The Samsung 860 QVO (1TB, 4TB) SSD Review: First Consumer SATA QLC
by Billy Tallis on November 27, 2018 11:20 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The 1TB Samsung 860 QVO does not handle The Destroyer very well, with an average data rate that is slightly slower than the DRAMless TLC drive. By comparison, the NVMe QLC drives from Intel and Micron are only slightly slower than the 860 EVO and MX500.
The QLC drives in general stand out more when looking at latency metrics than throughput, and especially when looking at 99th percentile latencies. The 1TB 860 QVO comes in last place for both average and 99th percentile latency, and all three QLC drives have worse 99th percentile latency than the DRAMless TLC drive.
The average read and write latencies of the 860 QVO are both only slightly worse than the DRAMless TLC SSD. The NVMe QLC drives are slightly faster than the mainstream SATA drives for read latency but fall behind in average write latency.
The 860 QVO actually doesn't come in last place for 99th percentile write latency, and in fact scores far better than the DRAMless TLC drive. However, the QLC drives are all still far worse off than the mainstream TLC SATA drives.
With low performance dragging out the test to a far longer duration, it's no surprise that the QLC drives all use much more energy over the course of The Destroyer than most SATA drives. The DRAMless Toshiba TR200 is an impressive exception that manages to be very efficient despite its low overall performance.
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Santoval - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
"Right now there is exactly zero reason to choose it over the EVO. The 500GB EVO costs about $130 US where I'm from, there's very little incentive for me to buy it given the "inflated" price."Assuming the 500GB EVO actually costs as much as the 1TB EVO in your country (I'm frankly skeptical about this, but let's take you at your word) what makes you thing that the 1TB QVO will not in turn cost as much as the 2TB QVO?
Are you seriously suggesting that your country's taxmen or tariffmen are going to place much lower taxes/tariffs on QLC based SSDs than one TLC based SSDs?
Lolimaster - Thursday, November 29, 2018 - link
Import the 1TB from Amazon, you can do that to any south american country.Impulses - Thursday, November 29, 2018 - link
Even at 25% cheaper than an EVO it would barely beat the (current) best sale price of other mainstream TLC SSD... And TLC is probably not going away any time soon. I'd love to see the price gap reach 25%+ sooner rather than later tho.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
It may be that companies are hoping for higher margin. It is not impossible for that to happen. CDs, for example, were a higher margin product than the LPs they replaced.If supply of TLC shrinks, as companies move to QLC production, the competition between TLC and QLC also shrinks, making room, potentially, for more margin.
Amandtec - Tuesday, November 27, 2018 - link
The yields are poor at the moment so there is no point selling them low. It has a big effect on your share price if you release new game changing technology like QLC to market, because shareholders are sophisticated and understand the long term term strategy here.moozooh - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
> The yields are poor at the moment so there is no point selling them low.I think you misunderstand: there's no point *buying them high*. The only point of these drives is buying them low. So not selling them low means *not selling them*, period.
Customers may not be shareholders, but they aren't idiots, either. They understand QLC is a step down in almost every aspect of the drive's operation. It's an inferior product, and the price needs to reflect that for it to be considered for purchase.
jjj - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Actually , R&D is surprisingly low compared to the revenue generated and, aside from that, they might be close enough to 5 cents per GB production costs now for QLC so if there is a global economic crash caused by Trump and his tariffs, we could see 50$ per TB in half a year from now.Otherwise, could be 2020-2021 for that kind of price, especially if China manages to ramp output.
NAND prices are down a bit from peak but folks still have 40-50% overall NAND margins,there is room for much lower prices and production costs decline 15-25% per year.
R0H1T - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
>they might be close enough to 5 cents per GB production costs now for QLCSure but that's at least 6~12 months away from now. So how can anyone realistically expect Samsung to debut the QVO at such prices given there's no competition (SATA QLC) nor any reason for Samsung to not make hay while the sun shines? For anyone who says the $130 US for 1TB EVO is the normal price, it's not in the ROTW.
sonny73n - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
“Yeah no one's selling you 8TB for $400 anytime soon. Aside from the fact that the R&D costs for QLC need to be recuperated first & companies need to reinvest an increasing amount for future development, there's also a point after which it doesn't make sense for the SSD, or NAND, maker to sell these at a loss.If you really want something that big, for dirt cheap, try spinners instead.”
You sound like a Samsung shill. If HDD manufacturers decide to keep on R&D for those spinners, are you willing to pay extra for their future development? Beside, SSD tech has been around for a decade, now it costs less to make an SSD than to make an HDD for the same capacity.
R0H1T - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
>You sound like a Samsung shill.Oh sure let's all forget the aftermath of the Thai floods ~ insane prices, insane quality (as in really bad) w/warranties as low as just a year long! So while the HDD makers sat on their collective behind, much like Intel, the SSD makers out paced them, out innovated(?) them & could make spinners virtually obsolete, except bottom of the barrel 5400/5900 rpm drives especially in $/GB.
So let's see, arguing for higher prices because R&D is an ever increasing (one time) cost that needs to be recuperated, is shilling now? Do you also want me to feel sad because vacuum tubes are dead or that NAND prices will continue to fall, in the foreseeable future?