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Samsung 850 Pro SSD Review: 3D Vertical NAND Hits Desktop Storage

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  • SSD
  • Storage
  • Samsung
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a b G Storage
June 30, 2014 7:33:11 PM

After winning an award last year for its 840 EVO, Samsung is ready to follow up with another high-end offering. The company's 850 Pro SSD merges the EVO's familiar MEX controller with 3D V-NAND. Does the combination justify an upgrade, or should you wait?

Samsung 850 Pro SSD Review: 3D Vertical NAND Hits Desktop Storage : Read more

More about : samsung 850 pro ssd review vertical nand hits desktop storage

a b G Storage
June 30, 2014 8:19:22 PM

Hmm, what's next for SATA? SATA4? SATA 3.2 (SATA Express) doesn't look like a long term solution. PCI-E is fine, but SATA is still so convenient.
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June 30, 2014 8:34:55 PM

I 'just' ordered 2x Samsung EVO 120GB a few hours ago, then I stumbled onto this article. Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Every freaking time I run into this, be it Storage, CPU, or GPU.... -_-
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2
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a b G Storage
June 30, 2014 8:41:22 PM

Quote:
I 'just' ordered 2x Samsung EVO 120GB a few hours ago, then I stumbled onto this article. Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Every freaking time I run into this, be it Storage, CPU, or GPU.... -_-


I don't know if this really changes anything for you. Two EVOs are still going to be better than one 850 Pro in [most] every way. But I understand the sentiment!

Christopher Ryan
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2
a b G Storage
June 30, 2014 9:05:46 PM

MoulaZX said:
I 'just' ordered 2x Samsung EVO 120GB a few hours ago, then I stumbled onto this article. Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Every freaking time I run into this, be it Storage, CPU, or GPU.... -_-

You just ordered a few hours ago. Just cancel your order if you really want this 850 Pro.
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5
June 30, 2014 9:12:39 PM

10yrs warranty, may be finally I have a reason to buy SSD. lol
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a b G Storage
June 30, 2014 9:42:37 PM

tomfreak said:
10yrs warranty, may be finally I have a reason to buy SSD. lol


I can guarantee that in 10 years you won't own that drive anymore. :lol: 
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7
June 30, 2014 9:52:06 PM

I still have several 8-10 year old drives laying around between 80GB-150GB. I mostly use them as external drives for backing up USB thumb drives and other files that aren't large volume.
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3
June 30, 2014 9:54:39 PM

Hoping for some SATA 12gbs (or more) transfer speeds in the coming years.
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1
June 30, 2014 9:56:27 PM

Will overclocking the bus that the sata controller is on impact the performance?

Can you test on an AMD platform which makes it easier to over clock that bus and some of the connected components?
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July 1, 2014 2:05:08 AM

Looking forward to future generations of 3D Vertical Nand on M.2 / M.2 Ultra interface. Too bad SATA 3 is all maxed out and the next generation standards are not yet mainstream for the masses which is holding back SSD performance. As far as this drive goes, it's only slightly faster than MX100 but costs double. I don't think it's worth it. MX100 512GB sounds like a perfect stop-gap until M.2/SATAe drives arrive with 1-1.5TB/sec throughput. Perhaps Samsung will give us 95% of the performance for a fraction of the price in the 850 EVO.
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-1
July 1, 2014 4:49:30 AM

Quote:
Quote:
I 'just' ordered 2x Samsung EVO 120GB a few hours ago, then I stumbled onto this article. Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Every freaking time I run into this, be it Storage, CPU, or GPU.... -_-


I don't know if this really changes anything for you. Two EVOs are still going to be better than one 850 Pro in [most] every way. But I understand the sentiment!

Christopher Ryan


Not quite. One is for my Desktop, the other is for my Father's Desktop.

For my Desktop, I'll be stepping up from 2x OCZ Vertex 2 60GB in RAID 0. Hope it'll be worth it...
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July 1, 2014 5:00:31 AM

Quote:
Quote:
I 'just' ordered 2x Samsung EVO 120GB a few hours ago, then I stumbled onto this article. Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Every freaking time I run into this, be it Storage, CPU, or GPU.... -_-


I don't know if this really changes anything for you. Two EVOs are still going to be better than one 850 Pro in [most] every way. But I understand the sentiment!

Christopher Ryan


Not quite. One is for my Desktop, the other is for my Father's Desktop.

For my Desktop, I'll be stepping up from 2x OCZ Vertex 2 60GB in RAID 0. Hope it'll be worth it...
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0
July 1, 2014 5:19:30 AM

Why does tom hardware looks like website from 1990? This page is narrow as hell!
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a b G Storage
July 1, 2014 5:40:12 AM

Quote:
Why does tom hardware looks like website from 1990? This page is narrow as hell!

That would be to give more room for the sidebar adverts.
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2
a b G Storage
July 1, 2014 6:02:24 AM

Impressive, didn't think some of these numbers were possible via SATA3.

But the limit has now been reached in almost every way.

Which solution will stick? Anyone care to guess?
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July 1, 2014 6:14:18 AM

Eh, unimpressed. Sure its a nice bump but when I look at how long the 840 Pro has been on the market and compare it to the increase to the soon coming 850 Pro, to say the least it doesn't make me want to run out and replace my 840's.
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a b G Storage
July 1, 2014 7:44:43 AM

Quote:
Hmm, what's next for SATA? SATA4? SATA 3.2 (SATA Express) doesn't look like a long term solution. PCI-E is fine, but SATA is still so convenient.


I disagree. SATA Express melds the convenience of SATA and pcie performance. With NVMe and Gen 3 PCIe, I think there WILL be much to like.

Christopher Ryan
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3
July 1, 2014 8:21:01 AM

That much speed for that little power draw? Impressive.
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July 1, 2014 8:21:32 AM

SATA Express haw to wide Cables as bad as the old IDE Cables M.2 or PCIE cards
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-1
July 1, 2014 8:23:10 AM

Part of me doesn't care about bandwidth. I've had Windows 7 load up much faster (as in the throbber didn't get to finish) on a laptop with a SATA 3Gbps interface than a desktop using the 6Gbps interface. And most of the time file accesses are small, but many.

I'd rather start seeing IOPS crank up to RAM levels.
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a c 318 G Storage
July 1, 2014 8:24:34 AM

The main reason not to go to SATA 4 and double the throughput rate again is not a signalling issue. SATA was designed for rotating magnetic media. There are limitations that are removed in the rising standards, although the next generation of storage will probably find those brilliant improvements to be a bottleneck!
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a b G Storage
July 1, 2014 8:47:49 AM

I like the look of this drive, but it's not quite enough to get me to upgrade from my 840 Pro/ 840 EVO combo, especially at those prices. The warranty is a nice feature, though. This drive looks like the best we can ever expect from SATA3.

I have a board that has a 2 lane M.2 PCIe slot. Once I see a drive that performs as well or better than this in that form factor at 500-512GB, I'll go for that, and no sooner.
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0
July 1, 2014 2:30:30 PM

It's about dang time.
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July 1, 2014 6:58:35 PM

With 10 years warranty Samsung really have belief in the product, guess ill wait a couple of months to see if it has reliability issues before considering striking a deal or two
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July 2, 2014 9:58:05 AM

MoulaZX writes:
> For my Desktop, I'll be stepping up from 2x OCZ Vertex 2 60GB in RAID 0.
> Hope it'll be worth it...

What model is your motherboard? If your system is just SATA2, the EVO may
or may not be quicker, kinda depends. I did loads of RAID0 tests using various
numbers of Vertex2E 120GB drives (tad quicker than the 60GB, but relevant
nonetheless). See:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/ssd_tests.txt

Compared to a single 840 250GB or Vector 128GB, the 2xV2E/120 RAID0 was
quicker for sequential I/O, slower for 4K random read, 2X faster for 4K random
write, roughly the same for 4K/64-thread read/write (AS-SSD), faster for CDM
512K read, and slower for CDM 512K write (ignore the ATTO results, they're a
bit whacko anyway).

Alas I didn't have time to run the real-world app-start/load tests on the RAID0
configs, and I've not yet run the same tests with a SATA3 setup. Useful data
for users of older SATA2 systems though I hope, and here's some extra data
testing a Vector 256GB with various types of SATA2/3 so you can compare to
the Vector's SATA2 results above (note that the Vector shows up fairly well
in the 850 Pro review, so it's a good model for this sort of general testing):

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/sata_vector_tests.txt


Overall, I think you'll be happy with the EVOs, though TBH I'm surprised you
didn't go for a couple of MX100 256GB units; I would have I think. Mind you,
for reliability I'd probably change my mind at the last minute & buy Samsungs.

Ian.

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1
a b G Storage
July 2, 2014 10:59:17 AM

BestJinjo said:
Looking forward to future generations of 3D Vertical Nand on M.2 / M.2 Ultra interface. Too bad SATA 3 is all maxed out and the next generation standards are not yet mainstream for the masses which is holding back SSD performance. As far as this drive goes, it's only slightly faster than MX100 but costs double. I don't think it's worth it. MX100 512GB sounds like a perfect stop-gap until M.2/SATAe drives arrive with 1-1.5TB/sec throughput. Perhaps Samsung will give us 95% of the performance for a fraction of the price in the 850 EVO.


Price/performance are not the only factors to consider here. You have much greater write endurance with the 850 as well as being much better in performance consistency & latency. Those factors alone might convince you to use these in servers instead of some 15k SAS drives. I wouldn't consider the Crucial MX100 for a server, but I would consider the Samsung 850 Pro.
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July 3, 2014 2:00:57 AM

I think that most of you who are nay-saying, completely miss the point. For one, the "out the gate" price on the 850 is typical of all business leaders competing for pole position. The price helps to reaffirm it as the superior product. Then, the price begins to drop into the reach of the masses. It's normal. Next, not being happy about the newest invention because it seems to be throttled by the SATA 3 protocol is silly. There is ALWAYS a mismatch between current uses, existing technology, and technologies on the drawing board. Nobody stops developing because the other has not caught up yet.

If I had some to invest, I'd be buying Samsung stock right now.

Good Job SAMSUNG! Hear, hear!
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July 4, 2014 9:13:01 AM

They have to break the limits of pci express so they can open up more lanes for fast storage especially 4 of these in raid in Sata 3 Or soon SATA express platform will eventually be the bottle neck especially in the next generation 3d Nand cells
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July 4, 2014 9:35:55 AM

That's why I keep saying Intel should update the 'mainstream' chipset to have 32 lanes,
not the woeful 16 it has atm, and then move whatever happens after X99 upwards to 80
or something, so 6/8/10/etc.-core top-end systems can have full x16/x16/x16/x16
CF/SLI/Gcompute without the need for PLEX chips or somesuch, in both cases leaving
plenty of lanes left over to provide all the new storage connections without having to mess
around with lane allocations and port choices. Are you listening, Intel? Make it good, I'll buy it.

Ian.

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2
a b G Storage
July 4, 2014 11:03:47 PM

Quote:
I think that most of you who are nay-saying, completely miss the point. For one, the "out the gate" price on the 850 is typical of all business leaders competing for pole position. The price helps to reaffirm it as the superior product. Then, the price begins to drop into the reach of the masses. It's normal. Next, not being happy about the newest invention because it seems to be throttled by the SATA 3 protocol is silly. There is ALWAYS a mismatch between current uses, existing technology, and technologies on the drawing board. Nobody stops developing because the other has not caught up yet.

If I had some to invest, I'd be buying Samsung stock right now.

Good Job SAMSUNG! Hear, hear!


I think Samsung probably has the best margins in the business, but I also believe that the new 3D NAND is still in its early production phases. One day, all the flash that Samsung crams in its consumer electronics devices will most likely be V-NAND. But for now, it makes sense to use what little flash can be made in SSDs.

And yeah, that means slapping a fairly high sticker on it. Most people do not need this drive, and for those I say look to Crucial or the EVO, or any of the other mainstream solutions.

Don't get disheartened because SATA III still holds these drives back. First, it's not just SATA but AHCI, and second, the AHCI-based PCIe solutions (including the XP941) aren't much better than one 850 Pro.

Regards,
Christoper Ryan
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July 6, 2014 7:56:44 PM

I still love my 256GB 840 Pro, and would buy more of the same as of now.
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a c 318 G Storage
July 7, 2014 6:21:28 AM

I'm running an SSD on a motherboard with SATA II ports. Yes, it throttles the performance, but for what I do with the machine it flies as far as I am concerned. "Good enough."
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July 10, 2014 6:11:13 PM

wolverine96 said:
I still love my 256GB 840 Pro, and would buy more of the same as of now.


Amazon has the 850 Pro 256GB on pre-order sale for $199.99.

The 840 Pro is $198.71

Think I know which one I'm buying.
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July 10, 2014 7:37:04 PM

Brogan said:
Amazon has the 850 Pro 256GB on pre-order sale for $199.99.

The 840 Pro is $198.71

Think I know which one I'm buying.


That is true. However, I am sure the price will go up after the release date. So if you want to buy it, buy it now!
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a b G Storage
July 16, 2014 4:36:43 AM

Sigh the bots are back!
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a b G Storage
July 18, 2014 7:49:36 AM

I'm not so sure the price will go up after release. It might a little bit, but I doubt by more than 10%. More than likely, due to market forces developing right now, we're likely to see these drop by 15-20% over the next 6 months. Other manufacturers are developing their technology and production techniques as well. We're going to have competing drives at lower prices pretty soon, and that will force prices down. It's a good time to be needing SSDs.

Unfortunately for me, I have two of the higher end drives already. The upgrades available would give me less than a 5% boost. These are great drives, but they're just not for me right now. If my 840 Pro or 840 EVO go out, then I'll buy an 850 Pro.
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July 20, 2014 4:47:40 AM

IOPS can't crank up to RAM levels... because of bandwidth.
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July 25, 2014 2:42:01 AM

I need help connecting the wires that connect to the mother board connect to the hard drive and connect to the disc drive correctly for a Dell computer tower
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July 25, 2014 10:04:43 PM

Shooterz said:
I need help connecting the wires that connect to the mother board connect to the hard drive and connect to the disc drive correctly for a Dell computer tower


I think it's the red wire.... No! It's the blue! The Blue!
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a b G Storage
July 28, 2014 1:12:19 AM

Shooterz said:
I need help connecting the wires that connect to the mother board connect to the hard drive and connect to the disc drive correctly for a Dell computer tower


Post a question on the main forum under the storage category giving more detail about your difficulty and I'm sure you will get an answer in minutes.
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August 13, 2014 1:41:26 PM

The product table on page 1 identifies these new Samsung SSDs as "Samsung EVO 850 Pro ..." but shouldn't they be called "Samsung 850 Pro ..."?
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August 20, 2014 9:38:27 PM

Bought one today from Amazon, They charged me 119.99 at the time. I'm gonna put it in my desktop PC. I've never had an SSD before. I was sold on the V-Nand and the performance. I also don't like buying old technology when something newer and better has come out. I'm not a power-user, but can your PC ever power-up fast enough? Mine is OFF most of the time, but when I need to use it, I want it ON now! Everyday I have to put up with the misery of computers that sit there doing Lord-Only-Knows-What after I've pressed, clicked or entered something. The ultimate achievement in electronic devices is to build something that is instantly responsive. The user experience has actually deteriorated in some areas like web-surfing, where there are some many auto-play videos and ads that page load times get ridiculous. Well, anyhow, I can't wait to install this thing and discover how fast my PC goes from dead-cold OFF to apps open and ready. If it's drastically faster, then it's worth 120 bucks.
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August 25, 2014 6:59:12 AM

Where is the Plextor M6E ?

After being highlighted twice in the first two test pages, it disappears from all remaining tests ! Are the forward voluntarily to put the 850 Pro?
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!