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 ESTPower Management
Real-world client storage workloads leave SSDs idle most of the time, so the active power measurements presented earlier in this review only account for a small part of what determines a drive's suitability for battery-powered use. Especially under light use, the power efficiency of a SSD is determined mostly be how well it can save power when idle.
SATA SSDs are tested with SATA link power management disabled to measure their active idle power draw, and with it enabled for the deeper idle power consumption score and the idle wake-up latency test. Our testbed, like any ordinary desktop system, cannot trigger the deepest DevSleep idle state.
Idle power management for NVMe SSDs is far more complicated than for SATA SSDs. NVMe SSDs can support several different idle power states, and through the Autonomous Power State Transition (APST) feature the operating system can set a drive's policy for when to drop down to a lower power state. There is typically a tradeoff in that lower-power states take longer to enter and wake up from, so the choice about what power states to use may differ for desktop and notebooks.
We report two idle power measurements. Active idle is representative of a typical desktop, where none of the advanced PCIe link or NVMe power saving features are enabled and the drive is immediately ready to process new commands. The idle power consumption metric is measured with PCIe Active State Power Management L1.2 state enabled and NVMe APST enabled.
Orange is for the new drives, Blue is for the previous generation models
Not much has changed with the power management situation for the WD and SanDisk drives; they're still using the same Marvell 88SS1074 controller, and the choice of NAND doesn't have much effect on idle power. Both active idle and slumber state idle power draw are good.
The idle wake-up latency of the WD/SanDisk drives is plenty quick, but not quite as fast as the Phison-based drives. The drives that most often outperform the WD Blue 3D NAND and SanDisk Ultra 3D all take several times longer to wake up from idle.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
52 Comments
View All Comments
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.