Samsung 840 EVO

[chazus]

Samsung released it's new "840 EVO" SSD's, at 120gb, 250gb, 500gb, 750gb, and 1TB sizes.

Basically, it's a slightly weaker 840 Pro at 840 prices. Pretty much everything is the same except faster Write speeds. But nothing to spend extra $ on, really. Will be nice if it pushes 840 prices down further, thouh.


Review here

[Deleted]

well this bodes well for me actually, having a I5 3570k 4.2, 8 GB ram and sapphire 7970 vapour x system, think its time for me to get an SSD, gonna go get a 256 when its released on amazon uk here, time to ditch the 500 GB HDD boot drive

[Baracuda]

Just make sure you have a motherboard that supports Sata 6gb/s if you want the most out of your SSD and look up how to turn AHCI mode on or you won't get much out of it either.

[Deleted]

Just make sure you have a motherboard that supports Sata 6gb/s if you want the most out of your SSD and look up how to turn AHCI mode on or you won't get much out of it either.

ah dont worry, my mobo has all the needed features, i just never bothered with one since couldnt justify it since i have a 500 gb boot drive and 1 tb drive, saying that i need another 1 tb drive soon...., was waiting til my boot drive was causing issues so can retire that out right

[Deleted]

It still uses TLC memory, which is worse than MLC. They upped writing speed by letting some of the cells think they are SLC memory (Highest quality) in some kind of buffer.
So everything gets written to the buffer and than to the normal storage. SO, life expectency of this drive depends on the buffer.

From my understanding thats how it works. I wouldnt buy it based on that. I would probably go for a MLC based SSD from either crucial or plextor.

[chazus]

Sigh. This again?

The worries about TLC life span have been largely proven myth. I still wouldn't buy the drive, unless it was the same price or cheaper than the current 840, simply because a dollar more is a dollar wasted when it comes to read performance.

[Deleted]

Sigh. This again?

?? TLC is just lower quality than MLC. As SLC is higher quality than MLC.

I dont think I made myself clear enough. Im not saying anything about the life expectency of TLC (which probably much longer than the average user will use the drive for). It is just the use of the buffer that bothers me. Samsung is basicly saying to TLC chips: "You are now SLC chips". That must have an effect on the life expectency of those TLC chips. And that is bothering me, because the moment that buffers dies --> the SSD dies. And everything gets written to that buffer.
So I have my doubts about that.

At the moment prices for the 840 EVO are in between the 840 and 840 PRO (in the Netherlands). Both the plextor and crucial are cheaper, and are priced the same as the 840. For me, I would get the crucial over the samsung (be it 840, or 840 EVO).

[Killora]

Sigh. This again?

The worries about TLC life span have been largely proven myth. I still wouldn't buy the drive, unless it was the same price or cheaper than the current 840, simply because a dollar more is a dollar wasted when it comes to read performance.

I don't think we should be looking at the performance or cost of the low end EVO drives, we should be looking at the high end (rather, bigger) drives. Samsung has provided us with affordable large format high performance SSD's. 500gb @ $370, 750gb @ $530, and 1tb @ $650.

Not everything is about performance. We now have affordable large format SSD's from two different brands, which is a good thing.

[BicycleMafioso]

Read up upon them a week or so ago, but I have a serious disinterest in this product; TLC and a die-shrink for NAND?
The IOPS are nice, but I see no reason to opt for it over the regular 840 unless you spend a lot of time writing, and perhaps an array of mechanical drives is more suited then.

[Deleted]

hmm, in the consumer front, do these slight differences matter ?, will the load times for games differ, will the start up differ, something tells me it doesnt, if the reliability is fine, if the read and write is fine, and we are getting these performance for this price, whats the complaint ?

these SSDs are obviously made for the consumer and not NAS or enterprise, and samsung seem to have a good review for their current SSD products at the mo

[Deleted]

Anandtech review of the 840 EVO

[chazus]

hmm, in the consumer front, do these slight differences matter ?, will the load times for games differ, will the start up differ, something tells me it doesnt, if the reliability is fine, if the read and write is fine, and we are getting these performance for this price, whats the complaint ?

From a consumer perspective, and gaming, there is no difference. Hence (for me anyway) if they are any more expensive, not worth it.

EXCEPT, as people pointed out, the 750gb and 1TB models, which are nice simply because.... there isn't that size option for the 840s. Performance is a moot point for those.

[yurano]

840 EVO's formidable write speeds at the 120/128 capacity made my Plextor M5P purchase obsolete in less than a month.

[BicycleMafioso]

840 EVO's formidable write speeds at the 120/128 capacity made my Plextor M5P purchase obsolete in less than a month.

That's an odd way of thinking about it. It doesn't make your SSD any worse. Just less competetive. :P

[Deleted]

need to add, seems amazon.co.uk has these drives up for at least what looks like a preorder, got a 250 gb on preorder it seems or backlog, just heads up for the UK peeps, seems the 120 gb is out of stock already and amazon only listed it on 5th of july...

[Deleted]

After installing latest Samsung Magician I noticed a few feature, which is only available for the EVO though, which essentially doubles the read and write speeds by using the RAM as a cache. It's called Rapid Mode.



840 EVO 750GB was showing around ~900-950 MB/s in some tests

Workaround for the SATA 3 limitations as well. Uses around 50MB RAM. Should be coming to the Samsung Pro as well at some point.

[Deleted]

840 EVO 750GB was showing around ~900-950 MB/s in some tests

How is that even supposed to be possible when the maximum transfer speed of SATA 6GBit/s is ~600MByte/s?

[chazus]

How is that even supposed to be possible when the maximum transfer speed of SATA 6GBit/s is ~600MByte/s?

by using the RAM as a cache.

>.> Do quotes count as part of the /tenchar? :P

[Deleted]

damn you notarget, im still waiting for my evo drive , looking forward to this, my 500 gb boot drive is getting more and more annoying as of late and is the noisiest part of my rig

[Deleted]

Using the RAM as cache will not increase transfer speed for a) very large files and b) first time read (and large write) processes though.

If one wants to use the RAM as cache one could just use a RAMDisk and would not have to rely on the mysterious ways of the SSD software.