OCZ Trion 100 (240GB, 480GB & 960GB) SSD Review: Bringing Toshiba to the Retail
by Kristian Vättö on July 9, 2015 12:01 PM ESTPerformance Consistency
We've been looking at performance consistency since the Intel SSD DC S3700 review in late 2012 and it has become one of the cornerstones of our SSD reviews. Back in the days many SSD vendors were only focusing on high peak performance, which unfortunately came at the cost of sustained performance. In other words, the drives would push high IOPS in certain synthetic scenarios to provide nice marketing numbers, but as soon as you pushed the drive for more than a few minutes you could easily run into hiccups caused by poor performance consistency.
Once we started exploring IO consistency, nearly all SSD manufacturers made a move to improve consistency and for the 2015 suite, I haven't made any significant changes to the methodology we use to test IO consistency. The biggest change is the move from VDBench to Iometer 1.1.0 as the benchmarking software and I've also extended the test from 2000 seconds to a full hour to ensure that all drives hit steady-state during the test.
For better readability, I now provide bar graphs with the first one being an average IOPS of the last 400 seconds and the second graph displaying the standard deviation during the same period. Average IOPS provides a quick look into overall performance, but it can easily hide bad consistency, so looking at standard deviation is necessary for a complete look into consistency.
I'm still providing the same scatter graphs too, of course. However, I decided to dump the logarithmic graphs and go linear-only since logarithmic graphs aren't as accurate and can be hard to interpret for those who aren't familiar with them. I provide two graphs: one that includes the whole duration of the test and another that focuses on the last 400 seconds of the test to get a better scope into steady-state performance.
TLC SSDs in general don't perform well under sustained random workloads and the Trion 100 is no exception. It seems that with TLC SSDs we have to accept a drop from 5K to 2-3K IOPS, which is still fine for basic client workloads since most SSDs from 3-4 years ago couldn't even match that.
The consistency isn't great either, but it's not particularly poor either when compared agains Silicon Motion drives.
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Looking at the performance over time, we can see that the baseline performance hovers at about 1,000 IOPS with frequent peaks occuring at 5K to 10K IOPS. That's actually very similar to the Neutron XT's (Phison S10) graph because the baseline is also 1,000 IOPS, although the peaks are higher and more frequent, but it further reassures that the underlying firmware architecture is similar. Increasing over-provisioning doesn't increase the baseline performance, but it does make peak performance moments more frequent and higher (from 10K IOPS to 25K IOPS).
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JellyRoll - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
Wow, it looks terrible to be honest. I agree with the analysis. WAY overpriced, especially considering the Samsung alternative. A swing and a miss from OCZ/Toshiba.ocz_tuff_bunny - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
Hi JellyRoll,Thank you for your comment, since this is my first post in regards to this article please allow me to identify myself as a member of the OCZ Storage Solutions. Usually by the time a product launches the MSRP already changed. We’re monitoring pricing very closely and will adjust to where the market goes. We believe with this drive's endurance and reliability it's a good option for users looking to upgrade from a HDD. Thank you again for your input.
MrSpadge - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
This drive makes the ARC100 look even more like "the most underrated value drive". The Trion would need to undercut it significantly (and the BX100 and 850EVO).StevoLincolnite - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
To be fair, everyone here would expect a certain degree of performance at each price point... This drive drops the ball on performance, so it needs to pick up the slack when it comes to price.Also... To put this in perspective, this drive is probably as fast/maybe even slower than my OCZ Vertex 2 that I am still using today, which I bought 5-6 years ago...
LtGoonRush - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Here is direct advice for OCZ: this is a very bad SSD, and there's no way to position bad SSDs profitably because the bottom of the market is already crowded with bad SSDs that have to be sold below cost.Instead, you should make SSDs that are not bad and are positioned appropriately in the marketplace. It's probably possible to make an SSD with a lower cost-to-manufacture that is not garbage and thus people might actually make a willing, informed choice to buy. I know it's not easy to differentiate your drives in a crowded market, but just making awful drives and hoping people buy them without knowing what they are getting is not a good strategy.
NvidiaWins - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Samsung is one of those bottom feeding SSD vendors......Read this- http://www.extremetech.com/computing/173887-ssd-st...
Questor - Sunday, July 12, 2015 - link
This article barely mentions Samsung and not in a negative manner. How is it that you feel your comment and the link are relevant to this discussion?ocz_tuff_bunny - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Hi LtGoonRush,Thank you for your input. We are a new organization under Toshiba and have made significant changes to everything from the design processes to production and validation. Trion 100 is optimized for value users, the market price will fluctuate and we will adjust. We appreciate your feedback.
hojnikb - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
It's not a bad SSDs. Its slow, i give you that, but not so slow, that typical user will notice. Still orders of magnitude faster than typical HDDs.Its just need to be priced lower and it will make sense. And maybe a few firmware tweaks to boost speed a little, where it makes most sense. I'm sure there is something to be done.
sonny73n - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Hi ocz_tuff_bunny,Speaking from my perspective, you can't just create a mediocre product and expect to survive in this day and age, unless it has outstanding value for the money. As for storage solutions, SSD price per GB is still high compared to HDD. Most of us are still not be able to afford SSD for the whole system, boot and storage. Furthermore, it's possible for SSD to lose its integrity if it's not being used for long period of time which defeats the whole purpose of data storing.
For now I can only hope OCZ and the rest of the underdogs can improve and compete. We, consumers wouldn't want one company completely dominates the market. So, good luck OCZ.