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Spotted: Samsung's 850 EVO SSD

By - Source: LesNumeriques | B 40 comments

Samsung appears to be working on a new mainstream SSD.

LesNumeriques has managed to catch a glimpse of a new product from Samsung at IFA – the 850 EVO SSD. The product hasn't been officially announced yet, but based on the information given at the booth and the target group of the existing 840 EVO SSD, we can make a handful of assumptions.

The information that was revealed at the booth is that the unit will be the first SSD geared at a mainstream audience with 3-bit 3D V-NAND. The first SSD to carry 3D V-NAND was the just-released Samsung 850 Pro SSD. The unit is also a 3-bit unit, which means that it will use TLC NAND memory.

The "3D" part in 3D V-NAND means that rather than shrinking the NAND cells to be smaller, Samsung is stacking the NAND cells in multiple layers in order to attain higher data densities. You might wonder what is the point of higher densities, but the answer is simple: lower cost per gigabyte of data. Combine that with using TLC NAND and you've got yourself a very affordable design for a mainstream SSD in the 850 EVO.

We don't really know much more about the units. Hopefully, more info will be available soon.

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

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  • 3 Hide
    SR-71 Blackbird , September 9, 2014 1:27 PM
    I'll take 5 send them to me now.
  • -2 Hide
    jasonelmore , September 9, 2014 1:31 PM
    i hope it has at least a 6 year warranty with high endurance like the 850 pro's 10 year warranty
  • 1 Hide
    turkey3_scratch , September 9, 2014 1:37 PM
    Quote:
    i hope it has at least a 6 year warranty with high endurance like the 850 pro's 10 year warranty

    10 year warranty!!! I gotta get my paws on one of these babies.
  • Add your comment Display all 40 comments.
  • 5 Hide
    dovah-chan , September 9, 2014 1:46 PM
    Samsung stop being so good you're blowing away all the competition
  • -6 Hide
    Amdlova , September 9, 2014 2:12 PM
    we need sata 4 or sas... sata 3 is too slow!
  • -3 Hide
    kinggremlin , September 9, 2014 2:20 PM
    Here's a prediction you can take to the bank. It will be imperceptibly faster than its predecessor. SSD performance "innovation" has pretty much ground to a halt. There isn't anything that can really be done at this point to change the user experience for the better.
  • -1 Hide
    alidan , September 9, 2014 3:06 PM
    Quote:
    Here's a prediction you can take to the bank. It will be imperceptibly faster than its predecessor. SSD performance "innovation" has pretty much ground to a halt. There isn't anything that can really be done at this point to change the user experience for the better.


    use 2 sata ports and software that sets it up as a raid 0, there, just increased the speed by two... could probably have 4 way without to much extra cost too.
  • 1 Hide
    Mac266 , September 9, 2014 3:33 PM
    Make it Sata Express and I'll take it. Maybe two.
  • 0 Hide
    littleleo , September 9, 2014 3:43 PM
    I've been disappointed in the M.2 models from Samsung so far I hope the 850 EVO version isn't limit to the Sata3 specs.
  • 3 Hide
    dovah-chan , September 9, 2014 3:50 PM
    It's less about the increasing the user experience (which is already exceptional especially with the Samsung magician software which is wonderful) and more about pushing for higher capacities at lower price points as well as setting the standard for future drives to come.

  • 3 Hide
    kinggremlin , September 9, 2014 4:02 PM
    Quote:

    use 2 sata ports and software that sets it up as a raid 0, there, just increased the speed by two... could probably have 4 way without to much extra cost too.


    You have potentially doubled throughput, you have not doubled performance. What makes the SSD user experience so much better than traditional hard drives is not the higher throughput but the much quicker access time. Access time with SSD's is to the point it is nearly impossible to improve performance by a perceptible amount for every day computing.
  • -6 Hide
    Tanquen , September 9, 2014 4:27 PM
    Cool, does it slow to 20MBs when 75% full and 75-125MBs when you put data on it like the 840 EVO?
  • 5 Hide
    alextheblue , September 9, 2014 5:00 PM
    Quote:
    Here's a prediction you can take to the bank. It will be imperceptibly faster than its predecessor. SSD performance "innovation" has pretty much ground to a halt. There isn't anything that can really be done at this point to change the user experience for the better.
    Modern SSDs are already awesome. Their performance doesn't need a major overhaul. Even with SATA, they have excellent transfer rates and more importantly rock incredibly high IOPS. Like Dovah-chan pointed out, what we need improved is the cost of high-capacity drives. If their 3D NAND eventually doubles capacity at all price points, I'm on board. I'd very much like to see a good quality 1TB SSD with decent performance hit the ~$250 mark. :) 
  • -3 Hide
    childofthekorn , September 9, 2014 5:22 PM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Here's a prediction you can take to the bank. It will be imperceptibly faster than its predecessor. SSD performance "innovation" has pretty much ground to a halt. There isn't anything that can really be done at this point to change the user experience for the better.
    Modern SSDs are already awesome. Their performance doesn't need a major overhaul. Even with SATA, they have excellent transfer rates and more importantly rock incredibly high IOPS. Like Dovah-chan pointed out, what we need improved is the cost of high-capacity drives. If their 3D NAND eventually doubles capacity at all price points, I'm on board. I'd very much like to see a good quality 1TB SSD with decent performance hit the ~$250 mark. :) 


    stop typing out this smut.
  • 4 Hide
    sewalk , September 9, 2014 5:39 PM
    Quote:
    we need sata 4 or sas... sata 3 is too slow!

    I dare you to actually sit down and document the difference in the user experience between using a Samsung 800-series SSD on a SATA-II port vs SATA-III. Then you can decide if we want Samsung to focus on developing a faster interface or if we'd rather have them focus on increasing density and economy so we can have TB SSDs as cheap as platter drives.
  • -1 Hide
    BulkZerker , September 9, 2014 11:25 PM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    we need sata 4 or sas... sata 3 is too slow!

    I dare you to actually sit down and document the difference in the user experience between using a Samsung 800-series SSD on a SATA-II port vs SATA-III. Then you can decide if we want Samsung to focus on developing a faster interface or if we'd rather have them focus on increasing density and economy so we can have TB SSDs as cheap as platter drives.


    Something about PCIx interface based SSDs...
  • 0 Hide
    nitrium , September 10, 2014 1:04 AM
    Since the vast majority of transfers on Windows are random reads of small files with queue depths of 1, we are seeing increasingly small real world differences between old SSDs and the latest models INCLUDING PCIe/M2 based drives. Is there any drive capable of delivering even a pathetic 50-100 MB/sec for random 4K reads at QD1?
  • 1 Hide
    xyriin , September 10, 2014 5:37 AM
    Who cares about higher density unless they start packing more than 1TB in a drive.

    No reason an 850 EVO couldn't offer a 2TB or 3TB capacity.
  • -2 Hide
    dovah-chan , September 10, 2014 6:32 AM
    The reason the 840 EVO slows down is because it runs out of turbo cache space and then lowers the transfer speed. The 840 EVO isn't the best long term transfer performer and TLC is inherently less hardy or long lasting as MLC. Really turbo cache is both a blessing and a curse.

    But the reason the drive became so popular is because of its cheap price, good overall performance, and nice feature set. Mix in that familiar Samsung brand name which naturally draws consumers towards your products and you've got a hot seller.

    Also all drives generally reduce in speed after being over 50% full. Well now that might be a myth as I don't think no one has done any testing on that notion for SSDs but it's generally true for HDDs.
  • -1 Hide
    Tanquen , September 10, 2014 1:09 PM
    Quote:
    The reason the 840 EVO slows down is because it runs out of turbo cache space and then lowers the transfer speed. The 840 EVO isn't the best long term transfer performer and TLC is inherently less hardy or long lasting as MLC. Really turbo cache is both a blessing and a curse.

    But the reason the drive became so popular is because of its cheap price, good overall performance, and nice feature set. Mix in that familiar Samsung brand name which naturally draws consumers towards your products and you've got a hot seller.

    Also all drives generally reduce in speed after being over 50% full. Well now that might be a myth as I don't think no one has done any testing on that notion for SSDs but it's generally true for HDDs.


    I’m not 100% sure as I’m old and forgetful but… No, the EVOs slow down the moment you put data on them, some nonsense about the 3bit cells. The only time I got the 400MBs-ish reads was on the parts of the drive with no data. The over 50-70% thing is an SSD thing, hard disc drives don’t have that issue.
    So, you are paying way more but:
    It’s really slow with small files, it slows down the moment you put data on it, It’s un realistically slow after you’ve used it for a time and or it get 50%+ full, it’s not a real TB, even though you have to or should overprovision it and make it even smaller. So your 1TB drive is not 1TB it’s 900GB before you overprovision and you can’t use more than half of it without it slowing to a crawl. Then people think the SATA ports are too slow. Not even.
    They lie (about all HDs) and say a GB is 1000MB, it is not! It is and always will be 1024MB. Even though Apple caved in a recent OS update as they were tired of support calls from people wanting to know why their 500GB drive was not 500GB. So your 1TB drive is not 1TB it’s 900GB. I’m old enough to remember when they lied (made up their own rules) and said something like, well a MB is 1024K until 100MBs or some such BS and then it’s 1000k and that’s why when you by RAM you actually get 32MB when you buy 32MB. Oh really, so when the file is in RAM it’s 1MB but when I save it to the HD it’s now 1.024MB. Right!
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