

Sequential reads hold steady at 550 MB/s for all four models, while sequential writes range from 510 to 520 MB/s. The performance claims differ slightly for each size.

PNY rounds out its CS1311 family with more interesting 240GB, 480GB and 960GB models. Given 128Gb density, there are only eight dies in a 128GB-class SSD, which means write performance outside of the SLC buffer is very low. Many companies have dropped that size altogether. PNY released the CS1311 at four capacity points, and we're surprised to see a 120GB model in the group. Lower-capacity drives don't benefit as much, but they're still a lot faster in those operations. By skipping over the buffer and writing straight to the NAND, sequential write performance more than doubles on high-capacity SSDs. Usually this happens quickly, so you don't notice a pause during the transfer. The buffer needs to purge its data to the flash before accepting more. Without the direct-to-die algorithm, information would pass to the small SLC buffer area and then "fold" into the NAND. By using an approach called direct-to-die, sequential data fills the SLC buffer first, and then begins to write directly to the flash. Phison is the first controller vendor aside from Samsung to address the issue. Depending on the flash used, you'll see sequential write speeds drop as low as 70 MB/s after a couple of seconds-that's less than a modern disk-based hard drive!
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Not every application suffers, but you'll notice big software installations slow to a crawl, for instance. In fact, they set SSD performance back several generations in some very common workloads. TLC-based SSDs from every company other than Samsung are slow compared to drives armed with MLC and SLC flash.
