Question Samsung 860 Pro 256gb SSD Performance question

[Roland Of Gilead]

Hey all,

Quick question to any storage masters out there.

I'm running a Samsung 860 Pro 256gb as an OS drive on my gaming laptop. All is well with the drive, speeds seemed to be bang on as rated, so was happy out.

Anywho, I was playing around with Samsung Magician (Samsung SSD software) and came across performance settings. The drive was set to standard mode, and there was also a 'Performance Mode'. Well, who's not gonna try that!?

Anyway after the software did some stuff, it prompted for a reboot, and went straight back to desktop, no issues. Ran some benches, and I'm baffled.

Essentially, switching to Performance mode has seriously ioncreased bench numbers in a good way, but it just don't make sense.

Crystal Disk reports crazy sequential read/write numbers, and HWInfo backs that up! Running Samsing Magician, whilst the numbers are lower, they are still insanely high!

Here's a pic to illustrate:

https://imgur.com/a/VCHE9G7

View: https://imgur.com/a/VCHE9G7


Any ideas what's going on? I'm not complaining mind you.

Performance mode turns on DRAM cache. Could that really increase the numbers that much?

Baffled.com

 

[SkyNetRising]

Any ideas what's going on? I'm not complaining mind you.
Performance mode turns on DRAM cache. Could that really increase the numbers that much?

Samsung SSD rapid mode

https://www.windowscentral.com/samsung-ssd-rapid-mode

I'd disable it.
There are situations, when it breaks and you basically have to reinstall windows.

 

[Lutfij]

switching to Performance mode has seriously ioncreased bench numbers in a good way
Do the numbers extend to an increase in real world performance numbers, like load times or transfer speeds? If not, then you're burning through the drive for a synthetic benchmarking score.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Samsung SSD rapid mode

https://www.windowscentral.com/samsung-ssd-rapid-mode

I'd disable it.
There are situations, when it breaks and you basically have to reinstall windows.

Hey,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Yeah, I just spied this article a moment ago. So it's basically using a ramdisk as opposed to the 512mb Dram on the drive itself. I haven't noticed any increase in drive temps, nor have there been any issues as of yet. Loading times for games are defo faster, but by how much, I can't quantify just yet. The laptop is essentially my VR rig, so really only have one or two games I'm currently playing on it at one time or another. The drop in 2gb of System ram for this machine won't hurt me too much.

On my gaming rig though, I wouldn't use it. Want all my ram free!

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

switching to Performance mode has seriously ioncreased bench numbers in a good way
Do the numbers extend to an increase in real world performance numbers, like load times or transfer speeds? If not, then you're burning through the drive for a synthetic benchmarking score.

Hey Lutfij,

So the numbers to translate somewhat, but not by the almost exponential increase in synthetic benches. Windows start up to desktop is maybe 0.5sec faster (this is a rough timing).

Games do load faster, but as mentioned above, hard to quantify by how much just yet.

I'm defo not after syntehtic benchmark scoring. I'm much more about stability and being pragmatic.

Ill run it for a day or two to se if there's any real world difference.

Thanks for getting back to me.

Cheers

 

[Lutfij]

Like all things in the world of performance, it all comes down to a tradeoff, reduced lifespan for exaggerated numbers is one such trade off. I'd revert to normal mode as stated above. I personally have Samsung drives and I never went into Rapid Mode since it's a burst of speed for a brief amount of time at the cost of your drive wearing itself out.

 

[USAFRet]

RAPID mode simply uses part of your RAM as a cache for the SSD.

I tried it for a while, years ago.
Saw no user facing improvement.
So I shut it off.

You DO get big benchmark numbers, though.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Rapid Mode produces SNAKE OIL Benchmarks , not real world performance.