The Toshiba OCZ RD400 (256GB, 512GB, 1TB) M.2 PCIe SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on May 25, 2016 8:02 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here.
As with the Heavy test, overall performance on the Light test shows the RD400 being slower than the Samsung PCIe 3 drives but faster than the Intel 750. In this case, the RD400 is much closer to the Samsung drives when fresh, but about halfway between Samsung and Intel for filled-drive performance.
Average service times again show that the differences between PCIe 3 drives are small compared to the gulf between them and SATA drives.
Latency outliers above 10ms are clearly more common with the RD400 than the other PCIe 3 drives, but still less than half as frequent as on any SATA drive. This time it's the 512GB and 1TB models showing a relatively large impact from the test being run on a full drive.
The RD400's energy usage is again worst overall with a significant gap between the Samsung 950 Pro and the RD400, and the 950 Pro already used more energy than most SATA drives.
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AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
What about boot time. Is it slow like the Intel card?mervincm - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Intel 750 SSD isn't slow at boot anymore. Later SSD firmware and NVME drivers have really helped my boot performance.Yregister - Thursday, November 3, 2016 - link
But that's on Windows, correct? I read that the 750 doesn't work on a Mac, not bootable...moheban79 - Saturday, November 12, 2016 - link
Thats not true. I got my Intel 750 booting up my hackintosh. Should be doable.adamto - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Why there is no 2T or even 4T M.2 SSD?Silma - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Because there isn't enough place on the stick. One would need to develop much denser NAND.Billy Tallis - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
A double-sided M.2 2280 can usually fit four packages of flash, each containing a stack of up to 16 dies that are typically 128Gb (16GB). That multiplies out to a practical limit of 1024GB for now. Newer 3D NAND such as Micron's will be available in 256Gb MLC dies, enabling 2TB M.2 2280 drives (or 3TB with TLC).Dr.Neale - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Don't you mean 4 TB with TLC?Billy Tallis - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
We're not quite there yet. Micron's 3D TLC is 384Gb and everybody else seems to be going for a 256Gb TLC that will be a smaller die than their 256Gb MLC. A 4TB M.2 would require either a 512Gb die or denser packaging.Chaser - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
"Upgrading from a mechanical hard drive to a SSD alleviates a major performance bottleneck but the experience of moving from SATA SSDs to PCIe SSDs is not as revolutionary. I suspect most consumers would be better served with a larger SSD of moderate performance than a cramped but blazing fast PCIe drive," Thank you!