The PNY CS1311 and CS2211 SSD Review: MLC vs TLC at 15nm

Sequential Read Performance

The sequential read test requests 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.

The sequential read performance of the PNY drives puts them all in the second tier of drives with lots of close competition and nothing to complain about. Choice of flash makes little difference to this benchmark: basically everything can saturate the SATA connection by QD4, so the differences here mostly reflect QD1 performance.

The power consumption shows that the MLC drives are a bit less power-hungry than the TLC drive of the same size (and therefore also more efficient, since the MLC drives are also faster), and that the larger drives are unsurprisingly more power-hungry.

PNY CS1311 120GBPNY CS1311 240GBPNY CS1311 480GBPNY CS2211 240GBPNY CS2211 480GBADATA Premier SP550 120GBADATA Premier SP550 240GBADATA Premier SP550 480GBADATA XPG SX930 120GBADATA XPG SX930 240GBADATA XPG SX930 480GBCorsair Neutron XT 480GBCrucial BX100 120GBCrucial BX100 250GBCrucial BX100 500GBCrucial BX200 480GBCrucial MX100 512GBCrucial MX200 256GBCrucial MX200 512GBOCZ ARC 100 240GBOCZ Trion 150 240GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Vector 180 240GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBPlextor M6V 256GBSamsung 850 EVO M.2 120GBSamsung 850 EVO M.2 500GBSamsung 850 EVO mSATA 250GBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 480GBSanDisk Ultra II 240GB

The CS2211 and the largest CS1311 hit full speed at QD2, but the smaller two TLC drives still have a little to gain from QD2 to QD8. Power consumption on all the PNY drives is flat starting at QD2.

Sequential Write Performance

The sequential write test writes 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.

The sequential write test clearly shows the write performance advantage of TLC over MLC, and the advantage of increased parallelism in larger drives. It's interesting that the 480GB CS1311 has such a small advantage over the 240GB despite having the advantage of an 8-channel controller, while the 120GB CS1311 is clearly starved for parallelism.

Power consumption during the sequential write test is strongly correlated with drive capacity, showing once again that the higher efficiency of MLC is offset by the higher throughput.

PNY CS1311 120GBPNY CS1311 240GBPNY CS1311 480GBPNY CS2211 240GBPNY CS2211 480GBADATA Premier SP550 120GBADATA Premier SP550 240GBADATA Premier SP550 480GBADATA XPG SX930 120GBADATA XPG SX930 240GBADATA XPG SX930 480GBCorsair Neutron XT 480GBCrucial BX100 120GBCrucial BX100 250GBCrucial BX100 500GBCrucial BX200 480GBCrucial MX100 512GBCrucial MX200 256GBCrucial MX200 512GBOCZ ARC 100 240GBOCZ Trion 150 240GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Vector 180 240GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBPlextor M6V 256GBSamsung 850 EVO M.2 120GBSamsung 850 EVO M.2 500GBSamsung 850 EVO mSATA 250GBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSanDisk Extreme Pro 480GBSanDisk Ultra II 240GB

The CS1311 actually drops slightly in performance from QD1 to QD2, but is stable after that. The CS2211 gains significantly from QD1 to QD2 and but scales no further.