie ssdS) interface is used.
What a waste.
Why? Until very recent AMD TR, niggardly lane quotas on platforms (not unreasonably pre nvme ssdS) mean few have much room for devices that use 4 lanes each.
Sata only sells because its the port folks have readily available on their current pc. Even so, settling for 1/5 of an expensive devices capabilities seems rich.
i.e. - u r mad to buy sata.
Far better to try hard to find a way of improving your interface than settle for gimped ssdS.
Pcie3 nvme should be backwardly compatible w/ pcie2, so by running nvme on pcie2 lanes, they ares slower, but more than double the speed of, sata, and you have invested in a non gimped drives.
While i am at it, If I were buying a ryzen, my plan would be one of each. 2x nvme ssds, on a mobo like msi's am4 x370 moboS, w/ 2x onboard nvme ports, but due to ryzen lane limits, the second must be pcie2. It yields a very fast ssd, and a very, very fast ssd. Not bad.
Thats all your ryzen lanes used after the 16x lane gpu is counted, but u have stacks of ports on the chipset for other needs.
Far better to get an m.2 port pcie adaptor card, lanes permitting, and an nvme ssd.
It grates to hear common remark "oh, dont worry, you wont perceive the nvme speed difference". Yeah right.
The champ 960 pro 500GB nvme is rated for 3400GB/s read seq & 2250~GB/s write. Like u r not going to notice if an app ever swaps out to disk or works on scratch files at such differing relative speeds. BS.
Factor in also that sata ports from chipsets are handicapped in various ways, so it pays to investigate the exact nature of the sata port you use.
A notion for some lane starved users to consider is getting by with 8 lanes for your 16 lane gpu, thus freeing up a juicy 8x pcie3 lanes. Even some gamers credibly say it works as well. Google it.