Samsung 830 128GB vs. Plextor M3 128GB

I need your help. I am trying to decide between these 2 drives. I have read a ton of reviews and my head is spinning. I have a horrible time making decisions so I came to you folks for help. This drive will go in a Thinkpad T500 as the primary drive. I am going to connect the drive to my SATA II interface. Which drive should I go for? I want the fastest but I read differing comparisons. Any help would be great. Thanks.

 

Get the cheaper one. or one with longer warranty if same price.

 

Both drives are great.
To know more about the Plextor you can read: AnandTech - The Plextor M3 (256GB) Review
and Plextor M3 256GB SATA 6Gb/s Review - Another Win for The Marvell 9174 Controller - The SSD Review
The Plextor M3 and especially the M3pro is the fastest Marvell based drive on the market now, is 9.5mm high and has 5 years of warranty.
The Samsung 830 is the fastest Samsung based drive is 7mm high (possibly you need the spacer from the Notebook Kit) and has 3 years of warranty.
Found a review of both:
http://www.hardwarelook.com/reviews/samsung-830-series-128gb-ssd-review_150_1.html
http://www.hardwarelook.com/reviews/plextor-m3-128gb-ssd-review_156_1.html

 

Thanks for the reviews. They seem to point to the fact that the Samsung is faster? The write speed of the Samsung looks quite a bit better on paper. What do you guys say about that?

 

That statement is not entirely true as m3 vanilla is just as fast/slow as m4 with sequential writes limited at about 200MBps, where m3p has no such limitation. What exactly is cause of that, I have no idea.

In sequential writing the samsung drive is much faster (but you're limited by sata2 port), but plextor works better with really small files.
Problem with sequential writes is you have to have some medium fast enough to read data at those speeds. Writes from memory are rarely large enough for that to make a significant difference.

Botom line, get whatever is cheaper, as you won't notice a difference in 99% of tasks. Only if youre concerned about warranty, than that plextor is better buy.

 

This. You won't notice the difference except in benchmarks, and since you are on SATA II, you really won't notice

 

:confused2:

According Plextor PX-M3P SSD Review | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews the difference is just caused by the firmware.
@ The Fire Snake:
There was also a discussion about a lot of SSD drives here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...ow-another-ssd-into-mix-intel-520-series.html

At this moment you have to look more at the SSD controller.
The nice ones now are Marvell and Samsung:
Marvell: Crucial M4, Corsair Performance Pro, Intel 510, Plextor M2/M3.
Samsung: Samsung 830

And they are all great, so look for warranty, support and/or price.

 

Samsung 830 has excellent support and RMA process.

 

But only for 3 years, Plextor M3 has that for 5 years.

 

Samsung RMA is next day shipping there, they next day it back the day they receive it.

I'd rather have that than Plextor's warranty.

 

That's cool, but here in The Netherlands you can't even properly register your SSD on samsung.nl The system doesn't know the 830.

 

The thing I was thinking of was that with my SATA II from my laptop I can get a max of 300 MB/s. I am assuming that is both read and write? The Plextor can do a max of 210 MB/s writes so I thought my SATA II might be constrained? Does that make sense?

 

That's my Samsung 830 on a SATA 2 port.

 

So from looking at those numbers the drive obviously won't constrain my reads but my writes can theoretically go at 300 MB/s but the Plextor can only do 210 MB/s writes. Isn't that quite a difference? Won't I notice that on writes?

 

And mine:

You will only notice it in benchmarks, not in real life.

 

I have decided to go with the Plextor M3. It has a nice long warranty and is using a reliable controller and I can get it for a decent price. I hope I am making the right decision.

 

Enjoy your new SSD! I don't think you will regret your choice.