The Toshiba OCZ RD400 (256GB, 512GB, 1TB) M.2 PCIe SSD Review

Performance Consistency

Our performance consistency test explores the extent to which a drive can reliably sustain performance during a long-duration random write test. Specifications for consumer drives typically list peak performance numbers only attainable in ideal conditions. The performance in a worst-case scenario can be drastically different as over the course of a long test drives can run out of spare area, have to start performing garbage collection, and sometimes even reach power or thermal limits.

In addition to an overall decline in performance, a long test can show patterns in how performance varies on shorter timescales. Some drives will exhibit very little variance in performance from second to second, while others will show massive drops in performance during each garbage collection cycle but otherwise maintain good performance, and others show constantly wide variance. If a drive periodically slows to hard drive levels of performance, it may feel slow to use even if its overall average performance is very high.

To maximally stress the drive's controller and force it to perform garbage collection and wear leveling, this test conducts 4kB random writes with a queue depth of 32. The drive is filled before the start of the test, and the test duration is one hour. Any spare area will be exhausted early in the test and by the end of the hour even the largest drives with the most overprovisioning will have reached a steady state. We use the last 400 seconds of the test to score the drive both on steady-state average writes per second and on its performance divided by the standard deviation.

The RD400 sustains good random write performance, but the controllers and firmware in the OCZ Vector 180 and Intel 750 were designed with this kind of test in mind, and it shows. PCIe and NVMe don't help appreciably when the performance bottleneck is all the bookkeeping inside the controller, but NVMe controllers tend to have at least adequate processing power.

Most Samsung and Intel drives are much more consistent than the RD400, but the latter's score is fine for a client drive.

Default	OCZ RD400 256GBOCZ RD400 512GBOCZ RD400 1TBOCZ Trion 150 240GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Trion 150 960GBOCZ Vector 180 240GBSamsung 850 EVO 1TBSamsung 850 EVO 250GBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 Pro 1TBSamsung 850 Pro 256GBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSamsung 950 Pro 256GBSamsung 950 Pro 512GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBOCZ Vector 180 960GBIntel SSD 750 1.2TB (PCIe 3.0 x4 - NVMe)Samsung SM951 512GB (PCIe 3.0 x4 - AHCI)Samsung XP941 512GB (PCIe 2.0 x4 - AHCI)
25% Over-Provisioning	OCZ RD400 256GBOCZ RD400 512GBOCZ RD400 1TBOCZ Trion 150 240GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Trion 150 960GBOCZ Vector 180 240GBSamsung 850 EVO 1TBSamsung 850 EVO 250GBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 Pro 1TBSamsung 850 Pro 256GBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSamsung 950 Pro 256GBSamsung 950 Pro 512GBOCZ Vector 180 480GB

The 512GB RD400 shows oddly different behavior from the other two capacities when tested with overprovisioning, but the RD400 results are all good looking with no extremely low performance outliers.

Default	OCZ RD400 256GBOCZ RD400 512GBOCZ RD400 1TBOCZ Trion 150 240GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Trion 150 960GBOCZ Vector 180 240GBSamsung 850 EVO 1TBSamsung 850 EVO 250GBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 Pro 1TBSamsung 850 Pro 256GBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSamsung 950 Pro 256GBSamsung 950 Pro 512GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBOCZ Vector 180 960GBIntel SSD 750 1.2TB (PCIe 3.0 x4 - NVMe)Samsung SM951 512GB (PCIe 3.0 x4 - AHCI)Samsung XP941 512GB (PCIe 2.0 x4 - AHCI)
25% Over-Provisioning	OCZ RD400 256GBOCZ RD400 512GBOCZ RD400 1TBOCZ Trion 150 240GBOCZ Trion 150 480GBOCZ Trion 150 960GBOCZ Vector 180 240GBOCZ Vector 180 480GBSamsung 850 EVO 1TBSamsung 850 EVO 250GBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 Pro 1TBSamsung 850 Pro 256GBSamsung 850 Pro 512GBSamsung 950 Pro 256GBSamsung 950 Pro 512GB

The minimum random write performance of the RD400 is as good as the average performance of most SATA drives. There is some periodic variation apparent for the 512GB and 1TB models in the form of steep drops that last only a few seconds.