The Western Digital WD Black SN750 SSD Review: Why Fix What Isn't Broken?
by Billy Tallis on January 18, 2019 8:01 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The WD Black SN750 is a few percent faster overall than last year's model, allowing it to tie with the Phison E12-based Corsair MP510 on the Light test. But the Samsung 970 EVO and Silicon Motion SM2262EN-based drives are still substantially faster, at least when the test is run on an empty drive.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores for the SN750 are a few microseconds faster than its predecessor, which doesn't change the drive's rankings. The average latency scores are pretty close to the fastest drives, but the 99th percentile latency scores are merely average for this product segment.
The average write latency scores from the SN750 are virtually tied with the fastest drives, and the average read latency scores are imperceptibly slower than the Samsung 970 EVO.
As with average write latency, 99th percentile write latency for the SN750 is basically tied with the fastest drives—every write lands in the SLC cache with minimal delay, even when the test is run on a full drive. The 99th percentile read latencies do not rank as highly, but are still comfortably below 1ms even for the full-drive test run.
As with the Heavy test, the new WD Black leapfrogs the Toshiba XG6 to retake our record for most energy efficient NVMe SSD on the Light test. There's still a bit of catching up to be done before it matches the WD Blue SATA SSD, but it's still quite an accomplishment for the SN750 to use half the energy required by the Samsung 970 EVO.
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nevcairiel - Friday, January 18, 2019 - link
Whatever happend to the Samsung PRO in those comparisons? If you call something a "top NVMe SSD" and then don't have the PROs in there to stack up against, it feels incomplete.jordanclock - Friday, January 18, 2019 - link
Where do you see that they call it the top NVMe SSD?Comparing it to the 970PRO doesn't make a lot of sense since they are in vastly different price ranges and market segment. The 970 EVO is perfect because they are very close in price and market segment. They even admit in the conclusion that the "970 EVO may be the slightly better performer overall."
Drakkhen - Friday, January 18, 2019 - link
He didn't call it the top NVMe SSD, he said a "top NVMe SSD".But, I agree that it isn't really relevant since this comparison is for a different price point/market.
DanNeely - Friday, January 18, 2019 - link
I would like to see at at least on higher end drive that's not an Optane for comparison though.romrunning - Friday, January 18, 2019 - link
Agreedphilehidiot - Saturday, January 19, 2019 - link
I think it's always useful, regardless of where you are in the meerkat, to compare to the top and the bottom of the range. This gives you an idea of what you're getting. Am I getting 70% of top end performance for 70% of the price or am I getting 95% of it for 70% of the price? Those are two very different value propositions and certainly things we see often in the PC meerkat. Sometimes the progression with price is linear(ish) and sometimes you can spend double the cash to get the very best but really all you're seeing is a few percent extra performance because it takes that much extra R&D / materials investment to get there.29a - Friday, January 18, 2019 - link
In the second paragraph on the last page."the new WD Black is still a very competitive high-end NVMe SSD"
They do make the claim that it is a high end SSE which I would equate to being "a top NVMe SSD" and should be compared to the Samsung Pro models.
althaz - Friday, January 18, 2019 - link
Depends where you are I guess. The 500Gb WD Black is exactly the same price as the 512Gb Samsung 970 Pro where I live. Samsung's 970 EVO drives are $100/TB cheaper.Samus - Monday, January 21, 2019 - link
LOL, the 500GB WD Black is consistently close to half the price of the 980 Pro, and the 970 Pro is essentially the same performance as the EVO (hence them being similarly priced.)I agree, the 980 Pro should be in the benchmarks, but certainly not the 970 Pro. Just use the EVO as a baseline and add 3% if you want to be picky about exact figures.
Samus - Monday, January 21, 2019 - link
I forgot to add, or rather point out, the 970 EVO and 970 PRO share the same controller and are otherwise identical configurations with the exception of the PRO being MLC.That said, Samsung actually rates them near-identically in performance and aside from the SLC caching algorithm, the EVO performs the same.
The only real reason to get the PRO is if you need the DWPD\endurance of MLC. That's literally the only advantage the PRO has.