Poll: Only £11 difference, which would you chose: Intel 330 180GB or Samsung 830 £128GB? And why?

so now its decision time, which of these two SSD's is the best option for my ASUS K52F - i3 M380 @ 2.53GHz, 8GB RAM, 320GB HDD, windows 7 64 bit:

Intel 330 180GB Intel 330 Series, 2.5" SSD, SATA III - 6Gb/s, MLC-Flash, Read 500MB/s, Write 450MB/s = £88

OR

Samsung SSD 830 2.5inch SATA III 6GBps 128GB Desktop Accessory Kit with Free Norton Ghost 15 = £77

OR


Sandisk 128GB Pulse SSD Slim = £60

Which would you go for? genuine opinions please on whiich you feel is best, and not just which one you own
and why?

thanks

 

I will always go for the biggest capacity - especially if it's also an Intel SSD.


Small = throw away = crap (in every sense of the word).

And 128GB is small (even the 180GB is on the borderline - consider the 240GB Intel 520 Series or the 256GB Crucial M4 instead).


Btw, what is your usage scenario going to be with this system?

 

the reason im going for 128/180gb is at present on the hdd i have 330gb capacity, but only use 100gb, but of the stuff i actually need/want is 30gb for the OS and 30gb for my documents/files/music/movies,

i only use the laptop for heavy web browsing, itunes, movies, MS WORD/EXCEL, notepad, vlc media player
so dont see the benefit of buying bigger space like 256gb when i will very likely not exceed 80 GB

 

Generally the bigger drives perform faster than the smaller counterparts. The samsung 830 128gb is slower than the samsung 820 256gb. I personally did buy the 256gb samsung 830 for £130. Better to have more space than less. The bigger means that your less likely to need another one, and you could always use the same drive on another computer when the time comes.

 

i see what your saying but i really never use more than 30GB, so plus the OS. we're looking at 60gb usage,7


the poll is 50:50, 2 [picking intel 330 180gb, 2 picking samsung 830 128gb!
more people vote please


i recall reading somewhere about the older SANDFORCE Controller, being buggy and unreliable.
how true is that? as in this 330 it has SandForce SF-2281

 

You can NEVER have enough storage.

My vote goes to Intel every time for SSD units. For one thing their track record exceeds (by far) that of any other maker of SSD. And for another thing, Intel has way more to lose if they are so dumb as to sacrifice their superior SSD reputation.

The one downside with Intel SSD is generally higher price.

Tends to revolve around how much you value your time. (Doing extra backups of SSD takes extra time; not to mention what a nosebleed it is when a SSD unit fails!)

Anandtech has "Update on Samsung SSD 840/840 Pro Failures" on 11/28/2012 at: AnandTech - Update on Samsung SSD 840/840 Pro Failures

To quote a recent statement by Kuroi-Tsubasa (previously privatejarhead) in the short "HDD Advice NEEDED!" thread here at: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...market-upgrades/697698-hdd-advice-needed.html

"Intel has completely switched over to Sandforce, starting with the 520. However, Intel uses their own firmware for the drive (other SF drives use SF-made firmware), helping with reliability.

The amount of NAND is pretty much irrelevant to how reliable the drive is. For just about all cases, SSD issues are controller related."

 

Didn't vote, but unless you're absolutely sure you'll never go over 100MB, get the bigger drive.

If you haven't already noticed, Samsung 830 prices are all over the place at the moment; that price could change very quickly.

 

thanks for the links, interesting reads,
suprised by some posters choosing hdd over ssd for reliability, some speaking of the risk of the sdd to just dying, so losing all your data!

- the samsung 830 is winning the poll so far!

yes i have noticed the varying prices of the samsung 830,
if i decide to buy a ssd , does the prices normally improve/reduce nearer to xmas?
or maybe i should wait for the boxing day/january sales, if ssd's are normally reduced in price in these sales?

as i have 8gb kingstom ram arriving next week, so this may even be sufficient to speed my laptop up vastly! ... not to confident though

 

I would recommend the 180GB. Not big difference in speed, and all the space counts once it's a SSD.

my 2 cents

 

More RAM will only speed things up if you have insufficient RAM for what you do on your computer. If you already have sufficient RAM, then more RAM won't do a thing. Think of it this way. If your car can only seat 2 people and you have two friends (yourself as the 3rd person) then to drive everyone someplace you would need to make two trips. So, switch to a 4 seat sedan and suddenly your efficiency improves because you only make one trip. Then you switch to a 7 passenger mini van, yet with the same two friends you don't get any improvements in efficiency and the extra seats remain empty.

I would go the larger capacity on the SSD. You won't notice any performance difference outside of benchmarks (180GB Intel uses only six NAND channels, so a bit slower than the 120GB and 240GB versions) but you sure as hell will notice a difference if you fill up the drive. SSD write performance goes down when the drive gets close to being filled. And of course actually running out of space... sucks.

 

wow , the 180gb intel ssd would actually be slower than a 120gb samsung 830? am i reading that right?

is this why more people are voting for the samsung 830 instead of the intel 330 (despite the additional 60gb you get with the intel), because the samsung has8 channels whereas the intel only has 6?

i've seen the samsung 840 sell for only £20 more than the 830,
is the 840 superior (faster and more reliable) to the 830?

 

hard to tell, but the 840 PRO is superior yesm the normal version isn't

 

now im tempted to go for the840 pro,.

do people recall seeing ssd's (including the latest ones) on sale on boxing day?
if ssd's do go on sale after christmas i'll just wait, same goes for RAM

 

They are both great SSDs, but I'd go for the Intel one simply because you're offered more capacity. I don't keep a lot of my stuff on my laptop but I ran out of space on my 320 160GB within short order.

Just don't fall into Intel's mail-in rebate nonsense if you're getting it on sale. I never received the rebate for my 330 180GB, and I bought that back in July! :/

 

thanks for the votes,
looks like samsung 830 wins 10-7

i thought intel would've been more popular

-
do people recall seeing ssd's (including the latest ones) on sale on boxing day?
if ssd's do go on sale after christmas i'll just wait, same goes for RAM

 

You know that living your life via 'polls' will make for a very stressful and unstable life?

The Intel is the #1 choice here no matter what. Simply because it has more capacity. Popularity doesn't make something good; substance does. And saving £11 won't do you any good when you've run out of space (and/or the performance of the SSD tanks because you've filled it past X%).

As for the question on sales: past events don't necessarily have any bearing on future ones. Case in point: this years BF sales were dismal compared to previous years.

More importantly: you (or anyone else) don't have the option to see which is the biggest savings (pre-Xmas or post...) - unless you have one of those new fangled time machines from eBay?

Pick a budget and stick to it. If the item you need comes in or under that price; buy.


Good luck.

 

I'm with tiller on this one; it's better to spend the extra 11 quid and get yourself an extra 52GB of storage space (unformatted, of course). Both are very reliable (again, I've had no issues with my Intel drives) and you'll run up your 128GB pretty easily if you aren't careful (hell, I ran up my 160GB Intel 320, let alone a 128GB drive). This doesn't include games or anything (those are on my desktop w/HDD), but even just all my schoolwork, personal stuff (photos, etc) and the like filled that up quickly. Right now my 180GB 330 is nearly full as well (~20% free space).

You'll definitely want more space when it comes to SSDs...

 

Precisely, the speed differences in these drivers are not noticeable, and the more space the better.

 

OK all noted, top advice!

but now people are saying how 128gb is inadequate , im considering a 830 256GB

But, based on the fact i use 40 GB MAX, + the 30gb for the OS, will having 58gb free disk space slow down everything?

if there a recommended amount of free ssd disk space one should have, in order for everything to run at its fastest ?

 

My understanding leaves me to conclude that approximately 40% plus minus left on the SSD gives the performance needed until it starts dropping once you fill it up beyond that point. Noticed that on my 256GB M4 once I had 30% left and 25% left on me Intel 330, 120GB.

 

My 'recommended' amount is from playing with Windows for almost 3 decades: current versions require 25GB free to perform and maintain themselves optimally (or at least without complaining...).

This however, is not enough.

That is why I also recommend leaving as much 'unallocated' capacity as you can afford to 'lose'. In your case? I would buy the 256GB 830 Series and partition it to 100GB (with Windows 7: 102600 MB and with Windows 8 103000 MB's, 'exactly' - this will create the small boot/recovery partition needed (100MB for Win7 and 350MB for Win8) and leave you with 100.2GiB for your own uses - which, will coincidently will leave you the 'approximate' 25GB free that Windows wants for itself.

The beauty of this system is that at any time you can go into Win7 or Win8's Disk Management options and Expand the capacity as you need it. If you leave it as is; you'll have the fastest setup you possibly can (short of changing platforms...). The other good point with getting a 'great' SSD (capacity-wise) is that you can use it in your future system(s) too.

This is basically how I run my own boot SSD's (with that capacity) and I'm finally okay (not quite 'happy' yet) with the day in and day out speeds I can attain from the storage subsystem.


Hope this helps?

Good luck.

 

It might be late but I'm going to chime in. I would always go for higher capacity and then speed, the rationale is, speed is lost very quickly as an SSD fills up, especially 128gb since this works out to maybe about 115gb-ish useable capacity. IF you have the luxury of having a second HDD, then you might be able to justify the extra speed and move some of your windows Libraries to the HDD but if you purely on Flash like me, then every GB of capacity is solid gold.

I would say for your situation, the 180gb Intel drive is faster than the 128gb Samsung drive in almost all scenarios based on the Anandtech Bench data.
However, you got to know the subtle differencee in the two drives.

the 830 doesn't care if you are utilizing compressible or incompressibe data so the performance is very predictable and consistent. Whereas the Intel 330 will be more sluggish with data like photos and videos.

Sandforce drives (Intel 330) have less consistent TRIM performance, this is especially evident as you fill up the drive, it can be shown that TRIM is actually only partially effective if you completely fill the drive and then start hammering away at it with Random Writes. You will permanently lose performance until you secure erase. The important consequence of this is Sandforce performance figures are really high out of the box but it tends to settle in to a lower "steady state" performance which may be slower than the 830. The 830 doesn't tend to degrade in to steady state like this.

Sandforce drives have a RAID-like redundancy system which is why they quote 180gb when there actually way more flash on board than the usual required for spare area. This means that theoretically, they can survive the loss of an entire NAND cell without data damage. The Samsung drive as far as I know doesn't rely on RAID schemes and instead just uses the best NAND samsung can produce.

Bigger drives have several important advantages, they have better wear levelling, more consistent IO latencies during heavy loads and longer overall drive write endurance.
Anand did an interesting study on the link between spare area and performance consistency
AnandTech - Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs
The reason this relevant is simply on a larger drive, you have more leftover space after you fill up your stuff, as far as I know, most SSDs are intelligent enough with Win 7 to utilize the unused NAND within a partitioned space as spare until they are required so you immediately benefit by having space lying around.
Bigger drive also means that you have more flash cells to spread the write load so it takes more writes to exhaust.

Finally, the 830 drives have a reputation for being power hogs, you might lose a noticeable chunk of battery life with the Samsung drive.

 

While I hold Intel in high regard generally, Samsung would be my preferred choice for a couple of reasons, the most important one being the fact that it's NOT utilizing a SandForce controller...

 

This argument is almost non-legit anymore due to the almost near perfect utilization of the SandForce controller nowadays but I get ya

 

thank you very much for all these detailed replies, it all helps me understand ssd's better.

one final point, the Intel 330 180gb has 6 NAND channels, compared to Samsungs 830 8 NAND channels,
is this a significant/noticeable difference in speed?


if i was to pay the £50 extra and go for the Samsung 830 256GB SSD would this be the best option for me/my usage?

 

First of all; try to ignore most of Marksman30K's post (not quite 'there' in quality of information).

Secondly; more channels by itself is not what makes an SSD fast - it is a combination of the controller, Firmware and specific nand used that determines if it is fast or not. If we're comparing the Intel 330 180GB model to the Samsung 830 128GB model - in real world use; the higher capacity will almost always be faster for the same (used capacity) steady-state workload simply because WA will be lower and GC will be much less (and also happen much faster because of that).

Finally, as to whether paying £50 extra to go for the Samsung 830 256GB SSD is the best option for you...

It is if you want the fastest SSD setup and you follow my previous suggestions on partitioning and over-provisioning. Especially with Samsung SSD's the more you fill them the worse (much worse) the performance becomes. However, with 50% over-provisioning the Samsung 840 PRO approaches the newly introduced Intel Data Center S3700 SSD which was designed specifically with a more consistent performance envelope in mind.

It is if you want to be able to move this SSD to a newer computer and still make the most out of the new platform.

It is to ease your concern about premature failure of the SSD. (No guarantees, of course; but the bigger the capacity the higher the probability the drive can find the nand cells needed to continue working as spec'd).

It is if you have the ££ in your pocket. (Don't go into debt for this!).




On the last comparison graph at the bottom of the following link, click between the Samsung's full capacity (256GB) and the 50% used capacity (128GB) to see what a huge difference over-provisioning an SSD makes on it's performance. This is not imagined: it is real and very noticeable in real world use.

See:
AnandTech - Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs



This kind of performance increase is well worth me 'wasting' 1/2 the capacity of all my SSD's in desktops and notebooks - especially as the prices keep going down...


(Now, where are the GREAT 512GB/1TB+ SSD's I have really wanted all along!).

 

Like I said earlier, the Samsung drive will definitely be faster in most transfer cases and tie in others AnandTech - Bench - SSD most importantly, Samsung doesn't differentiate between compressible and incompressible data so you would get very even all round performance.
As for feeling faster, it depends partly on your CPU, power settings and the drive in question. Usually the drive with higher 1-3 queue depth Random 4k read performance will generally FEEL snappier as most of your IO usage will be reading small files and booting windows. Samsung has higher 3 queue depth 4k Random performance so booting might be faster (I logged primarily 3 queue depth reads on my 320 SSD at boot) however, it has slower 1 queue depth 4k Random read
Samsung 830 256GB SATA 3 SSD Review - Make Way For Incredible Performance & Lower Prices - The SSD Review
vs Intel 330 Series 120GB SATA 3 SSD Review - LSI SandForce Performance With Unbeatable Value - The SSD Review
This means that the 330 may feel snappier under normal desktop usage.

However that being said, theres now a trend towards performance consistency where you can still maintain the snappiness while the SSD is under load. What this means is sometimes, you will send a request to your SSD which is currently performing another task (e.g. garbage collection) and you will notice a latency spike.
If you see this: AnandTech - The Intel SSD DC S3700 (200GB) Review
The 330 is actually extremely consistent unless you really pound at it, cross referencing it with the consistency and spare area article, the newest Samsung 840 Pro actually needs more spare area to the tune of 25% to tighten up the consistency.
Unfortunately I don't have any consistency data for you for the 830 but its reasonable to extrapolate that the 830 is probably not as good as the 840 pro so thereby not being as consistent as the 330.

In summary its basically like this.
The 330 180gb is cheaper, has the perks and limitations of Sandforce, excellent 1 queue depth 4k performance so possibly snappier and maintains that pretty consistent performance overall unless you really punish it.
The Samsung 256gb is more expensive (its about $200 in Australia), doesn't care about compressible or incompressible data, POSSIBLY less consistent performance (you might notice latency spikes) but higher peak performance in some cases (especially with incompressible data)

 

thanks marksman for these links and info/opinions,
As i am a complete noob in the SSD field, even those links/data looked good, i have no idea what i am looking at or interpreting,
but i still thank you for taking the time,

reading your summary it seems both the samsung 830 256gb an the intel 330 180gb have there pros and cons, i guess it now comes down to how much money i want to spend - £140 for the samsung 830 256gb or £88 on the intel 330 180gb

i know for a fact i wont ever use more than 80gb (including 30gb OS) BUT i dont want to slow the system down by only keeping 100gb free space.

So i think i'll wait till the boxing day sales and see the prices for the 830 256gb and intel 330 180gb, before deciding which one to go for


is www.hotukdeals.com theb est place to look on boxing day?
or is there other sites worth checking in the UK on boxing day for SSD 's on sale?

 

IIRC, OCUK have some pretty good deals though I'm afraid I don't know many other places. My local store is PC Case Gear but the prices are slightly inflated due to Australia tax + GST

 

HotUKDeals is pretty good for SSD offers usually, make sure you read the comments on the offers too, just for a bit more knowledge etc. At the moment I think the 256GB 830 is going for £130 from amazon it was hovering at that price (can't see it at the moment, but just wait a while). Just keep an eye on it, and you should be able to bag a decent deal. Its good to use HotUKDeals since you don't have to manually troll through multiple retailers, save you a bit of time hopefully.

 

I have the same Samsung model. It's small. I wish I had gotten something bigger at this point, so I may end up buying a larger one and just putting the Samsung in another laptop in my house.

 

thanks mate, ill keep my eye on hotukdeals on boxing day!
i'll probably end of with the 256gb samsung 830!
i want the best speed possible, so i guess the more free disk space the better

when buying from amazon, is it bes/t to buy ssd's that are sold directly by amazon, ratner than other companys using amazon to sell from?

 

Yeah, I prefer generally to buy direct from amazon if possible, unless its things that are a bit specialist and cheaper like laptop chargers, just check the feedback like ebay and you should be fine, you will be covered under amazon too to a certain extent. Usually when ebuyer or dabs drop their price amazon price match it the day after or so, looks like you can get the normal 840 256gb for £130 but its whether its worth it, havent checked the performance difference.

Try buy from amazon direct anyways their customer service will be there if you needed it. Good luck anyways, i bought mine 90p more expensive than the lowest price ever anyways.

 

what price did you pay for a samsung 830 256gb and where from?

also, besides samsung and intel, what other brands of ssd's would you trust enough to spend £100+ on?
and are of high quality/reliability/speed etc

 

I paid £130.96 for mine, from amazon uk direct.

 

ok, see i dont know what is classed as a good price for the 830 256gb


also, besides samsung and intel, what other brands of ssd's would you trust enough to spend £100+ on?
and are of high quality/reliability/speed etc

 

You can check out the Crucial M4. Probably the best bang-for-your-buck, though it's slightly slower at seq. read/write than the 330 or 830 (or 840). However, the most noticeable aspect of a SSD is the random access speed, which is pretty much the same across the board for SSDs. seq read/write only really comes into play if you're transferring GB-sized files from one SSD to another (HDD or ODD will bottleneck). Could also check on the Plextor SSDs out there.

 

Definitely go bigger than you need. A SSD really starts to slow down when they are about 80% full. It is much better for speeds and the life of the SSD to run them under 80% capacity.

 

Agreed on "best bang-for-your-buck"

Agreed on "though it's slightly slower..."

I just bought a 2.5" 512GB Crucial M4 SSD mainly for it's reliability, as Crucial has a good track record on reliability.

But still on square one for getting a notebook, but that's another progressing story.

When it comes to SSD reliability, only Intel (in general) has a better track record than Crucial M4 AFAIK.

I welcome any additional thoughts that you might offer of your own view/experience of SSD reliabilty. Thanks in advance.

 

Samsung is also above Crucial in reliability as well, though this is hardly surprising because *everything* in a Samsung SSD is made in-house.

Made a thread in WNBSIB to get some recommendations on notebooks

 

Looks like the crucial M4 256GB is a worthy contender against the Intel 330 and the Samsung 830

lets see which 256gb ssd is cheapest on boxing day