When we reviewed OCZ’s first SSD built with triple-level-cell (or TLC) flash, the Trion 100, we found its performance a bit wanting. OCZ went to work behind the scenes to improve the performance of its budget SSD, and last month, the company announced a follow-up to the Trion 100. This latest drive uses Toshiba’s newer 15-nm TLC NAND and brings 50% more Trions to the table. Say hello to the Trion 150.

Just like the Trion 100 before it, the Trion 150 comes in 120GB, 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB flavors. OCZ claims that this drive delivers “increased real-world performance” over its predecessor, but it doesn’t claim higher specs for the newcomer. The official performance numbers are all the same as the Trion 100’s.

OCZ Trion 150 Capacity Max sequential (MB/s) Max random (IOps) Read Write Read Write 120GB 550 450 79k 25k 240GB 550 520 90k 43k 480GB 550 530 90k 54k 960GB 550 530 90k 64k

We’ve got the Trion 150 480GB on hand for our review. We originally tested the Trion 100 480GB drive, as well, so it’ll be easy to compare the new drive’s performance figures to the old one’s. Let’s open it up and see what’s changed apart from the stylish new sticker.

As we already knew, what’s changed is the NAND. The Trion 100 used Toshiba’s A19 TLC flash, but its successor leverages Toshiba’s 15-nm TLC. The controller inside the Trion 150 hasn’t changed at all—it’s the same Toshiba TC58 we saw in the Trion 100. We’ll have to credit the majority of any performance increases we see to the new NAND. Maybe the process shrink will at least partially make up for the fact that we’re still looking at planar TLC.

The non-technical specs haven’t changed either. All versions of the Trion 150 come with three years of OCZ’s ShieldPlus rapid-exchange warranty coverage. And just like the Trion 100 480GB, the Trion 150 480GB is rated for 120TB of total bytes written, spread out across 110GB per day. Since this is an entry-level drive, it doesn’t come with fancy extras like encryption acceleration in the controller.

The 480GB drive we’re looking at sells for $129.99 on Newegg right now. The 120GB version will set buyers back $45.99, while the 240GB version rings in at $69.99 and the 960GB drive sells for $269.99. Those numbers are all solidly in the entry-level SSD pricing tier.

Now that we’ve seen the basics of the Trion 150, it’s time to see what Toshiba’s 15-nm TLC can do.

IOMeter — Sequential and random performance

IOMeter fuels much of our latest storage test suite, including our sequential and random I/O tests. These tests are run across the full capacity of the drive at two queue depths. The QD1 tests simulate a single thread, while the QD4 results emulate a more demanding desktop workload. For perspective, 87% of the requests in our old DriveBench 2.0 trace of real-world desktop activity have a queue depth of four or less. Clicking the buttons below the graphs switches between results charted at the different queue depths.

Our sequential tests use a relatively large 128KB block size.







Wow. Perhaps it’s because the Trion 100 set the bar rather low, but the Trion 150 come out of the gate looking quite good. Somehow, it sets a record as the highest-ranked SATA drive in our sequential read test at QD1. Eat your heart out, MLC.

Well, not quite. The Trion 150’s sequential write performance isn’t as stellar as its reads, but this drive is still vastly better than the Trion 100. The Trion 150’s planar NAND handicap doesn’t stop it from edging out the V-NAND-equipped 850 EVO 250GB, either. To be fair, that’s not an entirely apples-to-apples comparison, thanks to the capacity and cost differences between these drives. It’s still an impressive result, though.

Next, we’ll turn our attention to performance with 4KB random I/O. The tests below are based on the median of three consecutive three-minute runs. SSDs typically deliver consistent sequential and random read performance over that period, but random write speeds worsen as the drive’s overprovisioned area is consumed by incoming writes. We’ve reported average response times rather than raw throughput, which we think makes sense in the context of system responsiveness.







It just couldn’t all be good news, could it? The Trion 100’s read response times were already at the bottom of the rankings, but the Trion 150 manages to turn in a slightly worse performance yet. To put things in perspective, though, these are all sub-millisecond response times, so it’s not such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Random write response times are smack in the middle of the pack, so no complaints there.

The Trion 150’s improvements over the Trion 100 are encouraging thus far. We’re cautiously optimistic that the newer drive will continue to come out ahead in our other tests. Let’s see if that’s the case.

Sustained and scaling I/O rates

Our sustained IOMeter test hammers drives with 4KB random writes for 30 minutes straight. It uses a queue depth of 32, a setting which should result in higher speeds that saturate each drive’s overprovisioned area more quickly. This lengthy—and heavy—workload isn’t indicative of typical PC use, but it provides a sense of how the drives react when they’re pushed to the brink.

We’re reporting IOps rather than response times for these tests. Click the buttons below the graph to switch between SSDs.





To show the data in a slightly different light, we’ve graphed the peak random-write rate and the average, steady-state speed over the last minute of the test.

The Trion 150’s peak speeds are on par with the Trion 100’s. The newer drive’s steady-state speeds are much improved, showing about a 75% increase over the the older model’s. Even so, the Trion 150 is solidly in the slower half of our results. The 850 EVO’s steady-state performance, for example, is half again as fast as the Trion 150’s.

Our final IOMeter test examines performance scaling across a broad range of queue depths. We ramp all the way up to a queue depth of 128. Don’t expect AHCI-based drives to scale past 32, though—that’s the maximum depth of their native command queues.

For this test, we use a database access pattern comprising 66% reads and 33% writes, all of which are random. The test runs after 30 minutes of continuous random writes that put the drives in a simulated used state. Click the buttons below the graph to switch between the different drives. And note that the P3700 plot uses a much larger scale.





We never really expect budget SATA drives to exhibit much scaling. The database access pattern used for this test is certainly not the intended use case for a low-cost TLC drive like this one. Therefore, it’s no shock that the Trion 150 doesn’t seem to scale much more or less than the Trion 100 before it. IOps took a strange dive at QD4, but performance is roughly flat otherwise. The next graphs break down the results further and add some points of comparison. Click to toggle between read, write, and total IOps.





Something is definitely wonky here. Our write results demonstrate a weird bounce up and down as the test proceeds along from queue depth two to queue depths four and eight. We did a few extra runs of our scaling test, but got the same strange peaks and valleys each time. We’ve contacted OCZ to see if it can shed some light on what exactly is going on here, and we’ll post an update if we get any answers.

That’s it for synthetics. Up next is our suite of real-world performance tests. Let’s see if the Trion 150 continues to distance itself from its predecessor.

TR RoboBench — Real-world transfers

RoboBench trades synthetic tests with random data for real-world transfers with a range of file types. Developed by our in-house coder, Bruno “morphine” Ferreira, this benchmark relies on the multi-threaded robocopy command build into Windows. We copy files to and from a wicked-fast RAM disk to measure read and write performance. We also cut the RAM disk out of the loop for a copy test that transfers the files to a different location on the SSD.

Robocopy uses eight threads by default, and we’ve also run it with a single thread. Our results are split between two file sets, whose vital statistics are detailed below. The compressibility percentage is based on the size of the file set after it’s been crunched by 7-Zip.

Number of files Average file size Total size Compressibility Media 459 21.4MB 9.58GB 0.8% Work 84,652 48.0KB 3.87GB 59%

The media set is made up of large movie files, high-bitrate MP3s, and 18-megapixel RAW and JPG images. There are only a few hundred files in total, and the data set isn’t amenable to compression. The work set comprises loads of TR files, including documents, spreadsheets, and web-optimized images. It also includes a stack of programming-related files associated with our old Mozilla compiling test and the Visual Studio test on the next page. The average file size is measured in kilobytes rather than megabytes, and the files are mostly compressible.

RoboBench’s write and copy tests run after the drives have been put into a simulated used state with 30 minutes of 4KB random writes. The pre-conditioning process is scripted, as is the rest of the test, ensuring that drives have the same amount of time to recover.

Let’s take a look at the media set first. The buttons switch between read, write, and copy results.







As always, the media set is a pretty good real-world analogue to our IOMeter sequential tests. Again, the Trion 150 dazzles us with its reads, nestled proudly among the highest-performing SATA drives in our result set. And again, the writes aren’t quite as good as the reads, but nonetheless more than double that of the Trion 100.

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The work set, on the other hand, is sort of a mirror of our IOMeter random tests. It should be no surprise, then, that the Trion 150 posts sluggish read speeds here. The good news, if it can be called that, is that the newer drive doesn’t do any worse than the Trion 100. The Trion 150’s RoboBench writes, while not record-beating, are a 30% improvement over the Trion 100’s, so we’ll consider that a victory.

“Increased real-world performance” was no idle boast on OCZ’s part. In most regards, the Trion 150 has made great strides over the Trion 100.

Boot times

Until now, all of our tests have been conducted with the SSDs connected as secondary storage. This next batch uses them as system drives.

We’ll start with boot times measured two ways. The bare test depicts the time between hitting the power button and reaching the Windows desktop, while the loaded test adds the time needed to load four applications—Avidemux, LibreOffice, GIMP, and Visual Studio Express—automatically from the startup folder. Our old boot tests focused on the time required to load the OS, but these new ones cover the entire process, including drive initialization.

The Trions both are on the bottom end of the boot time rankings, but that only means there’s a two-second gap between them and the fastest booters. The Trion 150’s boot speed is virtually no different than the 100’s.

Load times

Next, we’ll tackle load times with two sets of tests. The first group focuses on the time required to load larger files in a collection of desktop applications. We open a 790MB 4K video in Avidemux, a 30MB spreadsheet in LibreOffice, and a 523MB image file in GIMP. In the Visual Studio Express test, we open a 159MB project containing source code for the LLVM toolchain. Thanks to Rui Figueira for providing the project code.

No surprises here. There are no appreciable difference in how long it takes any of these drives to load our productivity applications. Last up is a quick look at game loading times.

The Trion 150 loads all three games about as fast as Samsung’s 950 Pro, a PCIe monster with much higher specs. If you haven’t picked up on this trend yet, I’ll be blunt: if your use case is primarily gaming, don’t scrimp and save so you can shell out for a high-end SSD.

Across our boot and load testing, the Trion 150 put on a similar showing to the Trion 100 (and all the other drives, for that matter). The real-world performance increases that OCZ touts are a bit less tangible here than they were in our RoboBench tests.

That’s it for performance testing. Read on for a breakdown of our hardware and test methods.

Test notes and methods

Here’s are the essential details for all the drives we tested:

Interface Flash controller NAND Crucial BX100 500GB SATA 6Gbps Silicon Motion SM2246EN 16-nm Micron MLC Crucial BX200 480GB SATA 6Gbps Silicon Motion SM2256 16-nm Micron TLC Crucial MX200 500GB SATA 6Gbps Marvell 88SS9189 16-nm Micron MLC Intel X25-M G2 160GB SATA 3Gbps Intel PC29AS21BA0 34-nm Intel MLC Intel 335 Series 240GB SATA 6Gbps SandForce SF-2281 20-nm Intel MLC Intel 730 Series 480GB SATA 6Gbps Intel PC29AS21CA0 20-nm Intel MLC Intel 750 Series 1.2TB PCIe Gen3 x4 Intel CH29AE41AB0 20-nm Intel MLC Intel DC P3700 800GB PCIe Gen3 x4 Intel CH29AE41AB0 20-nm Intel MLC OCZ Arc 100 240GB SATA 6Gbps Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10 A19-nm Toshiba MLC OCZ Trion 100 480GB SATA 6Gbps Toshiba TC58 A19-nm Toshiba TLC OCZ Trion 150 480GB SATA 6Gbps Toshiba TC58 15-nm Toshiba TLC OCZ Vector 180 240GB SATA 6Gbps Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10 A19-nm Toshiba MLC OCZ Vector 180 960GB SATA 6Gbps Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10 A19-nm Toshiba MLC Plextor M6e 256GB PCIe Gen2 x2 Marvell 88SS9183 19-nm Toshiba MLC Samsung 850 EV0 250GB SATA 6Gbps Samsung MGX 32-layer Samsung TLC Samsung 850 EV0 1TB SATA 6Gbps Samsung MEX 32-layer Samsung TLC Samsung 850 Pro 500GB SATA 6Gbps Samsung MEX 32-layer Samsung MLC Samsung 950 Pro 512GB PCIe Gen3 x4 Samsung UBX 32-layer Samsung MLC Samsung SM951 512GB PCIe Gen3 x4 Samsung S4LN058A01X01 16-nm Samsung MLC Samsung XP941 256GB PCIe Gen2 x4 Samsung S4LN053X01 19-nm Samsung MLC Transcend SSD370 256GB SATA 6Gpbs Transcend TS6500 Micron or SanDisk MLC Transcend SSD370 1TB SATA 6Gpbs Transcend TS6500 Micron or SanDisk MLC

All the SATA SSDs were connected to the motherboard’s Z97 chipset. The M6e was connected to the Z97 via the motherboard’s M.2 slot, which is how we’d expect most folks to run that drive. Since the XP941 and 950 Pro requires more lanes, they were connected to the CPU via a PCIe adapter card. The 750 Series and DC P3700 were hooked up to the CPU via the same full-sized PCIe slot.

We used the following system for testing:

Processor Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Motherboard Asus Z97-Pro Firmware 2601 Platform hub Intel Z97 Platform drivers Chipset: 10.0.0.13 RST: 13.2.4.1000 Memory size 16GB (2 DIMMs) Memory type Adata XPG V3 DDR3 at 1600 MT/s Memory timings 11-11-11-28-1T Audio Realtek ALC1150 with 6.0.1.7344 drivers System drive Corsair Force LS 240GB with S8FM07.9 firmware Storage Crucial BX100 500GB with MU01 firmware Crucial BX200 480GB with MU01.4 firmware Crucial MX200 500GB with MU01 firmware Intel 335 Series 240GB with 335u firmware Intel 730 Series 480GB with L2010400 firmware Intel 750 Series 1.2GB with 8EV10171 firmware Intel DC P3700 800GB with 8DV10043 firmware Intel X25-M G2 160GB with 8820 firmware Plextor M6e 256GB with 1.04 firmware OCZ Trion 100 480GB with 11.2 firmware OCZ Trion 150 480GB with 12.2 firmware OCZ Vector 180 240GB with 1.0 firmware OCZ Vector 180 960GB with 1.0 firmware Samsung 850 EVO 250GB with EMT01B6Q firmware Samsung 850 EVO 1TB with EMT01B6Q firmware Samsung 850 Pro 500GB with EMXM01B6Q firmware Samsung 950 Pro 512GB with 1B0QBXX7 firmware Samsung XP941 256GB with UXM6501Q firmware Transcend SSD370 256GB with O0918B firmware Transcend SSD370 1TB with O0919A firmware Power supply Corsair AX650 650W Case Fractal Design Define R5 Operating system Windows 8.1 Pro x64

Thanks to Asus for providing the systems’ motherboards, to Intel for the CPUs, to Adata for the memory, to Fractal Design for the cases, and to Corsair for the system drives and PSUs. And thanks to the drive makers for supplying the rest of the SSDs.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

IOMeter 1.1.0 x64

TR RoboBench 0.2a

Avidemux 2.6.8 x64

LibreOffice 4.3.2

GIMP 2.8.14

Visual Studio Express 2013

Batman: Arkham Origins

Tomb Raider

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Some further notes on our test methods:

To ensure consistent and repeatable results, the SSDs were secure-erased before every component of our test suite. For the IOMeter database, RoboBench write, and RoboBench copy tests, the drives were put in a simulated used state that better exposes long-term performance characteristics. Those tests are all scripted, ensuring an even playing field that gives the drives the same amount of time to recover from the initial used state.

We run virtually all our tests three times and report the median of the results. Our sustained IOMeter test is run a second time to verify the results of the first test and additional times only if necessary. The sustained test runs for 30 minutes continuously, so it already samples performance over a long period.

Steps have been taken to ensure the CPU’s power-saving features don’t taint any of our results. All of the CPU’s low-power states have been disabled, effectively pegging the frequency at 3.5GHz. Transitioning between power states can affect the performance of storage benchmarks, especially when dealing with short burst transfers.

The test systems’ Windows desktop was set at 1920×1080 at 60Hz. Most of the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.