The OCZ Trion 150 SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on April 1, 2016 8:00 AM ESTRandom Read Performance
The random read test requests 4kB 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, which is filled before the test starts. 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 Trion 150 sets a new low for small queue depth random read speeds, with half the performance of the best SATA drives. This is probably the primary cause of the poorer latency scores seen on the ATSB tests. For context, the QD1 performance of the 480GB Trion 150 is still almost 50 times faster than a 7200RPM hard drive.
Power consumption has at least decreased in kind with the reduced performance, but the ADATA SP550 manages slightly better efficiency than the Trion 150 and most MLC drives are much more efficient.
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The 480GB Trion 150 doesn't perform quite as well at the highest queue depths as the other capacities, but all sizes perform considerably worse than the competition, especially at high queue depths.
Random Write Performance
The random write test writes 4kB 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 is limited to a 16GB portion of the drive, and the drive is empty save for the 16GB test file. 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.
Random write speed on the 240GB Trion 150 got a huge boost over the Trion 100 and even the larger Trion 150s, but they all improved and widened the lead over SM2256 drives.
Power efficiency during random writes is much improved. The 240GB Trion 150 draws slightly more power than the 240GB Trion 100, but that's completely justified by the performance jump.
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The queue depth scaling behavior is quite odd. The 240GB Trion 150 doesn't change past QD4, but the larger sizes see a huge improvement moving to QD8 and beyond. This can make for some nice benchmark numbers but won't have much real-world impact. At low queue depths the 240GB comes out well ahead. This discrepancy is most likely a difference in the SLC caching configuration between the different models. Whatever the cause, the 240GB drive is making the better choices.
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Arnulf - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
So not only is this a low-end drive, it's an OCZ low-end drive.Thanks for the article and giving consumers heads-up so that we don't get burned!
Arnulf - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
Ugh, EDIT function pretty please ...So not only is this a low-end drive, it's an overpriced OCZ low-end drive.
close - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
I wouldn't call this a "burn" but it's definitely a warm beer after a hot summer day.LB-ID - Friday, April 1, 2016 - link
<Wanders in, sees another OCZ drive review><Reads the review, sees nothing has really changed>
<Wanders out to buy from a reputable brand>
Samus - Saturday, April 2, 2016 - link
I now feel like Toshiba is a Trojan horse, because all the OCZ drives that were in the buffer during bankruptcy and released after Toshiba initially bought them, in particular the exceptional ARC 100, were a sign they were turning things around.Then Toshiba releases this crap under the OCZ name. WTF are they thinking OCZ is a performance focused brand and these drives are clearly marketed at grandma's old Dell laptop.
xrror - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Yea but I think Toshiba's plan was to use OCZ for ALL of their customer facing drives. Before they bought OCZ they simply didn't offer retail drives at all!As far as a Toshiba Trojan horse... Toshiba actually had a competent drive itself right before it bought OCZ.
The Toshiba THNSNH drives were actually good (they don't bench awesome, but they're good) but since they were OEM only you've never heard of them. THNSNH was also a big jump from Toshiba's prior drives that seemed mostly made for industrial (performance wasn't great, but HDD wouldn't handle vibration/shock).
Bonus that Toshiba kept OCZ's in development models, so you had the ARC series come out. (vs. something ... not so nice like continuing Octane). But those were Marvell (I think) based with Indilinx firmware? Nothing wrong at all with that, but I imagine Toshiba's shareholders would question why they weren't using native Toshiba tech...
I'm actually really glad Toshiba of anyone (also, a surprise!) was able to snag the OCZ engineering team. Yea everyone loves to hate on OCZ, but OCZ really was the first company to so extremely aggressively bring SSD drives to the consumer market. Everyone likes to hate on Ryan Petersen but damnit, he really DID push to make SSD drives an affordable "thing" much MUCH sooner than just Intel alone would have.
They had a really rough time pounding out the bugs with SandForce yes... but seriously - who could have predicted that? (no, SERIOUSLY - before the kneejerk reaction, imagine being in OCZ's development shoes - that had to be really tough cause each time they thought they had it fixed, and it was always something very subtle). I always find it interesting that everyone forgets that their Indilinx controllers just worked - but they weren't the "sexy" fastest.
Saying that, I totally understand people who... after forking out their $600+ on a drive and having failure after RMA failure after "no this firmware really fixes it honest" failure upon failure would yea... swear off OCZ forever. But today's OCZ isn't that. Different time, place, era.
This comment has gone way too long. And I've lost my point lol.
And so you all don't think I'm a forgive and forget person. I'll never buy another Kingston product after the asshattery with the V300. When a company basically tells Anand himself to piss off when they bait and switch the NAND used...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-ki...
Hey, at least Ryan Peterson and OCZ back then was super responsive to Anand directly when they got ripped a new one ;)
xrror - Wednesday, April 6, 2016 - link
Ugh, and I just realized I didn't address the part of using the OCZ name for non-performance parts.Basically, unless you're Samsung right now nobody is a performance part. And so that doesn't sound like a hipster "well, duh" answer - Samsung went crazy (awesome!) insane mad R&D into controllers and 3D NAND. Holy moly they even kicked Intel's butt enough so that Intel announces vaporware crosspoint memory.
I mean, halo effect in SATA market at least is crazy! SanDisk has some very extremely competitive models in their high end - but because they're maybe 3% slower in some benchmarks? Nobody on the street cares. That's nuts.
I dunno, I guess my point is that unless Toshiba/OCZ can somehow squeeze 12Gb/s through a SATA 3 link (I joke) they're not going to be able to market as a performance product these days.
Actually, the killer solution I think is to make an SSD controller that is both power efficient and makes TLC NAND not suck (so much). And that's not easy. At all. Cause small process planar TLC really a physics nightmare. I mean that's taking crappy flash drive memory and getting it to perform. Not easy.
leexgx - Sunday, April 24, 2016 - link
maybe i been unlucky i had to many sandisk SSDs (3) and SD (more than 5) cards fail (failing as what is in my phone right now about to funny enough change it for a 32GB EVO+)i do wish they would make more SSDs like the BX100 its the most power effect SSD i have ever seen (the BX200 and MX200 the very bad) BX100 is not very fast for a SSD but in laptops its very low power
jasonelmore - Saturday, April 2, 2016 - link
Still mad about that OCZ rebate scandal i see.Leyawiin - Sunday, April 3, 2016 - link
No, its a Toshiba low end. Do try and keep up.