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Samsung Goes 6 Gb/s: Is The 830-Series SSD King Of The Hill?

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Really, Samsung is disappointing - the fact is in most benchmarks the 3rd generation Sandforce drives kick its butt. This is why I have been continually perplexed by Tom's Hardware's choice to rate the Samsung SSDs so high.

Honestly, the M4 is the only drive that belongs in the same sentence as the Sandforce drives unless your work focuses on large data partitions (Intel 510) or non-compressible data. But really, the average user is not going to be dealing with non-compressible data overwhelmingly. I mean photos and video are not the center of most user's world.

Really we need more real-world tests - I am somewhat weary of synthetic tests that have little to do with reality. Are they really good indications of what the average user will experience?

We also need solid reliability tests/studies for the various manufacturers in order that we can intelligently choose the better drives.

SSDs are exploding because they undeniably speed up the average useer's computing experience. Really it is night and day - I just built a computer with the Corsair GT 120GB drive running the operating system. There is really no comparison to running the operating system off of an HDD.

As even the stubborn users who still cling to their HDD systems start to transfer to SSDs, SSDs will dominate the storage market. And as we are seeing, they are constantly improving. 1 GB/S+ SSDs already are a reality and as costs go down they will soon become mainstream. Amazingly, these will nearly double the current SSD's speeds.

In the near future, nearly every computing action will be nearly instant and even transfer of huge segments of data (HD video for example) will take only a few seconds instead of the hours it took just a couple years ago.

 
Regarding last, IO believe this ssd will drive down prices but it may be difficult for others to match as their SSDs don't have proprietary NAND.
 
[citation][nom]Anonymous[/nom]Would love to see an article addressing Sandforce controller problems people have been experiencing.[/citation]

Check out Anandtech.com. It's another great source for SSD information, and they have covered the controller problems in a bit more detail.

😉
 
Good to see Samsung in the picture with high-quality units, and nice to see competitive prices for those high-end drives.

As a gamer, particularly a👎 MMORPG gamer, these drives hold interest for me. I doubt I'll actually use one of this generation because my build plans are a year away (or more), but Samsung will be on top of my list of manufacturers to check out when I do build, if they keep up the good work.

😉
 
It's a real shame Crucial M4 series were not tested with firmware 0009 which provide a very significant speed boost. I mean, it's "only" **20%** faster now... This 0009 update was released on august 25 by Crucial. Practically 1 full month ago!!

You said in the article: "We'll try to update our benchmark library when a new firmware version is released". LOL... Well, try a little harder next time, especially when such a dramatic update has been available for that long, and one that would have totality change the conclusions of the article!

I'll over simplify but the average data rate of the 256GB M4 is rated at 163GB/s and ranked 6th. Add 20% and you are now doing 194MB/s and rank 3rd instead, only a few MB/s from the leader! The 4k random read and write is dominated by the M4 and would presumably dominate even more with the new firmware. The M4 continue to do very good on the max response time, despite firmware 0002 being used. The M4 256 finished 4th in compressible and in-compressible read at 327Mb/s. Would have probably destroyed everything else with 0009 firmware. Should I contintue?

The one thing the Samsung does better than anything else is writing. But for the average Joe who use SSD as a fast boot drive, read is king 95% of the time.

Now lets hope the M4 continue to drop in price becasue for the best all around performance, especially where it counts (read), price, **AND** reliability, the best value is still the M4 series in my book.


Ramon
 

Too true. The fact that the 0002 was released back in June, that it corrected the problems with the initial release, and that they are just getting to that firmware is a little worrying.
 
[citation][nom]ramon zarat[/nom]It's a real shame Crucial M4 series were not tested with firmware 0009 which provide a very significant speed boost. I mean, it's "only" **20%** faster now... This 0009 update was released on august 25 by Crucial. Practically 1 full month ago!! You said in the article: "We'll try to update our benchmark library when a new firmware version is released". LOL... Well, try a little harder next time, especially when such a dramatic update has been available for that long, and one that would have totality change the conclusions of the article!I'll over simplify but the average data rate of the 256GB M4 is rated at 163GB/s and ranked 6th. Add 20% and you are now doing 194MB/s and rank 3rd instead, only a few MB/s from the leader! The 4k random read and write is dominated by the M4 and would presumably dominate even more with the new firmware. The M4 continue to do very good on the max response time, despite firmware 0002 being used. The M4 256 finished 4th in compressible and in-compressible read at 327Mb/s. Would have probably destroyed everything else with 0009 firmware. Should I contintue?The one thing the Samsung does better than anything else is writing. But for the average Joe who use SSD as a fast boot drive, read is king 95% of the time. Now lets hope the M4 continue to drop in price becasue for the best all around performance, especially where it counts (read), price, **AND** reliability, the best value is still the M4 series in my book.Ramon[/citation]

I agree...those M4 SSD's are great! I wish I would have purchased one of those instead of this POS Corsair Force Series 3. I installed one of those M4's in a multi-media workstation here where I work and it has given us no problems whatsoever! FW updates did in fact increase the performance like they stated. Very impressed with the M4 series! I'll take reliability over performance any day.
 
[citation][nom]philharmonik[/nom]I'll take reliability over performance any day.[/citation]

I must of really gotten lucky. I haven't had any troubles with my Vertex 3 so far.
 
[citation][nom]gento1[/nom]Good to see an Android app released before an Iphone/Ipad one.[/citation]

Yeahp, this Samsung SSD will definitely make your Android app run better. :) LOL.
 
I get from JR store 128 Gb crucial and jesus its so awsome how it is work.. excelent hard drive SSD so fast ! And with this notice samsung have more speed than a crucual SSD, im so anxious to get new ssd samsung !
 
That sounds great. I am really looking forward to testing one of these new drives. I will write a review when i do so. I'm really hoping that they have all the controller issues perfected and that this drive is very stable. Right now the only ssd that i have had great luck with is the intel brand.
 
[citation][nom]beenthere[/nom]All you need to do is read the actual owner reviews.. See Newegg.[/citation]

Newegg shows the Samsung 470 series to be one of the best user reviewed on the site. In fact if you search all internal SSDs on newegg and order by 'best reviewed' you get: Crucial 64GB M4, Intel 120GB 510, and Samsung 128GB 470 in exactly that order.

So I have to ask: what are you talking about 😵?
 
I laugh because while the SSDs are faster, they are hugely expensive. If you have a VERY decent SAS or SATA add-in controller, I have noticed that you see some very decent numbers from the SAS and Raptor drives. (A GB of cache RAM will almost always help...)

At this point, I just don't think the SSDs are there from a price point. You are talking VERY expensive to be 1TB of storage... even though you can go ahead and use the SSD just for the OS, it's not always convenient.

I did a bunch of testing with some middle of the road SSDs and some WD raptors with and using an LSI controller it was anything but a total butt whooping.

I'm curious to see how Samsung does, but I like the Intel stuff in general.
 
Whoa, whoa, whoa, so you're saying you'd rather drop $$$ on a SAS card AND a 1TB HDD, but you're not willing to spend $200 on a very nice 128GB SSD? Then you say that simply choosing what drive an app get installed on is more inconveniencing than setting up a RAM cache for a HDD? Am I missing something here?

And I'd love to see the test systems' configurations and the results of those tests. Seriously when has anyone said SSDs are the best solution for consumer mass storage?
 


Ok, here is what I posted on the Egg some time ago... It's dated, as there are better products at this point... One of the key advantages to using the LSI (3Ware unit) is that so can move your storage configuration to a new platform (e.g. motherboard combo)...

Pros: Purchased this in order to add additional host adapters to my system. (I currently have a 3Ware 9650-4PL card that is SATA2 only.) I was using Windows 7 x64, and installed the driver for the 9750 and version 10 of 3DMC BEFORE attempting to use the card. Then, I simply plugged the new controller into my set of 600GB Velociraptor hard disks, and Windows booted without issue. Interestingly, the 9750-4i recognizes the RAID configuration from the prior model card (9650) and simply verifies the array once it boots to Windows. Another neat thing: Using either this controller or the prior model 9650 provides writes so fast that the Intel SSD X25-M 120GB drive does not outperform two Velociraptors in RAID 0 using either card. Performance with the 9750-4i card is 250MB/sec to 150MB/sec, which is well within the range of the Intel SSD; most of the reads take place above 175MB/sec, which is what I'm seeing with the SSD. The write speeds are equal to the SSD, and superior over 64k blocks.

Cons: I'm not sure this controller is actually faster than the prior LSI/3Ware 9650 with NON-SAS drives. [...but its darned fast, and much faster then the Marvel or Intel ICH 10R.]

Other Thoughts: I purchased this controller because of a flaw with my GA-X58A-UD5 system board. Specifically, that you can not install an SSD on the Intel ICH10R SATA2 ports and have the unit actually boot from an add-in card (the 3Ware 9650). Since my goal was to use the Intel ICH10 to run an SSD drive, this was a problem, as the system wanted to boot only from the Intel controller and the SSD. My goal was for the SSD to be the page file drive, where low access times would probably be an advange. Overall, both the 9750 and 9650 LSI / 3Ware cards are vastly faster then the built in controllers, and negate most of the performance gains you'd see with the SSD competitors...

 
I should also add this I did very extensive testing between the LSI cards, older raptors, and the older Samsung SSDs that I have in my firewall / IDS device.

I'm not at all saying that the SSDs are not fast, I'm just saying that they are not so blindingly fast that they blow away other options.

I'm also saying that my requirements are large amounts of FAST storage with a huge MTBF. So SAS or Velociraptors are pretty well and know quantities...

I will say that my gound was shaken a little with the LSI 9750 4i was NOT faster than the 3Ware 9650 4 that I was using previously.

Without the add-in controller... the SSD performance SUCKED by comparison, as did the Velociraptors and a few Seagate 15k SAS drives I tested [which could only be tested using the add in controller].

My system configuration is a i7-980x with the Gigabyte Sniper.G1 and 24GB of RAM. ...but even at those specs the price to install 1.2TB of (1TB really) of FAST SSDs would probably add up to the cost of everything else combined.
 
I'm not discounting your particular need, but your testing method isn't exactly fair. You're pitting average SSDs against the best HDDs. Test top of the line in both categories and you might see some more startling numbers. That would actually be an interesting test for Tom's, an array of HDDs versus a single high-end SSD versus and array of cheaper SSDs.

But large volumes of fast response storage like you're describing are prohibitively expenses to the vast majority of consumers. Yes, large arrays of HDDs can yield great performance in both directions, and in some instances will outstrip a single SSD, but the method you describe is over $1000. Yes, 2TB of SSD storage would cost you more than the rest of your machine, but your storage alone costs almost as much as my entire rig.

As for MTBF, I'd have to argue the jury is still out on SSDs. Initial MBTF figures may be skewed due to early failures in design, but SSD tech is evolving so fast that we quite honestly don't know the longevity of it. Perhaps current SSD technology actually is more stable than magnetic, perhaps the new designs are much worse. But all we have is theoretical analysis and projections at this point, so ruling it out on guesses is not a great idea.

No, SSDs are not yet ideal for large storage, largely due to cost and uncertainty. But I haven't heard anyone touting them to be so either. But I'd avoid blanket statements like "They're not there yet" because of a small niche use that doesn't apply to the vast majority of the market.
 
well no one has noticed that these QD1 numbers are totally incoorect? there is obviously a lack of knowledge on how to use iometer here. the fastest an SSD can go at these low QD is around 20mb/s for 4k random. what in the world were you guys thinking?
 
Doesn't seem to support pin 11 for drive activity LED in RAID enclosures.
 
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