You would have thought their design performance target would have been the older 950 Pro (not the newer 960 line) or the even-older Intel 750 . But no, it seems they are competing with Phison for the lowest-performing NVMe SSD award. Disappointing - just like that Intel 600p.
Guess it's a sub 200$ drive, we'll see how it does against WD's offering and Plextor M8Se. Not worth wasting the M.2 slot on such a drive, unless it's well bellow 200$. Right now on Newegg, the M8Pe without a shield is 220$.
Nice catch! Strange for one of the top tech sites in the world to use old tech to test new tech. Very strange indeed. Ryan? Can you squeeze Purch to get some current equipment into your reviewer's hands?
I don't think so. The last page of the article shows the card in a x4 PCIe adapter. AFAIK that's plugged into 3.0 lanes from the CPU both for performance testing and to monitor the power draw.
Exactly right. All PCIe SSDs are tested in the PCIe 3.0 x16 slot with a riser card that has the power measurement points on it. Although, I did also test the Intel 600p in the motherboard's M.2 slot to see how much the slowest NVMe drive would be affected.
Thanks! Please consider pointing that out in a test bed info next time, so people will know what to expect with a similar combo (z97+m.2). Keep up, the good work!
It seems like power consumption and consistency are both problems. Consistency can probably be addressed through tuning and optimization of firmware, but power consumption is probably something that can't be fine-tuned away. NVMe drives aren't as power friendly as SATA, but the inefficiencies of some recently reviewed SSDs here on Ananatech certainly seems to throw a spotlight on the problem. Between that and thermal throttling, the NVMe storage picture isn't very rosy just yet.
Even with 25% overprovisioning, I see a 1 second interval at the 3350 mark where the IOP's fall to zero. Fortunately, the performance consistency of this SSD seems more in line with its competitors on the trace-based benchmarks (The Destroyer, etc.).
The sequential read performance at queue depth 1 is lower than that of budget SATA SSD's like the MX300. At higher queue depths, the sequential reads are faster than anything a SATA SSD can manage, but queue depths of 1 are not uncommon in a desktop environment.
So what's a good roundup conclusion on the current state of NVMe drives? If we want to pick one up this year, where does the performance go from "bad for NVMe" to "not Samsung but still pretty good!"? Plextor?
That's what I was thinking. $220/$240 for the 500GB model right now. So much more than it used to be. Do we have any news on whether anything constraining nand supply will be alleviating any time soon?
The supply problems most likely will be gone after Chinese companies will flood this market in 2018. But it could happen sooner than that depending on how fast will Toshiba/Western Digital will be rolling up their own 3D NAND supply.
If this is CHEAPER than an MX300 it's an incredibly good bargain. The MX300's are really really well priced. I'd consider it if it's dead, dead cheap. The 960 Evo / Pro is a joke, sure it's fast but in real world usage, it's ridiculously expensive.
Make the 1TB version of this for $250 US or less and I'm very much in. (I doubt it will though)
I know right, Techreport tested the 960 Evo/Pro are both so close to yesteryears SATA3 SSDs in real-world load times that they are easily within the margin of error. I don't care about how NVMe is able to reach uber fast raw speeds that has zero use to me or to 99% of the people out there, but a hypothetical SSD with half the raw transfer speed of current SATA3 SSDs for 2x the capacity per dollar? That's a real bargain.
Honestly, at this point, TLC is the only viable technology for Client market, the incremental performance benefit you may get on MLC based SSD just don't worth it, and I expect to see little to no traction on those moving forward.
to bad they did not continue the BX100 line as it had insane low power use (still fast enough for a low end SSD) BX200 and higher was like the worst SSD for low end SSD and power use
Does anyone really care about this? The number of comments seems to indicate a comprehensive "NO." Another article, another step towards oblivion. Great job Anandtech.
I see you're back to once again try to decry the site. It's funny if things are so bad that you keep coming back to read articles, but that's a special sort of problem, I suppose. Anyway, since you're having trouble with reading comprehension, most of the comments swirl around the drive's poor performance relative to other products. Just because someone doesn't leap to their feet to applaud a device that landed at the bottom of a chart doesn't mean the reviewer, the article, or the company publishing it is doing something wrong by reporting their test results. Just because people are generally in agreement with the results via their comments certainly doesn't indicate there's a problem with the review. You're just trying to project your silly opinion on others and hope to bend reality to your will by getting prophetic about the future...or you're trolling...probably both.
I see you're back to once again try to decry the site. It's funny if things are so bad that you keep coming back to read articles, but that's a special sort of problem, I suppose. Anyway, since you're having trouble with reading comprehension, most of the comments swirl around the drive's poor performance relative to other products. Just because someone doesn't leap to their feet to applaud a device that landed at the bottom of a chart doesn't mean the reviewer, the article, or the company publishing it is doing something wrong by reporting their test results. Just because people are generally in agreement with the results via their comments certainly doesn't indicate there's a problem with the review. You're just trying to project your silly opinion on others and hope to bend reality to your will by getting prophetic about the future...or you're trolling...probably both.
So far, the Silicon Motion and Phison's controllers always seem to perform poorly with consistency. They don't seem like they are trying to fix it with each iteration of their controller.
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romrunning - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
You would have thought their design performance target would have been the older 950 Pro (not the newer 960 line) or the even-older Intel 750 . But no, it seems they are competing with Phison for the lowest-performing NVMe SSD award. Disappointing - just like that Intel 600p.ddriver - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
First look: slow. Second look: still slow. It is quite the feat they manage to make an nvme controller almost as slow as sata.jjj - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Guess it's a sub 200$ drive, we'll see how it does against WD's offering and Plextor M8Se.Not worth wasting the M.2 slot on such a drive, unless it's well bellow 200$. Right now on Newegg, the M8Pe without a shield is 220$.
kissiel - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Isn't the Z97Pro bottlenecking the drive?AFAIK it's pcie2.0 x 2 - > so sub 1GiB/s tops.
revanchrist - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
True that. It's a 10Gbps M.2 rather than the newer 32Gbps M.2 slot.fanofanand - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Nice catch! Strange for one of the top tech sites in the world to use old tech to test new tech. Very strange indeed. Ryan? Can you squeeze Purch to get some current equipment into your reviewer's hands?DanNeely - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
I don't think so. The last page of the article shows the card in a x4 PCIe adapter. AFAIK that's plugged into 3.0 lanes from the CPU both for performance testing and to monitor the power draw.Billy Tallis - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Exactly right. All PCIe SSDs are tested in the PCIe 3.0 x16 slot with a riser card that has the power measurement points on it. Although, I did also test the Intel 600p in the motherboard's M.2 slot to see how much the slowest NVMe drive would be affected.kissiel - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link
Thanks!Please consider pointing that out in a test bed info next time, so people will know what to expect with a similar combo (z97+m.2).
Keep up, the good work!
TelstarTOS - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Another piece of crap. This controller should be trashed away.BrokenCrayons - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
It seems like power consumption and consistency are both problems. Consistency can probably be addressed through tuning and optimization of firmware, but power consumption is probably something that can't be fine-tuned away. NVMe drives aren't as power friendly as SATA, but the inefficiencies of some recently reviewed SSDs here on Ananatech certainly seems to throw a spotlight on the problem. Between that and thermal throttling, the NVMe storage picture isn't very rosy just yet.KAlmquist - Friday, February 17, 2017 - link
Even with 25% overprovisioning, I see a 1 second interval at the 3350 mark where the IOP's fall to zero. Fortunately, the performance consistency of this SSD seems more in line with its competitors on the trace-based benchmarks (The Destroyer, etc.).The sequential read performance at queue depth 1 is lower than that of budget SATA SSD's like the MX300. At higher queue depths, the sequential reads are faster than anything a SATA SSD can manage, but queue depths of 1 are not uncommon in a desktop environment.
vladx - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link
Now we can see why Micron cancelled its' NVMe SSD using the SM2260, it's simply not competive.Drumsticks - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link
So what's a good roundup conclusion on the current state of NVMe drives? If we want to pick one up this year, where does the performance go from "bad for NVMe" to "not Samsung but still pretty good!"? Plextor?vladx - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link
Indeed Plextor M8Pe seems to be the best buy option at the moment in the NVMe space.Drumsticks - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link
That's what I was thinking. $220/$240 for the 500GB model right now. So much more than it used to be. Do we have any news on whether anything constraining nand supply will be alleviating any time soon?vladx - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link
The supply problems most likely will be gone after Chinese companies will flood this market in 2018. But it could happen sooner than that depending on how fast will Toshiba/Western Digital will be rolling up their own 3D NAND supply.Chaser - Saturday, February 18, 2017 - link
"and the Plextor M8Pe is very slightly faster."AbRASiON - Sunday, February 19, 2017 - link
If this is CHEAPER than an MX300 it's an incredibly good bargain. The MX300's are really really well priced. I'd consider it if it's dead, dead cheap.The 960 Evo / Pro is a joke, sure it's fast but in real world usage, it's ridiculously expensive.
Make the 1TB version of this for $250 US or less and I'm very much in. (I doubt it will though)
StrangerGuy - Sunday, February 19, 2017 - link
I know right, Techreport tested the 960 Evo/Pro are both so close to yesteryears SATA3 SSDs in real-world load times that they are easily within the margin of error. I don't care about how NVMe is able to reach uber fast raw speeds that has zero use to me or to 99% of the people out there, but a hypothetical SSD with half the raw transfer speed of current SATA3 SSDs for 2x the capacity per dollar? That's a real bargain.motigez - Sunday, February 19, 2017 - link
Honestly, at this point, TLC is the only viable technology for Client market, the incremental performance benefit you may get on MLC based SSD just don't worth it, and I expect to see little to no traction on those moving forward.LordanSS - Sunday, February 19, 2017 - link
To be very honest, a 3D MLC at 40nm has very good endurance, which would be good for a usage of heavy writes.If you're dealing with video capture and editing, it'd be a good choice over 3D TLC, even tho 3D TLC at 40nm has decent endurance as well.
leexgx - Tuesday, February 21, 2017 - link
to bad they did not continue the BX100 line as it had insane low power use (still fast enough for a low end SSD) BX200 and higher was like the worst SSD for low end SSD and power useRanger1065 - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 - link
Does anyone really care about this? The number of comments seems to indicate a comprehensive "NO." Another article, another step towards oblivion. Great job Anandtech.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 - link
I see you're back to once again try to decry the site. It's funny if things are so bad that you keep coming back to read articles, but that's a special sort of problem, I suppose. Anyway, since you're having trouble with reading comprehension, most of the comments swirl around the drive's poor performance relative to other products. Just because someone doesn't leap to their feet to applaud a device that landed at the bottom of a chart doesn't mean the reviewer, the article, or the company publishing it is doing something wrong by reporting their test results. Just because people are generally in agreement with the results via their comments certainly doesn't indicate there's a problem with the review. You're just trying to project your silly opinion on others and hope to bend reality to your will by getting prophetic about the future...or you're trolling...probably both.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, February 22, 2017 - link
I see you're back to once again try to decry the site. It's funny if things are so bad that you keep coming back to read articles, but that's a special sort of problem, I suppose. Anyway, since you're having trouble with reading comprehension, most of the comments swirl around the drive's poor performance relative to other products. Just because someone doesn't leap to their feet to applaud a device that landed at the bottom of a chart doesn't mean the reviewer, the article, or the company publishing it is doing something wrong by reporting their test results. Just because people are generally in agreement with the results via their comments certainly doesn't indicate there's a problem with the review. You're just trying to project your silly opinion on others and hope to bend reality to your will by getting prophetic about the future...or you're trolling...probably both.watzupken - Saturday, February 25, 2017 - link
So far, the Silicon Motion and Phison's controllers always seem to perform poorly with consistency. They don't seem like they are trying to fix it with each iteration of their controller.