Samsung 840 Evo Discussion Thread

[Coup27]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/...iew-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested

This looks insane. Similar speeds to the 840 Pro while using TLC. Combine that with the TurboWrite and RAPID technologies and I think Samsung have delivered a killer blow.

I'm selling my current rig (sig) and getting a Haswell mITX rig along with a new Samsung SSD. I was going to get the 840 Pro but unless there's an 840 Pro Evo (?) coming soon this looks like the best option!

 

[razel]

I absolutely love what they've done. Not only did they improve the 840 itself, but with the RAM cache, the area around it as well... all of which helps you want to buy a faster storage system. Can't wait for the SSD industry to move to a standardized a PCIe/NAND interface. Bring it!

To be fair, OCZ also did implement very clever performance tweaks in their Vertex 4 (I think) series. I think if those were kept under 50% usage, they was no MLC write performance penality.

 

[Cerb]

They can keep that, "RAPID" feature, IMO. But that is much more of an improvement than I expected, especially the improvement in service time.

 

[voodoo7817]

Good article from Anand, and the EVO looks like a real winner. Tom's had a similarly glowing review.

I was having trouble deciding between the 500gb 840 and the 256gb 840 Pro because they are close enough in performance and price and I think the EVO makes my decision pretty easy. Even if they release an 840 Evo Pro in the not too distant future, it will likely be considerably more expensive and I don't think the increased performance will make a huge difference on SATA3. This will be a nice upgrade over my 128gb C300 I bought a couple of years ago.

I'm generally not a first day buyer of things although I'm leaning that way in this case. I guess other companies will be releasing their new models soon but it looks like this will be hard to beat.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

in real world usage, how much faster is the evo then the regular 840?

 

[Cerb]

in real world usage, how much faster is the evo then the regular 840?

That's going to do depend on what you do. If you just read, or just write, like most people, there won't be a noticeable difference. The main thing I'm seeing is that the TLC 840's weakness, write latencies, has been worked on. Mixed read/write could make the 840 non-Pro fall down hard (still far faster than a HDD, but much worse than quite a few older MLC SSDs for similar money). VMs tend to get fragmented a lot, and can be hard on SSDs, as can DB work, which includes CAD and 3D modeling. *n*xes tend to rely on lots of small files, too, more-so than Windows, on average, and so differences in random read/write can be more perceptible than in Windows.

While AT doesn't specifically do those kinds of tests (HardOCP and StorageReview do, off the top of my head), the storage bench (service time) and consistency tests usually track the same kind of thing, and those look excellent for the Evo, probably thanks to the SLC write buffer. That write buffer probably even further minimizes WA, too.

 

[Germanic]

Where can I buy one?

The Samsung 840 EVO seems much faster than the standard Samsung 840 while priced significantly lower than the Samsung 840 Pro.

I'm thinking of buying a new 250GB SSD for my other computer that I have for work. I think the 840 EVO will be my next pick.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

That's going to do depend on what you do. If you just read, or just write, like most people, there won't be a noticeable difference. The main thing I'm seeing is that the TLC 840's weakness, write latencies, has been worked on. Mixed read/write could make the 840 non-Pro fall down hard (still far faster than a HDD, but much worse than quite a few older MLC SSDs for similar money). VMs tend to get fragmented a lot, and can be hard on SSDs, as can DB work, which includes CAD and 3D modeling. *n*xes tend to rely on lots of small files, too, more-so than Windows, on average, and so differences in random read/write can be more perceptible than in Windows.

While AT doesn't specifically do those kinds of tests (HardOCP and StorageReview do, off the top of my head), the storage bench (service time) and consistency tests usually track the same kind of thing, and those look excellent for the Evo, probably thanks to the SLC write buffer. That write buffer probably even further minimizes WA, too.

i do none of that stuff, my laptop is my internet browsing machine. occasional movie viewing but movies generally stored on an SD card in the slot.

 

[adnank77]

Any they blame me of being a Samsung Fanboy .. It's fully justified

 

[Cerb]

i do none of that stuff, my laptop is my internet browsing machine. occasional movie viewing but movies generally stored on an SD card in the slot.

Then honestly, the biggest differences are going to be price, capacity, and power consumption, generally in that order.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I'm game for one when they come out.

 

[Germanic]

So the expected release date is August?

 

[Burner27]

I would be curious to see how the RAPID software works with an 840 Pro when it gets written for it. I read the initial release of the Samsung Magician software v4.2 will have the RAPID software for the EVO only, but a future release will support the 840 Pro.

 

[Coup27]

A few people including me asked in the comments section of the review if there was an 840 Pro replacement (840 Pro Evo?) coming along but no reply. Given the performance of the 840 Evo along with the Turbowrite feature, I'm wondering if they've cannibalized the market for the 840 Pro. If you do need a much higher endurance drive, I'm sure they'll sell you an enterprise solution.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Given the performance of the 840 Evo along with the Turbowrite feature, I'm wondering if they've cannibalized the market for the 840 Pro.

That's pretty much what I'm thinking too. I'm seriously considering getting one to replace my 120GB 830. (running a bit low on capacity... :|)

 

[EXCellR8]

I love Sammy SSD's and I recommend them to my customers all the time. I have a pair of 840's that I use regularly and they are terrific, but I may need to pick up one of these new drives as well.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

You don't want ANY part of that RAPID feature, trust me. The company they bought who implemented the caching software is garbage. Stay away from all things software related from Samsung.

 

[Coup27]

You don't want ANY part of that RAPID feature, trust me. The company they bought who implemented the caching software is garbage. Stay away from all things software related from Samsung.

Care to elaborate? The gains Anand saw in the RAPID testing were huge with 1 bug spotted but as it was a BETA you come to expect that.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

Care to elaborate? The gains Anand saw in the RAPID testing were huge with 1 bug spotted but as it was a BETA you come to expect that.

Take a wild guess what happens when your caching software has bugs.

 

[Cerb]

Take a wild guess what happens when your caching software has bugs.

Not good things, whatever they are . As soon as I read that it used dedicated nonpaged kernel RAM, I thought along the lines of, "not no, but HELL NO." SLC-mode caching: brilliant. Taking RAM to do special caching, without a 50+ page document showing how it handled memory errors, bugs (or showing proof of lack of data corrupting bugs, barring memory errors), and bad shutdowns: no, no, and no.

Keep in mind that the disabled results were almost 23,000 IOPS in IOMeter 4K write, and 230-330MBps in the ATSBs. Also, the WA should be, in the worst case, about that of the prior 840, but typically better, and initial estimates (like AT's) point towards that. I'm sure some people will like and use RAPID, but this thing looks awfully impressive w/o it.

 

[Germanic]

An interesting article from Forbes which I'd say is worth reading:

[Updated] Samsung Wants 'SSDs For Everyone' With Introduction Of 1TB 840 EVO Solid State Drive

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...ntroduction-of-1tb-840-evo-solid-state-drive/

Basically most people will shift from the 840 Pro to the 840 EVO and this will probably phase out the older 830 and even the standard 840.

The 840 EVO is really no different in price compared to the standard 840 and 99% of the time is equivalent to the 840 Pro except in write intensive applications where the 840 Pro still has a slight edge.

This is Samsung's plan to phase out all HDDs and make everyone move to SSDs. It will make everyone's lives much more efficient and there will be less downtime in terms of loading Windows 7 and other applications. The amount of seconds, minutes, hours saved by simply having an SSD will be enormous when calculated for 6 billion people.

 

[seitur]

It is nice and all but prices are still far too high to replace HDD's, even at home usage. Many people have whole PC bought for 400-600$ a price of 500 or 1 TB Samsung respectively and 128 and 250 drives does not have enough space to replace HDDs, especially with "next gen" consoles and resolution increases which will continue to increase size of games and movies / videos. Streaming and cloud won't mitigate it enough.
500 GB new HDD cost 50-60 $.
Diffrence is still way too big. I can see HDD's phasing out if 500 GB SSD would cost 100$, maybe 120-140$ (but that would be pushing it), but almost 400$? No chance.

Then cutting price of SSD down even more is problematic because of technological limitations. Can you imagine reliablity of i.e. 12-14nm TLC SSD?

Flash is dead-end technology. We need something else to replace it for SSD storage. Be it MRAM or something else. Something that scales down good. Consumer SSDs don't need more speed or IOPS than it did have already, it does need dramatically lower prices and not detoriating reliablity when going for lower process nodes and densier data packaging if it is ever going to replace HDDs.

 

[Germanic]

It is nice and all but prices are still far too high to replace HDD's, even at home usage. Many people have whole PC bought for 400-600$ a price of 500 or 1 TB Samsung respectively and 128 and 250 drives does not have enough space to replace HDDs, especially with "next gen" consoles and resolution increases which will continue to increase size of games and movies / videos. Streaming and cloud won't mitigate it enough.
500 GB new HDD cost 50-60 $.
Diffrence is still way too big. I can see HDD's phasing out if 500 GB SSD would cost 100$, maybe 120-140$ (but that would be pushing it), but almost 400$? No chance.

Then cutting price of SSD down even more is problematic because of technological limitations. Can you imagine reliablity of i.e. 12-14nm TLC SSD?

Flash is dead-end technology. We need something else to replace it for SSD storage. Be it MRAM or something else. Something that scales down good. Consumer SSDs don't need more speed or IOPS than it did have already, it does need dramatically lower prices and not detoriating reliablity when going for lower process nodes and densier data packaging if it is ever going to replace HDDs.

I have a 1TB hard drive on my work computer and not even 100GB is used. No games installed but I don't see the storage for games being more than 100GB.

So let's say I use 200GB on a gaming computer, then the 1TB hard drive is a waste. I'm wasting 800GB whereas I could be using a 256GB or 500GB SSD instead.

A 1TB storage drive is unnecessary for 99% of the population. The other 1% probably need the 1TB because all they do is download 1000 movies per month and sit at home and eat junk food all day. But this is not the majority...

Out of all the people I know, I still don't know anyone who has used more than 500GB of storage space on their computer. Sure, I know a person who hordes movies like there's no tomorrow, but even then, he doesn't even use 500GB of storage space.

 

[Cerb]

No music, either, I take it? That's an easy way to eat up space, especially if you archive (300-500MB/disc). I don't get it, but I also know several non-techies who take a couple hundred GB (and always growing). Low space use for a work computer is typical, since the HDDs lie on the other side of the cable.

 

[seitur]

I have a 1TB hard drive on my work computer and not even 100GB is used. No games installed but I don't see the storage for games being more than 100GB.

So let's say I use 200GB on a gaming computer, then the 1TB hard drive is a waste. I'm wasting 800GB whereas I could be using a 256GB or 500GB SSD instead.

A 1TB storage drive is unnecessary for 99% of the population. The other 1% probably need the 1TB because all they do is download 1000 movies per month and sit at home and eat junk food all day. But this is not the majority...

Out of all the people I know, I still don't know anyone who has used more than 500GB of storage space on their computer. Sure, I know a person who hordes movies like there's no tomorrow, but even then, he doesn't even use 500GB of storage space.

Extrapolating your own experience to everyone is faulty, but since we talk about personal experience - then I can tell that I know many people who use hundreads of Gigabytes.

Lot of people using Steam or Origin or other similar services do keep dozens of games installed on their HDDs. With new AAA or semi-AAA games taking 10-25 GB per one easily you can make the math.

Then you have people who are MMO / f2p games enthusiasts and keep multiple clients. Those games routinely have 15-25 GB. It is not unheard of MMO titles taking over 35 GB of space.

People game drives / folders can easily be in hundreads of GBs and they don't even need to have more than 20 games to achieve that.

Movies freak don't need to download 1000's movies either since 1080p movies easily take 1,5-2 GB per one.


Not sure why you keep saying 1 TB either - like I said. 500 GB SSD still cost 370$. I've been building whole PCs (without monitor) for non-enthusiasts people for movies, office and low-resoultion gaming that cost less than that. Upcoming PS4 and Xbox One also use HDDs and not SSD. Telling right? Since whole consoles including 500 GB HDD in most basic default version will cost 399 - 450$.

Then look into not so distant future when games made for next-generation consoles start to release and 4K movies start to appear. Space requirements will rise.

Majority of low-cost gamers and general usage people will not spend more than 100-130 $ for SSD and until you will be able to get at least 360-480 GB for that price, until then it will not replace HDD.