Are TLC or QLC drives faster?

[TastyGuava]

I posted a couple days ago asking about affordable NVMe M.2 drives that are PCIe Gen 4 and was told that that difference in speed from PCIe Gen 3 vs 4 isn't as noticeable atm besides benchmarks and from videos online I see the same thing where Gen 4 isn't that noticeable to most users so was wondering whether TLC or QLC drives are faster as I've heard those terms throw around a bit and don't understand the difference.

[Sad123987]

QLC is faster. This image is pulled of of sabrent's website.

[TastyGuava]

Just now, Sad123987 said:

QLC is faster. This image is pulled of of sabrent's website.

Ah alright. Thank you.

[Kilrah]

That's completely wrong.

 

SLC>MLC>TLC>QLC in terms of write performance. Price goes the opposite way.

[spartaman64]

6 minutes ago, TastyGuava said:

Ah alright. Thank you.

no TLC is much faster than QLC. its just that QLC allows for higher capacities and more storage with less chips

after the SLC cache is used up it drops to below 200MB/s

[boggy77]

8 minutes ago, Sad123987 said:

QLC is faster. This image is pulled of of sabrent's website.

qlc is slowest. slc is fastest

[Sad123987]

Sorry, by brain is current decided to have some confusion. I have not been the tech space for long so my memory is questionable.

[Jurrunio]

Using NAND flash type to determine SSD performance is just a bad idea in general. SLC>MLC>TLC>QLC is in theory correct but in reality an unreliable metric.

 

1 hour ago, Sad123987 said:

QLC is faster. This image is pulled of of sabrent's website.

More bits per cell = tigher voltage checks = much more time for measurement = slower.

[WereCatf]

I feel there's a fair bit of confusion here. QLC-drives can be really fast for reads, like e.g. Intel's 665p - drives have 2000MB/s read-speeds. My 660p does 1200MB/s reads perfectly well. It's just the writes where QLC-drives are slow, but that's why they have SLC-caches, like e.g. the aforementioned 665p does 1900MB/s+ write-speeds as long as the SLC-cache isn't yet full.

 

EDIT: I remembered my drive's speeds wrong. I just benchmarked it a couple of different ways, just out of curiosity, and I am getting ~1900MB/s read-speeds and ~1800MB/s write-speeds with my 660p.

[ewitte]

MLC and TLC have made a lot of progress at endurance and speed (mostly through DRAM and SLC caches) but QLC is far far worse at the moment.  The read speeds are pretty good and it will still be miles ahead of any HDD.  If you need a ton of storage and are not hammering the writes they are ok provided there is a decent price difference.  For some sizes the price difference is minimal.

[Trentonxx]

How do I know if an ssd or nvme ssd has (and how much) SLC cache? On Amazon it’s hard to find in the specs, other sites don’t let you filter for cache let alone cache size

[Kilrah]

You usually can't, unless you get lucky and find a review that mentions it after having deduced it from testing.

[ewitte]

Samsung mentions it not so much for most other makers.

[WereCatf]

5 minutes ago, Trentonxx said:

How do I know if an ssd or nvme ssd has (and how much) SLC cache? On Amazon it’s hard to find in the specs, other sites don’t let you filter for cache let alone cache size

Yeah, ain't that a bitch? Some manufacturers tell you on their websites, but for others, you'll have to google reviews and hope one of those mentions such details. For some, you never find it out at all, unless you contact the manufacturer's support and ask.

[Trentonxx]

Just now, WereCatf said:

Yeah, ain't that a bitch? Some manufacturers tell you on their websites, but for others, you'll have to google reviews and hope one of those mentions such details. For some, you never find it out at all, unless you contact the manufacturer's support and ask.

Maybe we can pull some sheet on this forum like they do for the Motherboard tier list with all the vrms and specs, but for Sata and m.2 SSDs 

 

it sure would help a lot to clear the confusion when you compare by price and some good drives are on discount vs a cache-less cheaper ones idk

 

[Elad.Evron]

23 hours ago, TastyGuava said:

I posted a couple days ago asking about affordable NVMe M.2 drives that are PCIe Gen 4 and was told that that difference in speed from PCIe Gen 3 vs 4 isn't as noticeable atm besides benchmarks and from videos online I see the same thing where Gen 4 isn't that noticeable to most users so was wondering whether TLC or QLC drives are faster as I've heard those terms throw around a bit and don't understand the difference.

TLC tends to be faster but like PCIe gen 4 you wont really feel the difference, nost QLC and TLC drives use the same chacing system anyway, and if your not transfering huge files back and fourth (like 15 gigs or more) then QLC or TLC shouldt really bother you, but QLC drives tend to be cheaper