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  • Shadow7037932 - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    The benchmarks seems very lacklustre and similar to much older controllers/SSDs. I know it's still probably not optimized, but unless SSDs using this can REALLY get the price down, I don't see why people won't just go with the older SSDs like. Heck, even new SSDs like the 850 EVO can be had at a very competitive price.
  • watzupken - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    Having experimented with a couple of value SSDs running the older SM2246EN controller, I feel they are not too bad for the price. For most users, I don't think they will run into much performance issues with these drives and will still enjoy a better user experience than running a mechanical drive. If you are getting a new SSD running an older controller, its likely you won't find it cheaper cause its older.
  • NeatOman - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    Thats true, but paired with a i3 or anything AMD in which such a small margin when the Systems controller (like in AMD's AM3+'s 990 chipset) is the bottleneck or simply the processing power like with a i3 or lower.

    And i feel the 850 EVO 120gb at $85 is still much more expensive than a SSD you can pick up with almost the same day to day performance for $55. It's like comparing a desktop i5 to a desktop i7 IMO.
  • Taneli - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    Everything you write here is just complete garbage.
  • leexgx - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link

    i agree
  • Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link

    the new Plextor SSD M6V has Silicon Motion SMI-2246
  • Sejong - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    TLC for everyone....this is not a welcome. :(
  • SunLord - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    TLC is nice for low end low use scenarios but that about it.
  • Flunk - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    This would have to be really cheap to be interesting.
  • Hulk - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    My thought exactly.
  • watzupken - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    Looking at the state of the Samsung 840, I am still not convinced with TLC based SSDs. With value in mind, SSD is also walking down the path of cheap but unreliable storage solutions from my opinion. E.g. mechanical drives used to last a very long time, but not now even though they are cheap.
  • leexgx - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link

    the problem with 840 and 840 evo is just that its not refreshing the cells when it should be (the data is still retained even if its slow doing it) SSDs problem with retaining data is an issue towards end of life but that happens on all SSDs (more a concern for commercial use then consumer drives)
  • der - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    Wow great!
  • RU482 - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    IS THAT....A HAIR?
  • i7 - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    Looks like it to me.
  • KAlmquist - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    "OEMs can't price their TLC drives similarly to the MLC ones and expect it to be a good sale."

    Agreed. If you look at the prices of Samsung's 850 series, it's around $0.90 per GB of nand cells plus a fixed cost of $30. So you can get an MLC model for better performance at $0.45/GB of capacity, or a TLC model with lower performance at $0.30/GB of capacity. If that type of pricing is adopted by other SSD manufacturers, then TLC becomes very tempting; otherwise not so much.

    The other thing about the 850 line is that the relatively large cell size associated with 3D Nand appears to have eliminated the problem with data deterioration that we saw on the 840 EVO. So TLC will become more attractive next year when 3D Nand becomes available from other manufacturers.
  • nwarawa - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    10% my tush. Try 20%+. Considering I can get a good MLC 256GB-class drive like a BX100 right now for around $100, if they can't get a similar TLC drive under $80, I won't even give it a second glace.
  • revanchrist - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    TLC is going to be real cheap. Tigo, a Chinese 3rd-party ssd manufacturer has announced its tlc ssd based on Silicon Motion controller and SK Hynix nand chips last week, available in quantity up to 2TB. They've only disclosed the price of the 240gb model, which is RMB 399, roughly 65 USD. FFS that could translate to 260 USD for a 1TB model OMG.
  • revanchrist - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    The controller is exactly SM2256 and the nand is 16nm 128Gb TLC from SK Hynix.
  • anactoraaron - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    OFF TOPIC: Wow you guys must have had some serious issues with the LG G4 for it to be 2+ weeks past release and still no review.

    I'm guessing you were about to publish the issues you have had with the device (missed taps/unresponsive screen, slow charging/heat, lag/stutter, etc) and basically not recommend anyone purchase it and you were 'advised' by LG to not publish this until they have had a chance to fix those issues, which according to Android Central will be in the next 3-4 weeks. I just can't recall a review of a flagship device that wasn't out within 2 weeks of release (unless it was a Sony device since they won't comp anything to you guys to review).

    I don't see the point of waiting, because even with the issues I personally have (unresponsive screen/lag/stutter) the G4 is still a solid device.

    This isn't a knock on you guys - you do probably the most unbiased and thorough reviews. The delay on this review is just starting to smell a bit to me.
  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link

    "I just can't recall a review of a flagship device that wasn't out within 2 weeks of release"
    Weren't most Note phones, HTC Nexus 9 and Nexus 6 pretty late or only in preview format released? Anandtech is notorious for this stuff when it comes to anything but Apple. :D Though more often than not, eventually we get something.
  • Michael Bay - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    Just two weeks?
    I`m still waiting for 960 review.
  • Oxford Guy - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    "TLC for everyone?" Maybe if the drives are being given away. The last time I checked MLC isn't that expensive.
  • Oxford Guy - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    Samsung has had "some issues" with TLC, eh? Why not specifically state what those are?

    "Like all TLC SSD designs we have seen, Silicon Motion employs SLC caching in the SM2256 to improve performance and endurance. The size of the SLC cache is configurable by the OEM, but generally the cache size is between 3GB and 12GB depending on the capacity of the drive."

    Actual SLC or some sort of simulated SLC?
  • canthearu - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    "Actual SLC or some sort of simulated SLC?"

    Both the same really. As long as it is dedicated space that will never be asked to perform TLC duty.
  • Oxford Guy - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link

    Isn't it rather impossible for triple layer NAND to be single layer NAND?
  • DeepStorage - Sunday, June 21, 2015 - link

    Most flash foundries have at least some models of their MLC, and TLC flash that can dedicate some percentage of the pages per die to use in SLC mode. It doesn't have quite the performance or endurance of pure SLC but it's close.
  • Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link

    " It doesn't have quite the performance or endurance of pure SLC but it's close."

    Any data on that to link to?
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    "TLC for everyone" meaning that now every OEM can build a TLC drive if they wish.

    SLC cache implementation depends on the NAND. NAND vendors do have special dies with SLC cache functionality (supports a special command set), but so far they haven't sold them to third parties, although I've heard this is about to change. In other cases SLC cache simply means that the controller only writes to the lower pages, which in terms of write performance is about the same as real SLC cache but there is some minor read performance penalty (although I don't know exactly why).
  • dcaxax - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    "admittedly Samsung has had some issues with TLC"

    That's the understatement of the Millenium. My 840 and 840 Evo have such severe performance degradation (60-70%) that their speed is now visibly impaired and actually compares with some of the fastest HDDs.
    Considering the price per GB of an SSD that is completely unacceptable and constitutes a ripoff.

    Vendors like Samsung are fobbing off substandard parts supported by immature and unreliable technology to unsuspecting customers.

    This is the equivalent of a car with flashy design and big engine which is guaranteed to develop problems as soon as you drive 100 miles. They have a name for it and it's called 'a lemon'.
  • Oxford Guy - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link

    Apple reportedly abandoned TLC because of the defects.
  • serndipity - Saturday, June 20, 2015 - link

    Have noticed that, as the NAND manufacturers shrunk the die process, issues with both MLC and TLC based SSDs have begun surfacing.

    Glad to see that Samsung, with its 3D NAND technology, used in the 850 PRO and 850 EVO, has been able to return to a much more stable process size (e.g. almost 3X that of current MLC).
  • viktorp - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link

    TLC NAND isn’t welcome at any price.
    Ask yourself simple question – what parts of your personal data will you trust to storage designed specifically to have 10 times less endurance than technology it is supposed to replace (MLC).
    I am upset just thinking that someone thought of it as being a good idea.
  • cbjwthwm - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link

    The big problem here is a newer gen product at 2x the capacity of the equivalent architecture Sandisk Ultra II which for the most part gets outperformed by it. It would be interesting to see what the shipping firmware of this type of product eventually performed like compared to the reference design, but otherwise I see no reason to consider this vs the Marvell-based Ultra II.

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