Quote:Given the exceptionally low price points these drives are selling at, it will be difficult for companies to cash in on TLC-based products without significantly reducing prices. Ultimately, the five NAND flash makers will control the ratio of MLC to TLC flash produced. MLC's days are numbered, but we may see a revolt with native TLC sequential performance at less than hard disk drive levels. We have forthcoming TLC-based SSD review data that show just that.

We think the companies really need to take a good look at the roadmap before limiting access to MLC flash. TLC will further reduce SSD prices, but if it means these products fail to deliver better-than-hard-drive performance, who would want to buy one?

Quote:The BX200 sounds strikingly similar to that of the 240GB ADATA SP550 we recently reviewed, which utilizes the same controller, but instead of Micron’s TLC, SK Hynix’s TLC. To an avid reader here, this may come to you as a disappointment however. To others, we will explain why. In the SP550’s case, continuous write performance was not impressive past a few GBs. Beyond the small SLC buffer, speeds have dropped down to below 100MB/s in sequential performance, even as far as just 48MB/s. Similarly, many other TLC based SSDs face the same issue. Once a workload runs past a few GB we start to see TLC’s major flaws in the result of much lower performance. Therefore, today’s analysis of the BX200 is going to be interesting, especially once we throw some real world file transfers at it. Will the Crucial’s first TLC SSD have what it takes to stand out from the entry-level competition like the BX100 once did or will it just be another cheap, low performance option among the rising many in this TLC SSD category? Continue on and let’s find out!
...

In terms of performance, the Crucial BX200 really doesn’t bring anything special to the table as we can see in our tests. It has good synthetic performance when you are working within the SLC NAND cache buffer and idle power consumption is very good. It reached a max of 559MB/s read and 500MB/s write in ATTO and 4K QD 1 speeds are good. Beyond the pseudo SLC buffer, write performance may drop down to under 100MB/s which can be disappointing when doing large file transfers. During PCMark tests it fared well. In PCMark Vantage it received a total of about 85K for both capacities tested, which is almost the same as the BX100 received when we reviewed it earlier this year. In the PCMark 8 consistency test it do not do well at all in the heavy workload portion, however, during the light workload phase, which is more in line with real world performance, it did much better, although second to last compared to the rest of the drives on the chart. Finally, looking at the real world file transfer test, it was disappointing to see such low speeds, especially since a HDD is able to surpass them. Write performance is not its strong suit, but luckily it has fast read performance.

FINAL THOUGHTS

With this product release we are seeing not only a reinforcement of an industry trend where companies are now focusing on lower cost SSDs to gain HDD market share, but also a clearer divergence between the mainstream and entry-level SSD contenders. Right now we are starting to see much greater performance differences in the lower priced SSD market and competition for the lowest cost per GB. This has effectively increased the trend for companies to offer these planar TLC SSDs that have small SLC-like buffers to help boost performance for just a few GB.

A lot of readers may think that because these drives have much slower native write performance (write speed after the buffer runs out) that they are not worth owning at all. As an enthusiast, I have a similar mindset myself. However, looking at these drives in a different light and considering what most consumers use their systems for on a day to day basis, these drives are not all that bad. Consumer workloads typically don’t involve multi-GB transfers and heavy write workloads. For the most part you are limited by your internet speed streaming rich content at just a few MB/s and installing programs that take up about 50-200MB at most. There are exceptions of course, say you are installing MS office for the one time that you do or a big game, then yes, this drive and others like it may possibly show themselves to be much slower than normal or higher-end SSDs, however, compared to HDDs for an OS drive, they still fit the bill perfectly for many. Much lower access times (latency) and 4K low QD performance is what makes SSDs so much better than HDDs. Just look at our PCMark Vantage and 8 performance scores. Those are proof enough that for a consumer workload, these SSDs will typically perform well for those who are budget minded.

Again, these entry level SSDs aren’t the best and aren’t for the many enthusiasts out there, but they are helping to bring flash performance to those who have slow mechanical HDDs. All things considered, still, we feel the pricing of SSDs like this is just not low enough to warrant purchasing them when there are still so many better options out there in their price range, especially when considering sales. Unless these drives were $0.25/GB instead of over $0.30/GB, we would much rather suggest that you wait for something else to go on sale or buy a similarly priced alternative with MLC NAND. Right now you can even get the Crucial BX100 at a similar price still and it is very competitive option if you are looking for a new SSD, until they run out.

Hopefully, when NAND manufacturers other than Samsung start distributing their 3D TLC NAND we will start seeing SSDs that perform more competitively in this entry-level bracket. The Samsung 850 EVO, for example, with its 3D V-NAND sure does extremely well even though it has TLC. For those who really are on a tight budget, if these new planar TLC SSDs are the lowest cost, then sure, go ahead and get one. If you have a system with a HDD and want something faster, one of these newer entry-level SSDs will do the trick, just make sure there is nothing else of higher performance is in the market at the same price range.

Quote:MyDigitalSSD's BP5e isn't the first product we've seen pairing the S10 and TLC flash. But it is the first implementation we'd consider buying. The difference between this SSD, OCZ's Trion 100 and some of the unreleased models in our lab is night and day. We've seen a ton of low-cost TLC-based drives that can't sustain sequential writes any higher than 90 to 110 MB/s. And yet, we have mechanical hard drives that hit 200 MB/s. Ever since we started testing storage devices with TLC flash, I've maintained that an SSD simply can't drop to hard drive-like performance levels and still be considered acceptable.

What makes the BP5e special is its advanced error-correction technology. There are three levels of data protection. Without them, writing directly to the TLC flash would chew through its endurance rating. MyDigitalSSD doesn't publish those numbers, nor did it have an estimate available when I asked. But we don't put a lot of emphasis on endurance ratings anyway because they often prove inaccurate. A manufacturer can't predict your ratio of random to sequential writes, which affects how quickly the flash wears down. Instead, we get a more general three-year warranty to protect against failure.

The BP5e is the least-expensive 1TB-class SSD right now. I'm not sure how long it'll keep that title, but we have spoken with SSD manufacturers that told us MLC-equipped drives won't hit similar prices any time soon. The flash simply costs too much. If a competitor does introduce a TLC-based drive around the BP5e's price, it'll most likely also include Phison's S10 controller. JMicron and Silicon Motion don't have TLC-enabled controllers that scale well to 1TB, and they can't match the S10's performance.

(06-10-2016, 06:13 PM)happy medium Wrote: Believe it or not I still use a mechanical drive. While we are on the subject, I was thinking of grabbing a Mushkin reactor 1tb for ~ 250$. They were as low as 210$ but they have since gone up in price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226596

what do ya think?

(06-10-2016, 06:27 PM)SickBeast Wrote:

(06-10-2016, 06:13 PM)happy medium Wrote: Believe it or not I still use a mechanical drive. While we are on the subject, I was thinking of grabbing a Mushkin reactor 1tb for ~ 250$. They were as low as 210$ but they have since gone up in price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226596

what do ya think?

That drive is the best deal out there in terms of a large SSD.  I have a 480gb Pny drive that uses the same nand and the same controller and it's really fast.

There have been better deals on it like you said though.  They went as low as $230CAD here which is less than $200USD.

(06-10-2016, 06:49 PM)happy medium Wrote:

(06-10-2016, 06:27 PM)SickBeast Wrote:

(06-10-2016, 06:13 PM)happy medium Wrote: Believe it or not I still use a mechanical drive. While we are on the subject, I was thinking of grabbing a Mushkin reactor 1tb for ~ 250$. They were as low as 210$ but they have since gone up in price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226596

what do ya think?

That drive is the best deal out there in terms of a large SSD.  I have a 480gb Pny drive that uses the same nand and the same controller and it's really fast.

There have been better deals on it like you said though.  They went as low as $230CAD here which is less than $200USD.

Windows 10 does all kinds of crazy stuff while loading, overclock profiles, cloud services,ect .ect ect.
It drives me nuts waiting 3 or 4 min to load up.

My 7200 rpm 1tb drive is just about full with emulators, roms, and PC games.
Ideally I'd like to grab a 2 TB SSD and use the 1tb mechanical drive as extra storage.

But 500$ is a lot of money for a 2tb drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226829