The Samsung 870 QVO (1TB & 4TB) SSD Review: QLC Refreshed
by Billy Tallis on June 30, 2020 11:40 AM ESTMixed IO Performance
Our tests of mixed read/write IO vary the workload from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The mixed random IO test uses a queue depth of 4 while the mixed sequential IO test uses a queue depth of 1. The tests are confined to a 64GB span of the drive, and the drive is given up to one minute of idle time in between each mix tested.
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The Samsung 870 QVO brings improved mixed sequential IO performance: a big boost to the 1TB model and a small increment for the 4TB. For mixed random IO, the 4TB model also gets a decent improvement, but the 1TB 870 QVO's performance is a clear regression. However, even with that regression the 870 QVO still performs far better on mixed random IO than the DRAMless SSDs.
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Power efficiency scores for the mixed random IO test generally follow the same pattern as the raw performance scores, but the DRAMless SSDs aren't as far behind the QLC and mainstream TLC drives. Over on the sequential IO side, most of the Samsung SATA drives had similar overall performance, but they still have fairly substantial power efficiency differences. The 870 QVO significantly improves power efficiency on the mixed sequential IO test compared to its predecessor, and has almost caught up to the TLC-based 860 EVO.
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On the mixed random IO test, the 870 QVOs show clear improvement on the more read-heavy half of the test. As the workload continues to get more write-heavy, the 4TB 870 loses its lead over the 4TB 860, and the 1TB 870 hits a performance wall when it runs out of cache where the 1TB 860 QVO had no trouble.
During the mixed sequential IO test, the Samsung SATA drives all show broadly similar performance across the range of workloads, all bottoming out near a 30% read/70% write mix. The outlier was the 1TB 860 QVO which had substantially worse performance across most of the test, including a much lower worst-case performance. The 1TB 870 QVO shows drastic improvement over its predecessor.
Idle Power Measurement
SATA SSDs are tested with SATA link power management disabled to measure their active idle power draw, and with it enabled for the deeper idle power consumption score and the idle wake-up latency test. Our testbed, like any ordinary desktop system, cannot trigger the deepest DevSleep idle state.
The big obvious difference in the power measurements here between the 870 QVO and its predecessor is for the 4TB model. When we tested the 4TB 860 QVO, SATA link power management did work, but the drive itself never went to sleep because it was busy with background garbage collection work the entire time our testbed was trying to measure its idle power. The 4TB 870 QVO finished its cleanup work in the time allotted by this test and was truly idle during the measurements.
Idle wake-up performance is unsurprisingly quite similar for the various Samsung SATA SSDs, and the Crucial MX500 also takes about a millisecond to wake up from sleep. The two DRAMless SSDs show how budget drives often have broken power management, either by not sleeping at all (leading to near-instant wake-up), or by taking a bit long to wake up despite the sleep state still drawing quite a bit of power. And then there's the NVMe SSD which has a remarkably long wake-up time from this particular sleep state, but it was also drawing less power than the SATA drives in the slumber state.
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FunBunny2 - Wednesday, July 1, 2020 - link
"QLC is garbage."alas, which manufacturers are going to ignore QLC? unless we, the consumers, stop buying QLC SSDs, vendors will continue to spit them out. and, yes, in due time, the SSD will perform much like HDD. progress and capitalism seldom coincide.
Great_Scott - Thursday, July 2, 2020 - link
QLC isn't garbage. There's a bunch of uses for this kind of drive.8TB of bulk storage for seldom-played games or music/movies? Sign me up!
The real problem here is that all SSDs cost roughly the same amount per GB, so there's no reason not to buy a better drive.
Maybe someday when there's a bigger pricing delta between "DRAM-less SATA" and "midrange PCIe" the numerous speed categories will make more (any) sense...
descendency - Friday, July 3, 2020 - link
The problem with QLC is that there aren't really substantial price savings from that of TLC or MLC that are passed onto the consumer. In the US (at least), the QVO drives are more expensive than some respectable TLC drives of the same capacity but without the performance limitations of QLC.I'm not going to call it garbage, but I would say these drives (the 8TB) models make more sense at ~650-750 USD given the compromises over EVO drives and other TLC drives. It's basically insane to see the 4TB QVO at $500 when some TLC drives are $480 (like Sandisk).
Gigaplex - Saturday, July 11, 2020 - link
"8TB of bulk storage for seldom-played games or music/movies? Sign me up!"You can do that now with an HDD. At a much cheaper price, and with somewhat equivalent performance.
Mitch89 - Thursday, July 2, 2020 - link
Wow, I’m disappointed at my ignorance as to how slow these QVO drives get once you exhaust the SLC cache, I had no idea they crashed to 2.5 inch HDD speeds.Sure, the “limited time only!!!!” speed of the SLC cache will be enough for many, but those speeds are still incredibly disappointing.
Great_Scott - Thursday, July 2, 2020 - link
They're still better than spinning rust, especially for burst performance. The real problem here is that they cost the same as other SSD technology.Dragonstongue - Friday, July 3, 2020 - link
I am sure Sammy can do much better pricing then this on QLC tech (just cause they fancy it up by calling QVO) does not mean an automatic $50+ price is in order.Worse overall flash memory style, therefore better pricing should be very much part of the thought process, but I suppose they must have thought, 80mb/s is plenty fast, so therefore, $400+ for 4tb is more then acceptable.
IMO make
4tb $325 max (consider horrendous perf. specs) the 1tb 120 flat, 2tb $215
does not matter what others are doing, or if their perf. power use etc is better or worse is how you price your product, @#$ on that logic lol
Lolimaster - Monday, July 6, 2020 - link
Thing is you can already get 2TB ssds for that price or less. MX500 2TB hovers around $189-219.Oxford Guy - Friday, July 3, 2020 - link
"QLC isn't garbage. There's a bunch of uses for this kind of drive."That's true.
It can be used as a Christmas tree ornament, if dissected.
The case can be used to provide a protective cover for a number of earwigs.
The innards can be strapped to a vinyl suit for a retro sci-fi show.
The mind boggles at the potential usefulness.
Slash3 - Sunday, July 5, 2020 - link
Great for sliding underneath a wobbly table leg, too.