OCZ Trion 100 Series SSD Review

Now firmly in the Toshiba camp, OCZ's Trion 100 Series is the first retail product to ship with Toshiba's new A19 TLC NAND flash.

By Chris Ramseyer
published

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Data Type Comparison And TLC Sequential Write Speed

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Similar to the Phison S10-controlled drives, OCZ's Trion passes compressible and incompressible data through at different rates. Unlike SandForce-based SSDs that write incompressible data slower, Toshiba's controller reads compressible data at a higher speed. 

When it comes to TLC NAND, we're mostly worried about sequential roll-off. This is a new test that we're running on products that use pSLC modes to hide the performance of slower flash technologies. Some MLC products are complemented with pSLC, but for the most part emulated SLC is used to mask the weaknesses of TLC. 

Native TLC write performance is significantly lower than SLC or MLC. In the chart above, we write 64KB blocks to the full user LBA span of the Trion 100 480GB and observe performance right around 110 MB/s. There are mechanical hard drives that are faster.

The key to making TLC useful is to hide its native performance as much as possible. At the very start of the test, we see the Trion 100 480GB writing data at 427 MB/s. Sadly, that performance level is quite brief. Successfully masking the expected behavior of TLC memory means you need a large enough buffer to keep the drive from dropping to 110 MB/s transfers.

Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews consumer storage.
10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jedik1
    "Juliet in the eyes of Romeo"....lol....you guys really need to find better pickup lines.

    IMO. SSD market is overcrowded at the moment. I think better emphasis should not be in performance as more or less all of them perform pretty good. I think more emphasis should be on cost reduction alone. Only when SSDs will be like 1TB~$80-$100 then only we can see wider adoption of SSDs.
    Reply
  • JPNpower
    This drive is perfect and the ideal answer to those low budget builds that frequent the Toms forums. Yes, you can afford an SSD, Yes you can keep that 2/3 year old cheap computer and make it faster... no excuses now.
    Reply
  • "most of it ended up in devices with low endurance like thumb drives and SD cards"

    Can you please elaborate? I was under the impression that thumb drives and SD cards mostly used MLC or eMLC NAND?

    I don't like these 19 and 16 nm chips. You need over-provision and complex ECC algorithms just to correct all the errors the drive outputs after a year or so. The industry is going in the wrong direction, IMO. Samsung has 40 nm 3D NAND, but it would be even better to have that at 65 nm. I don't mind paying 2-3x the price if the endurance is an order of magnitude better.

    Even with RAM, do we really need more capacity over having ECC? Solar flares happen all the time. Data keeps growing and becoming more valuable, this is a real issue. Most people don't even checksum their data!

    I guess if you're playing video games it doesn't matter. But content creators should care.
    Reply
  • Blueberries
    I'm surprised OCZ still exists
    Reply
  • Frozen Fractal
    Shouldn't MX200 be of the competition with Trion than Reactor?
    Reply
  • JPNpower
    16226457 said:
    I'm surprised OCZ still exists

    It doesn't really. It's a company that's been butchered, restructured, and relaunched by Toshiba so really it's quite a new company.
    Reply
  • JPNpower
    16219463 said:
    "most of it ended up in devices with low endurance like thumb drives and SD cards"

    Can you please elaborate? I was under the impression that thumb drives and SD cards mostly used MLC or eMLC NAND?

    I don't like these 19 and 16 nm chips. You need over-provision and complex ECC algorithms just to correct all the errors the drive outputs after a year or so. The industry is going in the wrong direction, IMO. Samsung has 40 nm 3D NAND, but it would be even better to have that at 65 nm. I don't mind paying 2-3x the price if the endurance is an order of magnitude better.

    Even with RAM, do we really need more capacity over having ECC? Solar flares happen all the time. Data keeps growing and becoming more valuable, this is a real issue. Most people don't even checksum their data!

    I guess if you're playing video games it doesn't matter. But content creators should care.

    That's what enterprise products are for. They provide better stability and probably endurance as well. OCZ is a massive player in this field so you should check out their enterprise products. The semi-enterprise Vector 180 is pretty popular.
    Reply
  • Phuntasm
    I really hope this isn't meant to completely replace the Vertex line. Vertex were top of the line performers, while this is just a mediocre blaaah. "It's an SSD." I want to see a Vertex-like headliner, something to compete with the 850 Pro. Either way, where are them PCI-e uber-SSDs?
    Reply
  • JPNpower
    16269842 said:
    I really hope this isn't meant to completely replace the Vertex line. Vertex were top of the line performers, while this is just a mediocre blaaah. "It's an SSD." I want to see a Vertex-like headliner, something to compete with the 850 Pro. Either way, where are them PCI-e uber-SSDs?

    OCZ is building a wide range (yet poorly named...) SSD line. Vertex has always been and always will be the performers. Vector has always been and always will be the semi-pro with kool features. RevoDrive has always been and will be the traditional uber drives. Now Arc is the balanced mainstream, Trion is truly low end, and Radeon is... something else.

    I'm sure Toshiba have something cool M.2 wise up their sleeve. Maybe the Vertex will become M.2 only uber drives, while Radeon takes it's traditional place. Maybe they'll come up with a new name.
    Reply
  • Phuntasm
    Hey, good explanation! I hadn't thought of all the other lines they have. Interesting thought on M.2
    Reply