Considering Samsung 850 EVO 250GB

[Craig234]

For gaming. I'd prefer a 1TB drive, but Newegg has this drive on sale for $80, so I'm considering it for the savings (not huge, but good price).

But reading up a bit finds info saying 'the 250GB performance isn't very good, get the 500GB'.

Anyway, is this a good pick? The 840 EVO performance problem isn't in the 850 right?

Or is there a better pick, whether 250GB or up to 1TB?

(I saw the Amazon sale on MX200 1TB for $269 and was considering it also, but the Anandtech review was not very good).

The 850 isn't the best technology, but better technology is much more expensive?

 

[XavierMace]

I'm not aware of the 250GB having a problem, but yes the larger ones are faster. You'll also find some people base that sort of statement purely on useless synthetic benchmarks. You're hard pressed to find an SSD that performs "not very good" compared to a standard HD.

This applies to the AT review of the MX200 as well. Is it slower than the higher end Samsung drives? Yes. Will you actually notice the difference? Probably not. Crucial's superior support and better price will keep me buying their drives.

 

[corkyg]

I got the 850 EVO in 256 and 500 GB sizes. Both work just fine - no noticeable difference in real work performance. They are both in my old T510 notebook. 256 is OS and 500 is data.

 

[Craig234]

I'm not aware of the 250GB having a problem, but yes the larger ones are faster. You'll also find some people base that sort of statement purely on useless synthetic benchmarks. You're hard pressed to find an SSD that performs "not very good" compared to a standard HD.

This applies to the AT review of the MX200 as well. Is it slower than the higher end Samsung drives? Yes. Will you actually notice the difference? Probably not. Crucial's superior support and better price will keep me buying their drives.

I don't think anyone is saying performs bad compared to an HD, but they did say it performs not well enough that it's their summary in the review.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have a 120GB 850 EVO as my Linux boot drive. Works fine. Performance is, I suppose, technically faster than the 840 EVO I run Windows from, but I don't really notice in day-2-day use.

 

[Craig234]

I realized I have an old Samsung 830 256GB. Is that a good idea to use?

 

[Coup27]

The 830 is a brilliant drive and was the first drive which took Samsung towards the dominant position they're in now.

But I don't really know what you're asking? Will an 250GB 850 EVO be faster than a 250GB 830 in benchmarks? Yes. Will it be noticeable in real world usage? Possibly, but they're won't be much in it. You also stated you wanted 1TB but now asking if you can use a 250GB?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I realized I have an old Samsung 830 256GB. Is that a good idea to use?

It's not a _bad_ idea.

 

[.vodka]

Just use that 830 and be happy, secure erase it with samsung's tool and put it to good use. I have a 64GB 830 that I've retired to a notebook, it's working just fine with about 24TB of writes to the NAND (around 9TB host writes). Reliable drives. I still remember that 256GB 830 that did >5PB of writes at XS.

For future reference, keep in mind the 850 EVO doesn't have the problems that appeared on the 840 series, so if you end up buying one, you'll be happy.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Just use that 830 and be happy, secure erase it with samsung's tool and put it to good use. I have a 64GB 830 that I've retired to a notebook, it's working just fine with about 24TB of writes to the NAND (around 9TB host writes). Reliable drives. I still remember that 256GB 830 that did >5PB of writes at XS.

For future reference, keep in mind the 850 EVO doesn't have the problems that appeared on the 840 series, so if you end up buying one, you'll be happy.

Specifically the 840 EVO. The 840 Pro buyers just looked down their noses and laughed at us plebs.

 

[tweakboy]

Your not going to see a difference unless you do benchmarks... But in game performance,,,, will be unnoticable. gl

For hard drives, go with WD ,,,, Seagate and Maxtor are 1 company now and they suck. Seagate used to be good until they jumped in the bed with Maxtor the worst vendor ever for hard drives... thank you

 

[john3850]

I still have a few 830s,that run good in my I7 930.
I also have a 840 with only 77 hrs of use and 109GB of total writes on my wifes 2500k.

 

[Craig234]

Just use that 830 and be happy, secure erase it with samsung's tool and put it to good use. I have a 64GB 830 that I've retired to a notebook, it's working just fine with about 24TB of writes to the NAND (around 9TB host writes). Reliable drives. I still remember that 256GB 830 that did >5PB of writes at XS.

For future reference, keep in mind the 850 EVO doesn't have the problems that appeared on the 840 series, so if you end up buying one, you'll be happy.

Why 'secure erase' it? It's brand new. There were clear reports about the 1TB EVI 850 having some serious problem to not buy it, have those been fixed?

 

[Craig234]

OK, thanks, I was largely looking for things like 'oh, no, the $80 850 EVO is not as good a choices as this other option', or 'here's this great 1TB option', or 'great deal!', etc.

 

[.vodka]

I understood your 256GB 830 was used, as you said "old". That's why I suggested to secure erase it (as to give it a "clean slate" state), and to put it to good use somewhere.

I haven't heard of any problems on the 850 EVO lineup so far. I have a 250GB one and it's been flawless. There was a problem with it and TRIM, but it was traced back to a bug in the linux kernel, and that was a while ago.

 

[Craig234]

I understood your 256GB 830 was used, as you said "old". That's why I suggested to secure erase it (as to give it a "clean slate" state), and to put it to good use somewhere.

I haven't heard of any problems on the 850 EVO lineup so far. I have a 250GB one and it's been flawless. There was a problem with it and TRIM, but it was traced back to a bug in the linux kernel, and that was a while ago.

I see, by old I simply meant it's a long-obsolete model bought quite a while ago.

On the 1TB issue, from the Anandtech review:

"The issue with the 1TB mSATA is actually worse than I expected because it's literally stopping for seconds in a frequent manner. The pauses can even be over 50 seconds, so this isn't just some normal garbage collection that's happening in the background. I find this to be very alarming because it may have dramatic impact to user experience and it's simply something that no modern SSD should do anymore. I did let Samsung know about my findings before publishing this review, but I wasn't really able to get any comment from them regarding this issue and whether Samsung has noticed something similar in its internal tests. Adding over-provisioning seems to help as the pauses become much more infrequent, but for now I would still advise against buying the 1TB mSATA version until there's a fix for the IO consistency."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9023/the-samsung-ssd-850-evo-msata-m2-review/2

 

[Craig234]

Now even more tempting is the 500GB (reportedly faster than the 250GB) EVO 850 for $150. But then there are the 'wait a while, 5 times faster coming!' reports...

 

[StrangerGuy]

Any performance difference between all those drives is pretty much impossible to tell without synthetic benchmarks, so...

Now even more tempting is the 500GB (reportedly faster than the 250GB) EVO 850 for $150. But then there are the 'wait a while, 5 times faster coming!' reports...

We already have RAM disks that are magnitudes faster than any NAND storage yet in most workloads they are only just as fast as SATA SSDs because the software itself couldn't keep up.

 

[guskline]

Now even more tempting is the 500GB (reportedly faster than the 250GB) EVO 850 for $150. But then there are the 'wait a while, 5 times faster coming!' reports...

Have 2 of them in Raid 0 in my 5960x rig below and "Oh My" are they fast and solid!

 

[Shmee]

The 500 GB Evos are nice, and at a good price point. Only issue is mine is getting full :C

 

[Craig234]

Have 2 of them in Raid 0 in my 5960x rig below and "Oh My" are they fast and solid!

Is it really worth raid 0 on these?

How noticeable is the increase in speed?

 

[Coup27]

Is it really worth raid 0 on these?

How noticeable is the increase in speed?

Negligible. I ran 2x 830 128GB's in RAID0 a few years ago and there was no appreciable increase in speed. The system actually took a little longer to boot due to having to load the Option ROM. There was a rough doubling of the sequential read and write figures in benchmarks but unless you are running a workload where you do a heavy amount of sequential reading and writing (which a normal workload doesn't) then you won't notice anything.

4k read is one of the most important metrics for general performance and a single 830 in that system gave me 24.5MB/sec and the RAID0 did 23.13MB/sec.

 

[Craig234]

Good info, I'm comfortable with the pick - except one update.

Today the 850 PRO went on sale for $200 - could maybe return the $144 850 EVO for it...

 

[Coup27]

The difference is the Pro is marginally faster with much more endurance. Unless you need the endurance which I doubt, then there is no point. You would want a Pro over the EVO in a write intensive application.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Negligible. I ran 2x 830 128GB's in RAID0 a few years ago and there was no appreciable increase in speed. The system actually took a little longer to boot due to having to load the Option ROM. There was a rough doubling of the sequential read and write figures in benchmarks but unless you are running a workload where you do a heavy amount of sequential reading and writing (which a normal workload doesn't) then you won't notice anything.

4k read is one of the most important metrics for general performance and a single 830 in that system gave me 24.5MB/sec and the RAID0 did 23.13MB/sec.

Once you get 2012 era mainstream SSD the most of the bottleneck will be the software itself. Even decade old games don't load instantly on a RAMdisk or when fully cached in RAM on 2015 hardware.