Samsung 850 Pro review!

Samsung 850 Pro 128GB SSD Review

heres review for 128GB for samsung 850 pro, stay tuned for reviews on other capacity .


http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/64...sd-review-the-new-performance-king/index.html

1TB review ummmmmm

 

AnandTech has one out too.

The most interesting must be the consistency tests, and wow does the 850 Pro give the Extreme Pro a good run for its money. This is definitely an SSD I'll be keeping my eye out for.

 

Incredible performance. Samsung finally addressed the Achilles heel of the 800 series while maintaining the same phenomenal burst performance. 40nm nand has massive endurance, the only drawbacks back in the day was density and die size.

 

Samsung 850 PRO official homepage.
Samsung SSD 850 PRO Overview | Samsung SSD

Well I just read the Anandtech review and 850 PRO is the fastest drive out there. Period.
Not just performance, but it also consume least power of all drives. So good for Samsung.
What I also like is that they increased system RAM caching with RAPID to 4GB. Awesome.

My only con is that it is still SATA3 and not built for PCIe M2. That is the future and they will be much faster.

The good news is that 3D NAND can be used on PCIe M2 SSDs as well

 

The only two things that don't impress with this drive are less built-in over-provisioning than the 840 EVO and the price. Still a really solid effort, and it's something that should force the prices of the 840 EVO down so bargain hunters should benefit, too.

 

Yep the price could use some work, especially if it wants to be competitive with the Extreme Pro. But if they were within $30 of each other, then it's a no-brainer for the 850 Pro.

Hopefully once this is released the 840 Evo 1TB will drop below $350, now that would be a real catch indeed.

 

I`ve read a bunch of reviews and its one tidy optimized SATA3 drive for sure. Fastest out there by a decent margin. The 8TB petabyte life expectancy and low power consumption is just frosting on the cake.

I was particular impressed by the latency of this drive


Would def buy one if I was in the market for a new SSD today


http://www.myce.com/review/samsung-850-pro-1tb-ssd-review-72135/introduction-1/
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/2014/07/samsung-850-pro-ssd-review/
Samsung SSD 850 Pro 128GB and 1TB Review - HotHardware
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-850-pro-ssd-performance,3861.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/838-samsung-850-pro-ssd/

 

An msata and m.2 version would be perfect

 

Low power consumption, granted. 8TB Petabyte life expectancy? What are you smoking?

All capacities are rated for 150TB written or 10 years, whichever comes first.


The consistency is greatly increased (it had to be; the 840 Pro was a disgrace) but the stupidly higher prices puts a damper on this Samsung offering.

The name of the game is highest performance in a real world workload for each dollar spent - the SanDisk Extreme Pro is still the best bang for the buck imo.

I have no doubt the Samsung will 'feel' fast (just like the 1TB EVO does) in light use. But I'm just as sure that the SanDisk EP will 'be' fast(er) too than the Samsung in real world workloads that continually tax the storage subsystem over time - and, the SanDisk Extreme Pro will be cheaper too.


See:
Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD Review - Page 7 of 8 - Legit ReviewsPCMark 8 Consistency Test


What would have made this GREAT news if we could have a 2 or even a 4TB SSD in our current SATAIII based systems, as it stands, it is only another SSD that gives little real world improvements (even with RAPID @ 4GB RAM) at a much higher cost.


The stacked nand, the engineering expertise and the online tech 'hoopla' over the 850 is a mere smoke show of what is actually being offered: a catching up with previous products with regards to consistency - and an effective ~5% increase in 'snappiness' all at the premium of at least $100 or ~16%.

Don't get me wrong; I will have a 1TB sample of this drive one day to at least test (i.e. 'on sale') - but the facts as presented so far are not compelling enough to spend a penny extra for this new Samsung tech.

 

All that lengthy diatribe could have been succinctly summarized as "not the best bang for buck right now, especially considering the competition that is SanDisk Extreme Pro". As to your claim that the Extreme Pro will be fast(er) than the 850 Pro, I think that's a bit premature at this point no?

 

n=1, thanks for the summary, but that is not the only point I made.

Sure my claim may be premature; but the link I provided shows that the Samsung 850 Pro drops to ~50% of the performance of the SanDisk Extreme Pro during heavy, sustained use.

Even with the 850 being 'snappier' after it has time to recover, that is hardly consolation for being half as fast the rest of the time.

 

Yes I read the results in the link, but curiously there appears to be a large discrepancy between their results and the results from TweakTown's review.

 

I don't see any discrepancy. One is showing us storage bandwidth all tests while the other one is specifically the photoshop heavy trace.

 

So then the overall performance must not be 50% bad if the all tests result clearly shows the 850 Pro is just behind the Extreme Pro.

 

That would depend on your workflow and how closely it mimicked the photoshop heavy tests (where I live and breathe).

 

This review should cover everything, and it shows 850 Pro beating Sandisk Pro in:
Heavy workload (2013 bench)
Light workload by a good margin (2011 bench, typical average user scenario)
Consistancy
Random 4K by a good margin
Life expectancy (150TB vs 91TB)

Anyone who recommends Sandisk Pro over 850 Pro (if money is no issue) is as clueless as you can get it...

 

The Anandtech reviews proves what is theoretically possible with the hardware. It is not run on a partitioned drive, let alone an actual O/S with programs and data installed on it.

There is no allotment for TRIM and GC to do it's job (in real time with all the pro's and con's that entails).

There is also no real world comparatives in that report to even try to judge the drives against each other on a more level footing.

I love the detail and in depth dive Anandtech takes with their reviews; but real world performance reporting is still a foreign concept to them (just like their bias towards anything fruity is obvious too).


Claiming the Samsung 850 Pro as the current tech leader is a no brainer for anyone, including me at this point in time.

Recommending it blindly when all the current data is weighed equally is not only clueless; it is irresponsible too. At any price.

 

But extrapolating the result from a single subtest of a test suite to "...that is hardly consolation for being half as fast the rest of the time" is a bit extreme don't you think? Especially when the all tests result shows it is neck to neck with the Extreme Pro.

Different strokes for different folks. I don't disagree the current MSRP is a strike against the 850 Pro, but if prices were comparable, then it really boils down to what matters to you more.

 

n=1, please read my post #12 again.

I am not changing what I wrote; or the meaning of what I wrote; you are (trying to, anyways).


When we are talking about the SSD that can do the most work for the least $$$, day in and day out; it is the SanDisk Extreme Pro that has that distinction at this point. The Samsung offerings are still in the 'snappiness' category and while some still chase those 'improvements' I have stopped that since the late '90's.

Like a '70's Camaro that can hit 80MPH in less than a second or two, but tops out at 120MPH (with (im)proper gearing)...


I think we understand each other: you want flash over substance, that's fine.

But even if the prices are comparable, that doesn't change the differing levels of productivity offered by these two SSD's. And that is where the Samsung 850 Pro falls short for me (as I stated originally).

 

Your main gripe was that the increased snappiness does not matter if the 850 Pro is only half as fast "the rest of the time". But unless that "rest of the time" constitutes nothing more than workflow mimicking the Photoshop Heavy Trace, then it is simply not a true statement, as TweakTown's Consistency Test clearly shows that across all subtests (including the Photoshop Heavy Trace), the 850 Pro is neck to neck with the Extreme Pro. Anyhow that's my understanding, if I did change the meaning of what you said then I'm sorry, but that's my interpretation at the moment.

 

I have no gripe.

Snappiness does not equal performance. Period.

I also stated my use case in my original post (#10 in this thread): sustained performance over time. So yes, you are trying to change the meaning of what I wrote.


To spend my money, snappiness is not what would do it; almost all SSD drives are just too close these days to care about that.

That is why I chase productivity improvements from my hardware - the return on my $$$ are eventually realized and even when I am through with the old hardware, it is still more than worth something to others to continue using for a long time too.

 

You made the claim that:

And all that is based on a single subtest result in a test suite for performance consistency. And hence why I said:

What meaning have I changed exactly? I was simply pointing out that in order for your original statement to hold water, then you must very narrowly define "sustained performance" in the manner above. And if that's indeed how you originally intended to define sustained performance then fair enough.

 

Some posts were deleted from the thread earlier today because they contributed nothing to the discussion but snark. Please keep that to yourselves. And when you see it in posts, either report it or ignore it. But don't take the bait. It usually ends in nothing but pain.

 

magician is crap, when i look at review at Tweaktown I look for the one without rapid mode on lol. overall sandisk E pro and samsung 850pro exchange blow but the cost of 850 pro.. ? 1TB at almost 800bucks after tax yeah right not happening, its targeting for those whos only getting a single drive for rapid mode purposes and rip off more money

gotta wait in raid0, cause intel 730 blow them away in raid some how =/

just waiting for HyperS SLC 256gb and raid reviews.

 

You can't simply keep taking my statements out of context, even after I've explained them to you???

Piece together our conversation and you'll see that I too have a point - even if you don't agree with it.



To try to further clarify what 'performance' is to me:

An SSD that is 'up to' a certain performance level for a few seconds at a time is not a performance component. This is the class that all the Samsung SSD's I've used have been in. Starting with the 1TB EVO (OP'ed to 650GB's) at least they have been feeling 'snappy' to me (actually, the 'snappiest' I've used so far).

However, an SSD that can indefinitely perform at a high level (sustained, over time) which for an storage subsystem device like an SSD means read and write data continuously... to me, is a true 'performance' champ. This is what I've discovered the SanDisk Extreme series to be (not to mention the cost savings they bring to the table). Why? Simply because of (high enough) consistent performance over time.


It's okay if you don't agree with the above statements. But please stop trying to prove how little I know about what I've said.


And no, this is not a narrow definition of performance in my eyes. It's the only definition that counts.

I am just as disdainful of all 'U' series cpu's that throttle in cooling challenged chassis' - or any cpu that is throttled by design for that matter (i.e. apple products). The theoretical performance might make them convincing to some that don't have direct experience with different setups; but when actually used to do work; the performance promised is only theoretical and the sexiness of the chassis (at the expense of the cooling solution) soon disappears (at least for me).


I am trying to answer your questions as best as I can... if I have failed, please ask again with a different style. But please try to understand the answers I am providing first.

 

I believe its too early to pass judgement. There is more technology to this drive than meets the eye. For one, it has two hardware advantages that really stand out.
1. 40nm manufacturing
2. MEX controller.

Point 1 correlates to low reprogram latencies, this is huge for consistency. The potential to increase steady state performance consistency is huge simply due to the more agile NAND compared to the 19nm Sandisk variety.
The MEX controller is one of the fastest at burst performance available I might say it even surpasses the micron unit in the Sandisk drive. Everyone saw what it was capable of with the slow TLC memory. Imagine this speed coupled with low latency 40nm NAND. You have a very pronounced hardware level advantage.

At the end of the day, that extra cost is buying you top of the range burst performance AND excellent consistency. The Sandisk drive leans more towards consistency but is much cheaper to compensate.
I'm uneasy that the 850pro can so effortly outclass the competition, at least its costly to pay for RnD. However I'm downright terrified of what Samsung can achieve with a 2nd generation revision of the 3d NAND. You can be sure the price will go down, you move to 3D or get left behind.

 

So tiller, if I understood you correctly, are you saying that sustained performance over time is the only metric that matters when it comes to your evaluation of an SSD's performance?

 

No, it is not the only metric that matters, but it is the one that has the most weight when deciding to put down my money for one. This, from experience.


Snappiness is great, up to a point. But it is not worth paying anything extra for. Especially when going from an HDD to an SSD (the jump in snappiness is already obvious...).

Sustained performance over time is something that is more than skin deep. Installing programs and their updates, installing MS' monthly updates, installing virus definitions and running scans and of course, using it in my more intense workloads where performance over time becomes crucial to my livelihood.

This is not a mere wish of a storage subsystem - it is the whole reason for their existence. Even for the 'mundane' tasks I've listed above, the benefits are obvious (especially for me when I'm responsible for well over three dozen workstations, mobile and desktops, each month) - yeah; hours upon hours saved.



Buying an SSD without the above in mind is like buying a Subaru with a wing and ground effects and then laughing at the Ferrari's. Even this is okay if you paid Subaru prices for your ride of choice. But, if you pay Ferrari prices for a Subaru ride... well, that is what I'm trying to open a few peoples eyes to.


To me, the 3D Nand is the 'wing', the RAPID software is the 'ground effects' and the price puts it in the Ferrari (of SSD's) territory. Even with the 3 core MEX controller there is no sustained over time performance you can sink your teeth into. The tech is impressive as I've stated before. But high tech on its own is not sufficient and hasn't been for a very long time (i.e. google glass).


Take the ATTO Disk Benchmark RAPID performance as seen in the following link,

See:
Samsung 850 Pro SSD Review - Showing Off With 3D V-NAND | The SSD Review


The 'up to' results are good, no, they're great. But the dips in performance are pretty atrocious in anything other than benchmarking.

Furthermore, the following quote is what I've been suggesting that RAPID (and other RAM caching schemes) offer most users for well over a year now (bold mine):

Yeah; the RAPID mode 'ground effects' sure make the SSD look pretty - but faster it is not - no matter what 'scores' may suggest. And that is why paying a premium when better products are around for much less seems a little puzzling to me.

 

Debates aside, will this drive come in other form factors? MSATA particularly? I want my next laptop do be free of 2.5 inch drives.

 

do you skip everything and just look at numbers on chart?

 

Lets hope so. It would make more sense since the scalability of VNAND is greater than a traditional planar configuration regarding area occupation. I too am waiting to get my hands on a masta 256 x 2 setup. In one of their interviews however a samsung representative said that first comes the 2.5 than next is to be seen. Finger crossed

 

release a 2TB msata then im in lol. TLC, 3D nand i'll use it for storage, fit two 2TB msata in a 2.5" space, totally worth it.

 

I'd like to share some results I got from some rudimentary testing I did and what I should make of them.

To begin, I dug out an 840 Pro 512GB and Extreme II 480GB I had lying around. Both of these were less than 4 months old and mainly used as a data drive prior to the tests. In order to ensure consistency I used PartedMagic to secure erase both drives, then cloned in an existing installation from a 512GB 840 Pro, then set OP to 30% for both. Yes I know a fresh installation on a used drive would have been a better idea, but I'm not a full time reviewer and don't have that much free time, and I wanted to keep confounding variables to a minimum. Anyways...

I did 3 tests, each back-to-back in order to hammer the drives as much as possible and ensure there's minimal recovery time. The 3 tests are:

-copying of 640 episodes of different TV shows, ranging in size from 67MB to 0.96GB, totaling 63.8GB, using TeraCopy, from an internal 500GB 840 Evo on a SATA3 port
-a full system scan using MalwareBytes Pro
-installation of PCMark 8 (3.81GB in size)

I ran the file copying in quadruplicate, in order to get a good average readout as well as make sure there are no flukes. Once all 4 runs have finished, I immediately fired up MBAM and did a full system scan, and once that was done I installed PCMark 8.

Results below:


On the one hand the 840 Pro seems to give really good peak file transfer speeds, as evidenced by the 15 minute run. On the other hand (sometimes large) fluctuations are seen from one run to the other. By contrast the Extreme II is slower in every run, but the results are more consistent and don't fluctuate wildly. But, the 840 Pro still manages to finish the full system scan faster than the Extreme II, while the PCMark 8 installation time is the same.

Couple questions:
1. Am I starting to see the tip of the consistency issue by the 4th run on the 840 Pro?
2. Just based on these results and my subjective feeling when using both SSDs, the 840 Pro definitely felt snappier. But given 840 Pro's supposedly terrible consistency, is this because fresh out the box 840 Pro wins, yet performance will continue to degrade steadily until it drops to below Extreme II's level? In other words, are the above results due to 840 Pro's better burst performance?
3. Is the SanDisk Extreme II "what you see is what you get" ie the performance from a clean slate on day 1 will still be the same performance after 3 years of heavy usage?

 

n=1, thanks for sharing your testing.

A few questions before I comment below: I'm assuming this is a desktop? What platform/cpu/RAM and O/S are you running? What Intel RST version?


A couple of observations:

Starting with a SE'ing and then cloning the O/S, you allow both SSD's to show their best results possible (essentially pure sequential writes).

With 30% OP'ing on both SSD's, their consistency should (theoretically) be as ideal as possible all things considered (hardware, firmware, wear leveling, GC and TRIM routines).

The 500GB EVO is a storage drive or a system (O/S) drive? I think as an O/S drive it may be skewing the copy results (for both SSD's tested).


1) I think this shows the issue even more than I would have guessed (considering all the above points). With a full/clean install of Win8.1x64 Pro I can see (frustratingly) how the 840 Pro seems (at times) so much more responsive, yet still complete tasks (eg. simple Windows updates) slower or equal to the SEII.

2) The snappy sense the 840 Pro gave me was actually a damper for my enthusiasm for the drive in general; because under a constant load it would feel positively lethargic. The split personality it displays leaves me to think this is a work in progress (firmware?).

3) The SEII 512GB drives I use are all OP'ed at least 30% and on my desktop workstations, 50%. I use them from anywhere between 2-14 Hrs straight (PS image editing) and the systems are just as fast at the beginning of the work session as at the end. The systems are never turned off, simply rebooted as needed (WU's).


I haven't kept any drive for 3 years of my typical/heavy usage; but with the OP % I employ for my drives (I used to do the same for my HDD's; short stroke them to ~20% of their total capacity for Scratch disk usage), I wouldn't expect anything less (3 years) from the SEII 480GB drives.



I want to add that I am currently testing Magician 4.4 with the capability to use 4GB RAM (but only on one of my lesser systems) and the snappiness is very, very obvious and welcome. Keep in mind though; in the testing I've done previously with caching software, any RAM taken away from the O/S and/or PS for caching purposes is sorely missed when productivity is the goal (even if the system feels snappier up until the performance dives off a cliff (when the RAM runs out)).

I would be curious to see what the above results would look like with RAPID 1.1 enabled (if you have more than 8GB of RAM available in your test system).


Question: With a $130 difference between the two drives, do you think this is worth it for the snappiness (all 3 minutes and 12 seconds worth each half hour, or, the 1 second saved in the PCM8 install)? It wasn't for me (the 840 Pro's are relegated to caching duties now in my NAS units).

See:
Hard Drives - AV / Surveillance & Desktop Drives at Memory Express

 

It was a laptop with 4900MQ, running W7 Pro x64 with 16GB 2133 ram. IRST version is 12.9. Both SSDs were cloned off of an old 840 Pro I used for about 7 months before switching to a 1TB 840 Evo.

If you buy both SSDs from Amazon the price difference is down to $100, but to answer your question, it really depends. Yes because I care about snap and responsiveness, so I definitely don't mind paying a premium for it. That being said, I realize we're talking seconds (or less) of difference for the most part in a daily routine (opening documents/programs, loading games etc), but since my workflow doesn't tax the storage subsystem anywhere near the level where it would cause the 840 Pro/Evo to keel over, the excellent burst performance is very welcomed. (after switching to the 1TB 840 Evo the snappiness is even more obvious)

Admittedly this is very much a personal preference, and there's a (potentially large) psychological component to it. For example I *know* the SEII is only 4 seconds slower to boot when I timed it, and even though it only took about 3 seconds longer to load a game, subjectively it felt much longer than that, and on a few occasions I caught myself tapping my fingers waiting for something to happen or finish happening. So in that sense, yes it was worth the premium so I don't have an anxiety attack (don't laugh). But for Mr. Joe Average who doesn't care nearly as much (or feel nearly as strongly) about snappiness, probably not.

 

Thanks for the additional info.

The 1TB EVO is definitely snappier than the 840 Pro, ime.

Any chance to run the tests with RAPID 1.1 enabled?

 

hmmm. new SSD with new tech. I say hold out until no news of sudden death drive.

 

Hopefully at some point down the road.

Good point, we don't know anything about 3D NAND at this point and its reliability.

 

The most interesting observation I drew from your data is how the worst case on the 840 Pro is very close to the best case on the Extreme II.
I have a few theories regarding this
Consistency is exactly as the name sounds, predictable performance. I don't think the 840 Pro will degrade over time, I think the issue with it is your body's perception. The saying goes, you don't perceive something as slow until you've seen something faster. Thus, in specific short term tasks, you see the 840 Pro completing tasks extremely fast, then other times you perceive it taking longer, your body is then hyper attuned to the slowest episode resulting in a discontinuity of experience thus the feeling of "inconsistency or "hiccups".
Because theres so little variation in the Extreme II's performance, it may be slower than the 840 Pro but your body will perceive it as "smoother", "faster" or "snappier" due to the small performance delta.

Again what made it interesting is the worst case for the 840 Pro is still competitive or better than the Extreme II's best case. Electronically, the 840 Pro is faster on average, but your body perceives the Extreme II as faster.

 

Another way to look at that data is that in less than an hour and a half, the time to do the exact same thing increased by ~41% for the 840 Pro when doing things that are normal/expected of the storage subsystem.

If the ~24 minute runs were now the new normal for the 840 Pro, then this could still be considered okay (we got a few moments of better performance out of it). However, what I have found though is that the time to complete simple tasks like this keeps increasing with SSD's that are skewed towards snappiness instead of an actual work/productivity focus. Again; not anything extraordinary... just normal storage subsystem tasks like copying files back and forth (and the bigger the drive, the more this workload is expected of it, naturally).

For example; the 1TB EVO is the snappiest drive I've ever used, but it's sustained throughput is greatly lacking - even when taking the burst speeds it is capable of into consideration.


I'll point out again that these numbers were achieved with the best possible scenario for the SSD's; 30% OP'ing and a cloned O/S installation. The 840 Pro would show much worse consistency with no OP'ing and a full/clean install of the O/S and programs (and all their updates).

 

my ramdisk destroyed samsung evo with rapid in every browser i have used i cant go back to ssd anymore, at least not for browsers.

@n=1, drive usually gets hammered when you do lots of random writes, so in your test case there isn't a whole lot of it so it isn't considered as "heavy" and for the most part, on the sequential write portion, its queue depth of 1. when it gets to high qdepth with random writes thats when samsung falls drastically.

 

Which ramdisk software do you use?

 

Good question. And here's a decent summary of available RAM disks: RAMDisks Roundup and testing

A little overwhelming but seems to cover everything.

edit: out of all those imdisk seems to be the best option, and it's free. Only you have to do manual backups with the software, but there must be a command line prompt that would do that, possibly use a script to write to disk at shutdown?

 

AnandTech has a short piece on endurance testing for those interested.

 

i use primo atm, but basically i throw everything in there

 

Does anyone know the release date for the 1TB 85O PRO?

 

They seem to be delayed. No idea why or until when.

Amazon said "1-3 weeks" more than a month ago. Now the same link says 2-3 months.

 

Thanks, I'll go for the 512GB 850 PRO then. I think the storage will be more than enough

 

That's what I have, here are the benchmarks:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...o-vs-840-pro-vs-840-evo-vs-840-evo-msata.html

 

I received my new Lenovo T440s with CPU I7-4600U today and swap the 500GB HHD with the 512GB 850 PRO.

What tweaks\settings should I use with the Samsung Magician Software?