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

Features
By Andrew Ku
published

Samsung's 830 is a late entry to the 6 Gb/s SSD market, but the company claims impressive performance. Can it unseat the incumbent SandForce-based drives? Let's just say this new offering shakes up the SSD world in a major way. Other vendors, beware.

Benchmark Results: Storage Bench v1.0

As always, we're going to kick off our analysis using Storage Bench v1.0 because it allows us to examine the real performance of an SSD within the first two weeks of use. We're specifically going to focus on busy time and average data rate. If you're unfamiliar with our Storage Bench v1.0, we'd suggest that you read page three and four of Second-Gen SandForce: Seven 120 GB SSDs Rounded Up.

Busy time and average data rate are directly tied to one another, but looking at both allows us to examine performance in a slightly different way.

These benchmarks rank performance based on actual use over the course of two weeks. With that in mind, Samsung edges out the second-gen SandForce-based Vertex 3. The performance delta is extremely small, though. The 240 GB Vertex 3 is only busy 48 seconds longer than the 256 GB 830. More than one million seconds go by in two weeks, so again, that lead is pretty tiny.

The average data rate reflects the same 2.6% difference, just like busy time. However, this graph paints a clearer picture of throughput. The 256 GB 830-series drive is the first SSD to pass the 200 MB/s mark in our test. But, on average, Samsung's latest SSD is only 5-6 MB/s faster than the 240 GB second-gen SandForce-based HyperX and Vertex 3.

Andrew Ku
44 Comments Comment from the forums
  • pbrigido
    With all of these fast SSDs coming to market, I can only hope that the competition starts to drive down prices soon.
    Reply
  • I still opt for the M4 in all the enthusiast builds I do!

    It boils down to reliability, not one hiccup on M4 yet (or any crucial drive Ive installed), 4/5 Sandforce drives I have installed have had some form of callback problem to resolve once deployed, mostly requiring firmware updates, but a few failed drives as well!

    Mind you, still better than the early Corsair force Series I used, every single one failed! Stopped using them quick!

    Am tempted by OCZ, once they have reliability on their side I will give them a go again!
    Reply
  • Would love to see an article addressing Sandforce controller problems people have been experiencing.
    Reply
  • mark_hamill
    Would love to see an article addressing Sandforce controller problems people have been experiencing.
    Reply
  • JamesSneed
    Looks like a really nice SSD. Samsung has one of the best validation proceses along with Intel and Crucial so I really don't expect people to have issues like they do with OCZ drives. Now the real question how much will it be on the egg?

    I saw this quote below in the summary and laughed as nobody in there right mind would use a basic MLC drive in a database server. So Samsung tuned the drive for what it will be used in ,desktops, good.
    "Although we'd probably think twice before picking this as our first choice for a database server, it does just fine in an enthusiast's machine."
    Reply
  • kikireeki
    When will we be seeing articles like: SSD price slashed 50%?
    Reply
  • JohnnyLucky
    great review. now we just have to wait and see how the ssd will hold up over the long haul. If it is anything like the 470, then it should be problem free.
    Reply
  • alikum
    Make it $1 per GB at least
    Reply
  • beenthere
    We'll see how this series of Samsung SSDs fair. The previous gen was a nightmare of problems so I don't think Samsung's validation process is any better that the rest of the SSD suppliers - which is sad when Samsung controls everything including NAND production. It's amazing that we still have SSDs NOT readt for Prime Time.
    Reply
  • AppleBlowsDonkeyBalls
    beenthereWe'll see how this series of Samsung SSDs fair. The previous gen was a nightmare of problems so I don't think Samsung's validation process is any better that the rest of the SSD suppliers - which is sad when Samsung controls everything including NAND production. It's amazing that we still have SSDs NOT readt for Prime Time.
    Proof? I think you just pulled this out of your ass or from someone's that told you some story. The 470 series was VERY reliable.
    Reply