Samsung 840 or Sandisk Extreme?

I want to buy 120 GB SSD around 100$ and currently I see samsung 840 (non pro) and sandisk extreme for about 100$ (except OCZ). Which one will be good to buy?

 

The samsung is pretty awesome. I'd say go with that. It has extremely fast read and decent write speeds. Great for general use.

 

Samsung 840

 

Thank for reply, but according to benchmarks isn't sandisk faster? Also read that samsung 840 does not use MLC chips? howz that gonna make a difference?

 

The Samsung uses TLC nand and the sandisk uses MLC. TLC nand only effects write performance but I doubt you'll be doing any write heavy stuff.. Go with the Samsung. Personally I wouldn't buy any ssd brand other than samsung or intel. Both have great track records and are regarded as the two most reliable brands. Forget the sandisk!

 

Don't listen to anyone above, 128GB SSD's are a poor choice at this time.

Samsung especially makes a very laggy/stuttering version.

See:
Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD Review :: TweakTown

While I won't go so far as to recommend a Vector (as in the quote above...), I would pick an M4 256GB (Crucial) or a Sandisk Extreme 240GB SSD over either of your options above.


Simply put: anything smaller than 240/256GB is asking for (performance) trouble - whether you write 'a lot' to it or not.

Yeah; overall 'performance' lower than HDD based systems in some cases...


Good luck.

 

120 GB will meet my requirements pretty easily, It says that in 128 GB class vector is winner. I read somewhere that vector underperforms when above 50% full.

 

I did this research a while ago except I was looking for a 256gb drive. The situation with the vector is really complex. From what i could gather from the OCZ forums it has really aggressive garbage collection that specially kicks in when 50-75 percent (depending on firmware) of all NAND on the drive has been used, during the collection period is when you will notice the performance drop. However things go back to normal after.

TLC Nand has a penalty to access times and for some reason, plus the TLC drives seem to need a much larger reserve Nand pool to maintain smooth performance. I believe this is because the 840 has much more conservative garbage collection imposed by samsung to reduce the Write Amplification on the relatively fragile TLC NAND.

Likewise, the vector is difficult to recommend for a laptop due to its high idle power consumption.

The crucial drives are solid all round performers though consider the Plextor m5s which uses the same controller but is tuned for faster random reads (I. E. The better system responsiveness) at the cost of lower random writes.

You always have to be wary of Sandforce drives in that their incompressible speeds suffer greatly vs their compressible speeds. The high compressible speeds used to be a big thing when most other controllers had difficulty breaching 500mb/s but nowadays it seems very moot. Furthermore, they are very intolerant when fully filled up (which is very likely due to the small 120gb capacity) with regards to garbage collection. Simply because of the performance superiority of the Samsung 840 or the brute reliability of the Crucial drives am hesitant to recommend the Sandisk Extreme. The drawbacks of TLC NAND seem preferable compared to the caveats of Sandforce. As a final note, Sandforce extreme drives have had issues with non-working TRIM in the past. I'm not certain if it has been resolved.

Essentially, this would be my summary of the 120-128gb SSD market:
1. Samsung 840 pro: High power efficiency coupled with excellent all round read performance (for a snappy desktop and fast boot times) very jack of all trades
2. OCZ Vector: one of the fastest possible SSDs when it comes to write speeds, very competitive read speeds but lower power efficiency
3. Crucial m4: very well proven, not absolutely the fastest but very reliable
4. Plextor M5s: cheap, same controller and NAND as the M4, tuned for fast Random Read at the cost of lower Random Write performance. I can personally confirm that DIPM works for this drive so it consumes <0.3W at idle
5. Samsung 840: excellent read speeds, poor write speeds, conservative garbage collection leads to wild fluctuations in performance, cheap and very good power efficiency. Biggest drawback is the questionable lifespan of the TLC NAND with heavy writes

 

I wouldn't give recommendation for either of those two SSDs since I havn't used them, but I know that while the 128GB Samsung 840 Pro performs similarly to the 256GB and 512GB models when less than halfway full that is not the case with the 120GB 840. Not only is the 250GB 840 slower than the 128GB 840 Pro, but the 120GB 840 is even slower. It's write speeds are over 2X slower than the 128GB 840 Pro. Just the OS and a few programs are going to saturate more than half of the 120GB 840 and turn a slow SSD even slower.
You can sometimes find the 250GB 840 on sale for $150 with no Tax on Tigerdirect, so get that if you find one on at that price, or just get the 840 Pro.
As for the Sandisk Extreme I don't know much about it other than it being a low cost solution for OEMs and being a relatively slow SSD.

 

i have a question, if i have Samsung 840 as my OS drive with some programs ( abit less then halfway full ) will it really slow down alot? i mean even slower then HDD as said above? Any more details on this can be useful, please suggest as i am planning to buy one 120gb 840 just for OS not storage, so it will be less then halfway full

 

The SSD's we have available today are 'performance optimized' at 240/250/256GB capacities. This is when the controllers channels are fully populated, the nand chips themselves are optimally interleaved and the actual capacity all come together to offer the best performance possible. At lower capacities, all three of these parameters are not at their best possible configuration - which is why performance plummets vs. the 'real' SSD's.

A 120GB SSD is just a toy in the storage subsystem world: unless you are running a tiny O/S with a tiny workload that doesn't change from day to day and week to week, then yes, it will slow down to below HDD levels. Not in all metrics or 'benchmarks' (obviously), but in real world use - when the user is waiting for the machine to finish the task he/she gave it. The pausing/stuttering a small SSD gives more than negates any other benefits it may offer (imo).

Consider that Windows (7/8) needs around 25GB, your programs and data may need another 25GB-75GB of capacity - now, also consider that Windows also needs ~25GB 'free' to run optimally and you can see how a 120GB (nominal, ~110GB available to the user) is cutting it close.

Further, if you listen to myself and Anand - leaving ~25-30% of the usable capacity as 'unallocated' to prevent these pausing/stuttering hiccups doesn't leave you with much of an SSD anymore.

See:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6489/playing-with-op

Not to mention that the TLC based 840 is substantially slower than the MLC based SSD's even from Samsung's own inventory - and both are notably slower than almost any MLC SSD at the 240/250/256GB capacity point.


This is not to say don't buy, if your budget is that tight and you 'must' buy now - this is a heads up so that you go into this with the full knowledge that this is an experiment with the hopes that a 'toy' solution will give you 'pro' (and sustained) results.

Hope this helped a little...

Good luck.

 

Reading Anand's article i assume in nutshell he was trying to say to leave around 25% space unallocated and drive will perform alot faster?

So even if i buy 120GB Samsung 840 series ( My budget doesnt allow any better, just worse ) and use just 50 gb (25 gb for O/S and 25gb for programs) out of 110 (user usable) Shrink the drive through Disk management and make 10GB Unallocated, Will my SSD perform good? i wont be making huge changes since its just for an O/S. Will it be fine then?

 

Check out this article HARDOCP - Conclusion - Samsung 840 120GB SSD Review

The 120gb 840 suffers from severe latency issues, apparently even HDDs can match this thing's write speed. Hell, the old Intel 320 looks like fast in comparison. I haven't experienced any of these issues myself but my drive is the 500gb 840 which has a much much more generous overprovision.

 

What people don't understand about over provisioning is not that the drive will perform faster - it is simply one way to (hopefully) ensure it will perform to spec's (sustained, over time).

Buying an 'ssd' just because you have enough to purchase the lowest level entry point is not a good reason to upgrade - especially when that 'upgrade' will most likely net you a decrease in performance, instead of an increase.

Save your money a while longer: the Crucial M500 series will be your best bet at affordability, capacity and true, 'upgraded' performance vs. whatever storage subsystem you're running now.

Good luck.

 

I have about 40GB on a spare area and 200GB as usable in my 840 Pro

 

Does this happen to all SSDs?

 

All SSD's, yes...

Though I'm sure that some are more affected than others...

 

Do we necessarily have to partition off some space or is it ok to just never fill up the drive?

 

So far in my torture testing of 120GB Samsung 840 I have not noticed any slowdown or lag. I am recording time it takes from startup of a command to the time it takes to complete the command and it has not varied anything significant. READ performance is reduced, but write performance hasn't budged. Granted it's only 140-150MB/s but it still hasn't been affected. The drive is continuously running from 75-100% filled.

See here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...40-120gb-endurance-testing-4.html#post9150564

I will do a full analysis and write up once the torture testing is complete.

 

@tilleroftheearth,

do you feel the same way on Samsung 840pro 256/512?

 

Sorry, you'll have to narrow that down a bit... specifically what aspect are you asking about?

 

Well mostly is more general, like i see you dont recommend samsung 840 120gb partially because of what those reviews found, but even those reviews specially the one from hardocp recommends the 840pro 256gb, even the 840 250gb, but just wondering what was take on the 840pro on higher capacities.

Personally im waiting on M500, to see how they do, and specially to drive the prices down of most ssds, but 840pro 256gb+ seems like a great ssd, if it gets below $200 i think it will be my bet unless the M500 comes out tearning down in prices.

 

I'm using SanDisk Extreme 240GB in my notebook and desktop since last April. Both systems running 24/7 and never faced any issues.

 

As a user of the Intel 320, Intel 330, Plextor m5s 256gb and the Samsung 840 pro. I can tell you that the Samsung 840 pro was clearly built for solid all round performance but special focus was made for the Random 4k Read and Power consumption. My Plextor m5s had very aggressive garbage collection at the moment of delete so when it settled in to DIPM, it would stay there almost indefinitely (about 0.4W idle), this was probably second only to the Intel 320 in terms of power efficiency. While the Samsung 840 pro is known to have good power consumption, this was the older models with the initial firmware, the latest firmware restores the behaviour to something closer to the 830. Basically, the drive comes out of sleep periodically to do GC, during these times, I can track a spike of about 0.5-1W on batterybar that coincides with the HDD light popping up. I would say compared to the m5s, I have lost about 15 minutes of battery life due to the new firmware of the 840 pro.

The second most tangible difference is the performance, the 840 pro feels not only extremely snappy but consistently so, while the m5s could keep up, you sometimes get these random slowdowns, e.g. right clicking on files to show metadata, the Samsung 840 pro would not slow down while the m5s holds firm for about 5 files, the 6th file opens significantly slower.

My boot times (UEFI, Secure boot with Windows 8) decreased by about 2 seconds since installing the 840 pro (vs the M5s, which shaved off about 3 seconds compared to the Intel 320), I basically don't see the Windows splash logo anymore.

Its the little things that separate most modern SATAIII SSDs, I was skeptical at first but the performance difference is there though it is very subtle. While the 840 pro and the M5s are indistinguishable in peak performance, the 840 pro tends to be able to sustain such performance much more consistently.

Now, the m5s resides in my Desktop, snappiness has definitely improved due to the lack of power saving features and a 4.5ghz i5-2500k and I tell you, the performance feels similar to the 840 pro with power saving features on and a slower mobile CPU. This tells you something about the samsung drive's efficiency.

 

I am running a 480GB SanDisk Extreme in my M15X and it has been flawless for over a year. They had an issue with the TRIM in the beginning but they got it fixed quite some time ago with a firmware update. My machine is a little older so I only hit SATA 2 speeds, but it works great, and pepped up the machine remarkably.