SAMSUNG 850 PRO vs 840 PRO vs 840 EVO vs 840 EVO mSATA

Just got a new SAMSUNG 850 PRO 512GB SSD and ran some benchmarks for comparison between the 850 PRO, 840 PRO, 840 EVO, and 840 EVO mSATA

I am disappointed by the results though. Even the 1TB 840 EVO mSATA has a bit higher results in the 4K speeds which is what matters to a user the most. So much for 3D NAND!

the 850 PRO 512GB is OPed by 30%

What gives? Please help. I am on AHCI mode and no antivirus installed just did a clean installation of Windows 7 Pro


Controller Driver Used: IRST 12.8.0.1016
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional

AS SSD Benchmark:

SAMSUNG 850 PRO 512GB




SAMSUNG 840 PRO 512GB




SAMSUNG 840 EVO 1TB




SAMSUNG 840 EVO 1TB mSATA




==============================================

CrystalDiskMark:

SAMSUNG 850 PRO 512GB




SAMSUNG 840 PRO 512GB




SAMSUNG 840 EVO 1TB




SAMSUNG 840 EVO 1TB mSATA



==============================================

 

At this kind of speed, your CPU clocks start becoming a factor. Make sure all your drives have the CPU set to high performance with no power saving features. Particularly with the Evo drives, make sure you are benchmarking over the same quantity of OP since the size of the SLC cache available directly affects the speed.
Also, technically, the Evo has the faster NAND since it's cache portion is actually SLC (vs stacked MLC for the Pro drives).
Finally, overprovisioning does very little for the 850Pro since it is already optimized for consistency.

 

hmm, the 850 PRO OP is 30% while the 840 EVO and mSATA EVO are only 10%, very surprising the mSATA has higher 4K speeds

 

i'm more interested in the reliability of 850 pro vs others, let's see feedback from buyers after one month.

 

I don't think any of the above benchmarked drives would fail after 1 year, let alone 1 month

I think the only thing good about V NAND is consistency in performance

Just for reference, I am including the 850 PRO 512 GB SSD benchmarks on Windows 8.1

As you can see, the performance on Windows 8.1 is 10% lower.

AS SSD Benchmark:

SAMSUNG 850 PRO 512GB




CrystalDiskMark:

SAMSUNG 850 PRO 512GB

 

Hi Ferris,

Do you've the SanDisk Pro\Extreme II to compare your results? That's be nice as I'm planning to buy the 850 PRO or SanDisk.

 

It would have to be way longer than one month for an accurate review. You'd also have to write/read hundreds of GB's of data to accurately determine which SSD is truly the best. In terms of real world performance: they're all based off similar design and they're all going to last a very long time. When they talk about NAND lasting longer in the 840 PRO & 850 PRO, they're talking years of constant reading/writing of hundreds of GB's of data (e.g. dedicated servers) - very rarely will a person ever do such a thing with their home laptop/gaming laptop.

Just grab the cheapest of the Samsung series SSD's (i.e. the 840 EVO @ $129 or 850 EVO when it comes out). They're all excellent drives. The 850 PRO may only be worth it for regular users because of the warranty. Just take note that Samsung will give you the runaround when trying to get a replacement. You need to keep all records of the transaction for RMA.

---

@Ferris: Great results. Thanks for posting them. :thumbsup:

 

i referred to those reviews from buyers that claimed SSD failed within one month from 840 EVO: SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA 6Gb/s 1x nm Samsung Toggle DDR 2.0 3-Bit MLC NAND Flash Memory (400Mbps) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Newegg.ca
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0

This review is from: SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA 6Gb/s 1x nm Samsung Toggle DDR 2.0 3-Bit MLC NAND Flash Memory (400Mbps) Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: I decided to get this SSD as I have the 120gb version which has run flawlessly.

Cons: It died in less than a week of use. Now I have to do the RMA dance with Newegg for the replacement.

6 of 13 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Dead, May 15, 2014
By
A. Tomczak "~Silvermango" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE120BW (Personal Computers)
This SSD bricked itself after 3 days of normal use. Would not buy again.
Perhaps I just had a bad one

 

The best place to look is Amazon if you want customer reviews.

People are more likely to write a bad review than a good one. If something goes wrong with a product, you want to vent and complain. If nothing goes wrong, you're just going to enjoy whatever you purchased.

 

Newegg and Amazon are both good for reviews. BUT look for reviews from verified owners and give them more weight.

 

I don't, I only buy Samsung SSDs

Check these REAL WORLD BENCHMARKS results and you will see the SanDisk Pro way at the bottom. Nothing even comes close to Samsung :

AnandTech | Bench - SSD

 

Again, you are looking at the 2011 Heavy Workload not the 2013 Destroyer which is AnandTech's steady state, consistency test. The Destroyer is as "real" as AnandTech gets for a heavy workload. The results for SanDisk Extreme II and Extreme Pro are stellar. AnandTech | Bench - SSD
Here's AnandTech's Best SSD's: July 2014 AnandTech | Best SSDs: July 2014 In the Professional & Enthusiast level the recommend Samsung 850 Pro and SanDisk Extreme Pro.
When the Extreme II was released it became AnandTech's top choice. It is the best value for price/performance 480GB for about $250 USD when on sale.

 

I would buy 840 Pro over Extreme II.

 

I wouldn't

 

ha, just the thread that i was looking for

ive recently got myself an 850 pro 1TB and naturally was really excited to give it a run for its money thru the usual tools. unfortunately, im not really satisfied with the 4K read/write performance! see for yourselves:

AS SSD in my case:


Compare this to TheSSDreview.com review of the 850 Pro 1TB:


Same goes for Anvil Storage Utilities in my case:


And the equivalent test from TheSSDReview:


Strangely, when it comes to compressible raw data, such as with atto, the results are as expected:


TheSSDReview:



Ok, now to my config background:

I migrated from my previous OCZ Vertex 4 512GB to the Samsung 850 Pro 1TB via Acronis True Image 2014. I know I know, fresh install is always recommended, but I figured it shouldnt be such a biggie when coming from another SSD. Besides, I made sure to follow these points:

- checked alignment of the cloned drive with diskpart / AS SSD / Anvil Storage Utilities / AOMEI Partition Assisstant (very nice and powerful freeware tool btw!) and its at 1024 kb

- applied the SSD optimization guide by TheSSDreview for Windows 7/8/8.1 (Link: The SSD Optimization Guide Ultimate Windows 8 (And Win7) Edition | The SSD Review)
includes such thing as: switching off system restore, disabling prefetch/superfetch, disabling flush write cache, etc.

- Used SSDTweaker in the newest version and WiseRegistryCleaner and applied all recommended System fine tunings. Been using those tools for years with my SSDs now and was always able to eek out every bit of performance the drives had to offer.

- Obvious, since Ive been on an SSD system for years now, but still: rechecked and made sure i was on AHCI mode in BIOS, freshly re-installed the newest version of Intel RST drivers for my chipset (12.9.4.1000), also tried the stock windows AHCI drivers just for the heck of it, still the same craptastically low 4K speeds.

- Played around with Samsung Magician, made sure the newest firmware was installed and also found out that the "OS optimization" function in this tool is just BS. when u run that ur speeds actually drop so i reverted to my manual config (see above mentioned stuff)

- Mustve sent the TRIM command like 10 times through the drive in regular intervals between finetuning and benching just to make sure the drive is in optimal condition.

- Also obvious, but just to mention it: System Power on High Performance, even tried disabling Intel Speedstep and C-Sleep states, still no improvement.

-......

yep, running out of ideas at this point.... soooo, any SSD-boy out there who knows his stuff and can help me out here? would very much appreciate it

some more potential ideas from my side:
- could it really be just the migration of the OS from one SSD to the other? so that it needs to somehow "settle" for a few days before reaching its actual max. speed? Still weird though that atto speeds are just fine, same with sequential and 4KQD64´s.....
- drive does not include any extra over provisioning, maybe i should go ahead and try again with 10%
- would overclocking the CPU help? Tested at 2.7Ghz, could crank it up to 4.7 and see what happens
- RAM is OCed to 1600-10-9-9-26 from stock 1333-9-9-9-24, would it somehow bottleneck transfer speeds if the timings were "too tight"? memtest stable OC though.... and yeah, I´m starting to reach now

Any input is greatly appreciated, folks!

PS: My Vertex 4 reached an AS SSD score of around 1030 which was pretty spot on the scores shown in reviews at 1040-1060, especially considering it was filled up and in a used state already as opposed to brand-new test drives. with the 850 Pro its 1093 max. compared to 1207 in reviews..... :-/

 

your scores are abnormal and that's not what an 850 PRO should perform like. I hope you had done a clean Windows Install in AHCI mode and not did the lazy clone method.

Here are the results of my 850 PRO 512GB PRO that I sold today and made a profit of $300 USD out of (yes in Dubai these things are non existent so you can make such huge profit)

 

yep, exactly THOSE speeds are what im actually looking for, my friend! this was actually the first time ive taken the lazy-clone road, since I´m short on time and using my rig for my PhD, so I thought I´d make an exception....and bam this is what i get unfortunately im running low on space on my external HDD, otherwise i couldve backed up my current OS and just make a few benches with a fresh system, just to make sure my drive "could" actually behave like it should....

 

you know what they saw dawg... no pain no gain

use your system for now, but when you have time, please do the following:

disconnect all other drives except the 850 PRO

Ensure your BIOS is set to AHCI

Launch the Windows setup and choose a clean install (with onle 1 drive attached to the system at the time of installation since you don't want the stupid Windows setup to place your boot files on the second drive / partition

Now while you're at the partition selection screen in the Windows setup, press SHIFT + F10 to open up the command prompt

type the following

cd\ then hit enter
diskpart then hit enter
select disk 0 then hit enter
clean then hit enter
convert gpt then hit enter



now exit the command prompt and click on REFRESH in the partition wizard screen

You should now only have 1 un-partitioned disk, click on CREATE to create a new partition



DO NOT CREATE the 2nd partition at this point, just leave it un-partitioned as we don't want Windows to put the boot files on the second partition.

15) Install Windows on the 4th partition we just created.



16) When you get to the first screen on Windows 8, do not choose EXPRESS SETTINGS but rather, choose CUSTOMIZE















17) Make sure you disable Windows updates for now and turn off "automatically get and install updates for drivers" otherwise you will have Windows update silently install the VGA, Bluetooth, WAN, and other drivers which you don't want! Always stick to the drivers from DELL.

18) After you get to the desktop, go to Control Panel > Computer Management > Disk Management, then change the drive letter of the BD-ROM Drive to whatever you want keeping in mind that you will now insert your 2nd HDD so that will probably need to be replaced. Then reconnect your 2nd HDD, then turn on your computer, shutdown, and reboot one more time







19) Ensure you are connected to your wireless network, then launch Windows Updates from Control Panel. Install all available updates but do not install any drivers or drivers from Windows update; right click on any driver that shows up in the available updates list, then choose Hide.

The only exception is the Microsoft Wireless Router Module if that showed up in your Windows Updates, that can be installed but NOTHING ELSE with regards to drivers from Windows updates





20) Reboot your computer after the updates have been installed, then search for updates again and install the 2nd list of updates (if any)

21) Go to Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features On or Off

22) Check the first box which says .NET Framework 3.5 and click OK, when asked where do you want to get it from, choose Download from Windows Updates.

23) After .NET Framework 3.5 has been installed, search for Windows updates again and install any updates that show up after the installation of .NET Framework 3.5

24) Go to Control Panel > System then scroll down to the end and click on ACTIVATE then click on Enter New Key and enter the product key that is built into your BIOS which you acquired earlier in this guide. As soon as you enter the product key Windows will be activated automatically over the internet.

25) Optional step: Right click on the desktop, then choose Screen Resolution, then choose "Make text and other items larger or smaller", then choose "Medium 125%".

for some strange reason, if I choose Medium 125%, the text in some areas like the Services Control Panel seems to be blurry, so first set the resolution to 150% then log off and relogin, then change it to 125% then you wouldn't have anything appear blurry.

 

haha thanks for the heads-up buddy, i know my way around OS install procedures as i said, first time that i actually cloned a disk due to time restrictions, usually go for the fresh install. besides, that thing with the fourth partition doesnt concern me (yet), since im pre-EFI good ol´BIOS baby

ill check and see what kinda performance i get with a "quick n dirty" fresh OS install without programs & data. if that pans out, then I´ll stick to my current config until time permits me to properly set up a new OS

 

*sigh* ok so i did a fresh os install, just put the chipset drivers and irst drivers, followed the ssd optimization guide and reran as ssd, atto, samsung magician and anvil storage utility benches.

result is a bit better than before, but still not satisfactory. the problem still persists:

- sequential read/write are maxxed out with compressible & incompressible data - ok!

max iops are at 90k write 90k read at 4K QD16 or larger - ok!

4K QD1 read and write are way below expected values *ugh* - NOT ok!

as ssd shows around 50 MB/s write and 25 MB/s read. total score around 1090+/-3. still not getting the 1200! what the hell could be wrong here?

any help

ps: alignment is fine, first that hidden system partition from 1024kb to 350mb, then the os partition from 351mb onwards.

maybe i should try different irst driver versions...

 

Which IRST Driver did you use? I found IRST 12.8.0.1016 to be the best. the newer ones give me worst results

 

Did you run before and after the "optimizations"?

 

ive tried 12.9.4.100, 12.9.1.1001, 11.7.x (latest), so far the latest v12.9 gave me the best results. ill try and see what i can get with 12.8.0.1016, will report!

well, the optimizations include stuff like

- run in ahci mode
- install irst drivers instead of using the stock microsoft ones
- check for trim functionality
- disable pagefile, hibernation, superfetch, prefetch, write cashe flushing, gui boot, system restore points, multiboot selection, drive indexing, windows search
- set power profile to high performance
- enable optimize drives (trim scheduler)

i doubt that any of these would have a negative effect, actually right the opposite when it comes to performance maintenance, endurance of the ssd and enhanced capacity please advise if u disagree!

edit: also made sure to secure erase the drive before the fresh os install and regularly trimmed it before each benchmark. just dont get WHY all my performance values are great except the 4KQD1's, just doesnt make sense.

 

Let us know the new results with the IRST driver I suggested.

Secondly, ensure you disable NTFS Compression via the registry and disable RAC Task

everything is mentioned below in a guide I compiled myself: (most of them are done automatically by Magician so don't bother, just disable RAC task and SSD Compression / Encryption as shown below)

BIOS:

MUST be set in AHCI mode before installing Windows, not ATA or RAID in order to get the maximum performance.

If you have Windows already installed in ATA or RAID mode then you cannot simply change this setting because then you wouldn't be able to boot into Windows so formatting your computer and doing a clean install is recommended if you aren't in AHCI mode already

There is a registry trick to turn on AHCI mode manually without changing it first in the BIOS but that just lies to Windows that AHCI mode is on when it really isn't so don't bother with that.

===================================================================================================

OS Installation:

1) DO NOT clone your previous OS installation! As easy as that may sound, cloning your old OS to your new SSD will never give you the 100% performance out of your SSD! So stop being lazy and start with a fresh clean installation of Windows.

2) When installing Windows, if you had more than one drive in your computer and only create ONE PARTITON for now, you MUST disconnect the other drive before installing Windows. The Windows setup has a nasty habit of copying the boot files onto the 2nd drive if it finds one for some odd reason. That will slow down your boot process and cause headaches if you ever want to restore a corrupted boot loader since the boot files are not on your main drive. Only re-connect your second drive after you are on your Windows desktop. Don't forget to change the drive letter of your DVD/CD/BD Drive in Computer management as it probably has taken the Drive letter D: which you will need for a 2nd partition or drive.
===================================================================================================

Over-provisioning:

Over-provisioning is very important if you want to ensure you have consistent performance. For more details on what Over-Provisioning is, feel free to read this great article: Understanding SSD Over-Provisioning

Most drive are usually over-provisioned at the factory by 7% so make sure you research your SSD model to see if it already has factory over-provisioning or not.

For best performance, I recommend you to over-provision your SSD by 20%. Off-course, if your SSD has factory OP (over-provisioning) then you subtract that from 20 so: 20-7% = 13% OP

The way to do this is very simple:

When you are installing Windows and are about to create a partition, instead of allocating the entire available space to that partition, deduct 13%

Example: you have a 120GB SSD (so that means it already has a 7% OP from the factory since the actual size is 128GB)

What you need to do is multiply 120x0.87 = 104.4GB

So that means that if we create a partition of 104.4GB, the remaining 13% will be left as un-partitioned space (ie. over-provisioning)

So to create that 104.4 GB partition, multiply 104.4 x 1024 = 106905 MB

That means you need to specify a 106905 MB as your partition and leave the rest un-partitioned

If you already had installed Windows then you can simply shrink your partition in Disk Management with the desired space to get the end result of 20% partitioned space (the un-partitioned space must be at the end of all other partitions, so if you have C: and D:, then the un-partitioned space needs to be after D

===================================================================================================

Windows and Registry Tweaks:

1) Turn off Indexing Service

To do this press the Windows + R key on your keyboard then type services.msc in the Run Dialogue Box

In the Services Manager Window, scroll down to Windows Search, double click on it, then set it to disabled and hit Apply



===================================================================================================

2) Turn Off Drive Indexing

Open Computer

Right click on any partition that is for the SSD, in this example my partition is C:

Uncheck the "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties" box then hit Apply and wait for the changes to be applied.



===================================================================================================

3) Disable Automatic Disk Defragmentation

Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter

Once the Disk Defragmenter launches, click on the top button which says Turn Off Schedule

===================================================================================================

4) Disable NTFS Compression, NTFS Encryption, and NTFS Last Access Update:

Note: If you have a SandForce based SSD, then do not disable NTFS Compression as the SandForce controller heavily relies on compression to give you optimal performance but for any other controller this will help to prevent data from ever being compressed then decompressed when needed.

Press the Windows + R Key on your keyboard to bring up the Run Dialogue box then type regedit

Navigate to:

Code:

[B]HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem[/B]

Double click on NtfsDisableCompression and set the value to 1

Double click on NtfsDisableEncryption and set the value to 1

Double click on NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate and set the value to 1




Exit the registry editor then reboot

===================================================================================================

5) Fixed Page File Size:

If you have 8 GB or more RAM in your system, then you can safely decrease the size of your page file. Do not disable the page file completely as some programs such as Windows Media Player will always look for it and if you don't have it you will either get low memory errors or the program won't run properly.

So the best thing to do is set it to a Minimum size of 200 MB and a Maximum size of 1024 MB


Go to Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings > Performance (Settings) > Advanced > Virtual Memory (Change)

Un-check the box which says "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives"

Click on the Custom radio button

Set the initial size to 200 MB and the maximum size to 1024 MB

Reboot when prompted



===================================================================================================

Disable Hibernation:

Hibernation was great for HDDs allowing you to completely shutdown your computer but before it does that, it saves your OS state to a temporary file called pagefile.sys

Now that means the next time you start your computer, rather than loading everything from a fresh start, it will use the pagefile.sys to load the previous OS state so any open documents, browser, programs, etc. will appear instantly as if you never shutdown.

This is bad for an SSD though because it creates a lot of writes to the SSD while it is saving your current OS state and secondly, SSDs are fast enough that you don't need this features since loading back any programs should be almost instantaneous.

Additionally, the hibernation file AKA pagefile.sys takes up a lot of space on your SSD which is equal to the amount of RAM you have. So let's say you had 16GB of RAM, the pagefile.sys would be a whooping 16GB of space on your SSD. By disabling hibernation you would also claim back that space reserved by the hibernation file.


A) Type cmd in the windows start menu search box, then right click on cmd.exe and choose Run as Administrator.
B) In the command prompt type in powercfg –h off and hit enter.

You must reboot for this to take effect.

===================================================================================================

Disable Superfetch:

SSDs are fast enough as they are and they do not need to cache your frequently used programs into the RAM upon every reboot. This creates unnecessary writes to your SSD and it wouldn't really make any difference.

Disable Superfetch (SSDs are Fast enough to disable Superfetch to free up RAM)
a. Press the Window + R button on your keyboard to bring up the Run Dialogue Box
b. Type service.msc then hit enter
c. Look for the service named Superfetch then double click on it and change the Startup Type to Disabled
d. In the Windows start menu search box, type regedit and hit enter
e.vNavigate to:

Code:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

and look for a Binary Value called EnablePrefetcher
f. Double click on EnablePrefetcher and change the value from 3 to 0.
g. You must reboot for this to take effect.

=============================================

Enable Write Caching on your SSD:

A) Open up your Computer then right click on the drive that is your SSD and click Properties.

B) Click on the Hardware tab at the top.

C) Double click on the Disk Drive that is your SSD. Now in the new window click the Policies tab.

D) Under the Write-caching policy box, make sure Enable write caching on this device and Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device are both checked. Now click OK and exit.

===================================================

Disable Reliability Monitor

A) Type cmd in the windows start menu search box, then right click on cmd.exe and choose Run as administrator.

B) In the command prompt type in (or copy/paste):

Code:

schtasks.exe /change /disable /tn \Microsoft\Windows\RAC\RacTask

and hit enter.

C) If you want to enable reliability monitor run the command:

and hit enter.

D) If a SUCCESS message comes up after the command is entered then it worked.

 

thanks for the help so far buddy.
so i went down ur list of suggestions and applied the settings i havent already implemented.

still no luck, even with irst 12.8.0.1016, 10% OP, disabling RAC and ntfs compression my 4K values are still in the same range of 50-55 write and 20-23 read in as ssd *ugh*

im starting to think that this ssd might just be too powerful for my chipset to handle

 

if you did everything as per the guide so you've covered your basis. I know that you know your stuff just wanted to ensure you didn't miss anything bro

tell me, what OS are you on and what antivirus are you running if any?

 

Go back to what the guide says about that "write cache flushing", it won't hurt to try it both ways. also read some of the comments below in the guide.

Your Vertex 4 still has the OS and ready to pop back in? You have two drive bays on your Clevo, and both are SATA 3? You could SE it again, format it and test it as an empty/storage drive. Testing it as an empty/storage drive might tell you a lot, good or bad. Not the drive - good, something in the install/setup - not good, the drive - bad.

Some of those endurance tweaks you don't really need, you got a 10 year warranty. With the amount of RAM you have, search, indexing, prefetch, superfetch will speed up you system. when used not benchmarked.

 

just wanted to say thanks to you guys again for hanging in there with my troubles much appreciated!

im running win8.1 x64, havent installed an antivirus yet since i can only go online via phone tethering at this location here.

ill go ahead and play around with the write cache flushing, maybe thatll help a bit.

sorry, no can do, my v4 is already formatted and ready to be sold on ebay haha i only have one sata3 port in my machine (its from 2011, sandy bridge gen). and yeah, i definitely wouldve liked to test the drive freshly secure erased and completely empty in order to separate any software from any hardware faults.
haha i know its not really necessary@10yr warranty, but cmon, u know what its like! got a new piece of hardware and u just wanna eek out every lil drop of performance and tuning out of it besides, ive never really used indexing, search and x-fetch anyways, so might as well disable them

too bad there arent yet many ppl around with 850 pros to give some firsthand input, preferably with a samegen system like mine

lets think about it, what could cause the 4KQD1 values specifically to be crippled? as long as i apply larger QDs im doing fine performance-wise, same goes for sequential transfers. first thing that came to mind was alignment but ive checked and rechecked that a thousand times, cant be the culprit...

 

is it possible to try this on Windows 7 or is that too much work for you?

 

ive already had the idea of trying to replicate the software environment samsung uses for benchmarking their 850 pros and give out the official performance specs. that was on a win7 sp1 system with irst 11.5.x and iometer 2010 / crystaldiskmark 3.0.1. that would definitely take some time to implement for me, since i dont have a win7 iso at hand here and would have to make a system backup first... *ugh*

 

It may be more than 4KQD1. I went back to look at your Anvil pic. Your 4KQD16 writes are way off. It's like it throttled or something. Your 4KQD4 looks good, considering your test has an OS compared to the empty drives of review sites. Also comparing MB Written, it looks like it didn't finish at 4KQD1 and QD16. Your reads are good at QD16 but not 1 & 4. And the 32K and 128K are off too.

I also compared to TweakTown's Anvil here: Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD Review - The New Performance King - Benchmarks - Anvil Storage Utilities

Any power management settings in BIOS under storage, SATA Aggressive Power Link Management to disable?

 

funny that u mention this, i just saw a remark of another nbr buddy of mine pointing into the same direction@low 4KQD1 caused by power management settings. indeed ive been using a registry hack in order to be able to access and set HIPM&DIPM modes for the AHCI link under windows power options. ill switch everything off there, reboot and give it another go. would be funny if it was indeed just cuz of that!

*sigh* about to throw in the towel here... performance has slightly bumped to 25 write / 60 read, but still far away from the official 40/140 that its supposed to deliver at 4KQD1...

 

Just as a real world reference, here are my benchmarks on my previous 512GB 850 PRO that I sold and am awaiting the 256GB 850 PRO to be delivered as according to many sites it is the fastest version of the 850 PROs surprisingly.

The 512GB aren't that great of Samsung, even my current 840 PRO 512GB performs slower than what I saw online for scores of the 256GB 840 PRO

AS SSD Benchmark with IRST 12.8.0.1016 (W7)



CrystalDiskMark with IRST 12.8.0.1016 (W7)

 

One other thought to test it empty. You have USB 3.0 and Windows 8.1 supports UASP. You could get a UASP supported enclosure with an ASMedia controller and try that as an empty/storage drive. I wouldn't expect the numbers to be as high as the onboard Intel SATA connection but it might be worth a shot. In Anvil you could see if the numbers rise as expected or have the fall off.

 

that might actually be worth a try, especially since such a case would only be like 15€, just checked it on amazon also found am older screenshot with my vertex 4 where it reached like 30/70 in 4K read/write on the same exact system... of course with a non-fresh os installation that was already like 9 months used.

 

ok, so i ordered myself a nice lil usb 3.0 case with uasp protocol support,should arrive in a few days. heres what im gonna do:

- bench both the vertex 4 and 850 pro with the current os and setup on the internal sata3 port

- bench both ssds in the external case when empty and secure erased

- bench both ssds with freshly installed win8.1 on the internal sata3 port. and i DO mean fresh! no updates, no programs aside from the benchmarks and just the ahci and chipset drivers, thats it. no optimizations, no fuss, right out of the box.

lets hope i will get some answers through this!

suggested benches: atto, anvil, crystaldiskmark, as ssd

any further suggestions appreciated!

 

Will these benchmarks make any difference in day to day usage of SSD?

I've the 512GB 850 PRO in my Lenovo T440s. Will the 256GB 850 PRO improve my day to day performance as it's claimed that it outperform the 512GB 850 PRO?

 

one word.....no........ Yes i Had the 512GB 850 PRO, and I just got the 256GB 850 PRO, the 256GB version beats it by about 5% in benchmarks, nothing you would notice in real world......

All that matters for OS snapiness are 4K speeds but the 256GB 850 PRO gets like 2 to 3 MB higher speeds in 4K.....to me that's great, to a normal user, not worth it

Here are the benchmarks of 512GB 850 PRO vs 256GB 850 PRO:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...29-just-got-my-samsung-850-pro-256gb-ssd.html

 

naturally, in everyday use its only of importance that u actually HAVE an ssd installed in ur system, aside from that one wont even notice the difference in snappiness when comparing a lower tier to a highend class sata3 ssd nowadays BUT: if one actually decides to go for the very best and spends a ton of money on it, then of course one wants to eek out every lil drop of performance that was paid for!

guys, im onto something here! managed to improve my AS SSD score to 1177 and anvil to 5361, thus getting pretty close to the 120x / 570x scores from reviews and other users as it turns out, it really has something to do with powersaving settings, specifically concerning the chipset and cpu management. ill post more details and screenshots later, since im off to work now first. just wanted to say thanks one more time for hanging in there with me now im optimistic that ill solve this thing

ok, some additional details concerning my situation here.

i found these two links describing an issue with the intel 5 series chipset, where pretty aggressive power saving modes in the cpu handling cause SSDs to underperform by a quite significant margin:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...-series-4-5-965-chipsets-stamatisx-tweak.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...s-4-5-965-chipsets-jjb-tweak.html#post6700345

even though im on a series 6 chipset i nevertheless tried those tweaks, since i didnt have anything to lose anyways

turns out that the tweaks in the first link didnt really do much in my case (aside from messing around with my TurboBoost), but playing around with the newly unlocked processor power options from link 2 i managed to get the following results in AS SSD and anvil storage utilities:





Comparing the AS SSD numbers to what Ferris posted earlier, one can see that i was able to reach about 93% of the 4K read and at least 80% of the 4K write values, which is way better than the previous 60% and 40%, respectively!

As for Anvil, when comparing the results to the 850 Pro 1TB review by TheSSDreview.com, I can see the following:
-9% in 4KQD1 read
-6% in 4KQD4 read
-6% in 32K read
-4% in 128K read

-27% in 4KQD1 write
-10% in 4KQD4 write

-6% overall score

all other values are either the same or better in my case.

thus, satisfactory results in both benchmarks except for the 4KQD1 write in both cases. maybe ill be able to eek out some more in that department...

drawbacks:
- slightly higher idle temps of my cpu, but those are still bearable, especially since im planning to upgrade my cpu heatsink soon, anyways
- im only getting these speeds when putting a slight load onto the cpu (in this case i used prime95 using only 1 thread resulting in about 14% total load). when the cpu is idle i can only reach around 25-27 4K read and 58-60 4K write.

the way i figure it: whenever i have a serious load of 4K operations on my SSD its either gonna be with a larger than 1 QD (OS) or together with some significant cpu load (games, programs, etc), so the scenario of 4KQD1 with idle CPU is actually only gonna happen when running a synthetic benchmark what do u guys think?

 

Just FYI: Eke - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

 

oooh, my bad! thx for the headsup ill make sure to spell it correctly next time around...

 

I don't see the drop off in Anvil like in your first pic. :thumbsup: The response times are down and MB Written are the same at different QD.

Also, your results are with the OS as opposed to the "new volume" results of the ssdreview. That and the test platform could account for the lower results.

 

yep, i figured theres definitely some influence of the OS and the platform@ OS vs. empty and laptop vs. desktop. im gonna finetune the cpu power options and then i guess ill be a happy camper indeed with this lightning fast new ssd

 

Hey mate. I tried one of the 2 tweaks you mentioned (Stamatix) and my CPU got stuck on 2.8GHz... This probably isn't a good idea for the 3940Xm or any laptop with Ivy bridge or higher architecture processors...

 

Those tweaks were for Arrandale based platforms. Even back then, the performance improvement did not outweigh the drastic reduction in batter life.

 

yep, as mentioned before, the tweaks listed in link no. 1 did nothing for me either aside from messing up my turbo boost! but the ones from link 2 are definitely worth it, at least in my case (HM65 chipset) finished finetuning them last night and was able to squeeze a bit more performance out of my ssd. will update shortly with screenies and exact numbers...

btw, i dont really care about battery life...to me, the battery is just a safety net against data loss in case theres a blackout or my machine gets disconnected from the power socket accidentally aside from that, the tweaks i implemented didnt really do much in changing cpu temps

alright, so as mentioned before i did some more finetuning with the stock and the six additional cpu power management values one can unlock in the windows power settings menu by following the instructions in this link:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...s-4-5-965-chipsets-jjb-tweak.html#post6700345

i got the best results with the following settings:

CPU OCed to 4.7 Ghz
13-15 % load on CPU (used this nifty lil tool called CPUSTRES for that: Tools To Simulate CPU / Memory / Disk Load - The Way I See It - Site Home - MSDN Blogs)
Processor performance increase threshold 0% (stock 30%)
Processor performance decrease threshold 0% (stock 10%)
Processor performance decrease policy "Rocket" (stock "Single")
Processor idle demote threshold 100% (stock 40%)
Processor idle promote threshold 100% (stock 60%)
Minimum processor state 100% (stock 100%)
Processor performance core parking over-utilisation threshold 100% (stock 60%)
Maximum processor state 100% (stock 100%)

And these are my results:







with these settings im in the range of 95-98% of the performance on a desktop review system (empty drive!) and thats definitely something i can live with besides, looking at these values i cant help but imagine that my chipset and SATA controller is just compleeeetely brought to its limits!

cheers!

 

How the hell does your 2960XM run at 4.7GHz without burning? My 3940XM runs at 90C in games at 3.8GHz... What magic have you done?

 

haha well tbh it can only sustain that speed with load put on up to 3 threads and then only fluctuating up and down, as ive described in my 2960XM overclocking thread (see sig, stressing with prime95):

1 Threads = 3.6 - 4.7 Ghz at 69.0C
2 Threads = 3.4 - 4.7 Ghz at 89.3C
3 Threads = 2.7 - 4.7 Ghz at 91.3C
4 Threads = 3.3 - 3.4 Ghz at 90.0C
5 Threads = 3.3 - 3.4 Ghz at 91.3C
6 Threads = 3.3 - 3.4 Ghz at 90.0C
7 Threads = 3.2 - 3.4 Ghz at 89.0C
8 Threads = 3.2 - 3.4 Ghz at 88.8C

so in the end ure actually better off with 3,8 ghz at 90C in games, mine would clock down to 3.4 ghz on all threads

 

install the latest samsung magician software, and install "turbo mode".

the benchmark scores. go off the scale!

 

1) it's not called Turbo Mode, that's RAPID mode

2) Don't be so excited, that's not your SSD's performance, you are simply benchmarking your RAM. RAPID is just a marcketing gimmick from Samsung to lie to benchmark programs and have them benchmark your RAM instead of your SSD

3) Read this and you will see how RAPID will actually hurt your performance in the real world. I call it CRAPID not RAPID: A closer look at RAPID DRAM caching on the Samsung 840 EVO SSD - The Tech Report - Page 8