As we know, Samsung is in a unique position as an SSD manufacturer. The fact that it fabricates its own NAND means the company can cherry-pick the very best flash for those 840 Pros. It's also pushing the envelope with regard to lithography in a way that very few competitors can match. Consequently, Samsung's engineers also know where those solid-state drives come up short, giving them a problem to work on solving.

When you look at the spec sheet for pretty much any SSD family, you notice that the maximum performance levels are typically available from the highest-capacity models. At lower capacities, those throughput numbers trail off pretty fast. In fact, many drives under 100 GB bashfully offer sequential write rates in the low 100 MB/s range. Why? Usually, it comes down to the number of dies per memory package, and the controller's ability to utilize them all in parallel. As the density of flash increases, you need fewer dies to hit certain capacity points, and that can detract from performance. SSD vendors can use lower-density NAND for as long as it's still available, but that also drives prices up, which nobody likes.
This conundrum is exacerbated by triple-level cell flash. Capable of storing three bits for every memory cell, TLC NAND further increases density and reduces cost compared to MLC flash with two bits per cell. The price you pay is higher latency. TLC NAND takes longer to stabilize, which affects its performance.

To combat those compromises, Samsung introduced us to a couple of new technologies. The first is called Turbo Write. Think of this as an additional tier of storage space between the system RAM and TLC NAND. In effect, Samsung takes a small amount of the triple-level cell flash and treats it like SLC, or single-level cell memory. This reduces latency significantly, augmenting performance so long as the data you're working with is in that space.

Turbo Write increases performance across all capacity points, though the 120 GB configuration enjoys the largest boost. Claimed to improve sequential throughput by as much as 3x, this feature is key to extracting respectable benchmark numbers from a low-cost, lower-capacity SSD.

Samsung based the amount of NAND dedicated to Turbo Write on typical desktop workloads, it said. Even in the entry-level space, the 120 GB 840 EVO can maintain those impressive numbers across 3 GB of writes. That's more than enough for most folks. If you do routinely write more than that at a time, you might want to consider a true enthusiast-oriented SSD like the 840 Pro or one of its competitors.
My 840 has about 0.41TB written to it, and i bought this drive a few months ago.
Anyway, looking forward to RAPID.
Anyone else find that this reads like an infomercial?
Everyone wins.
NVMe is a protocol to work with PCIe. This is quite clear from the slides. What is PCIe? Do you remember your last video card upgrade? The slot your card plugged into was most likely a PCIe slot. NVMe has no business with SATA, and that's the way you want it to be.
Last year, Samsung touched on some new technologies that they were working on, but didn't share any insight during their latest summit,
NVMe is a protocol to work with PCIe. This is quite clear from the slides. What is PCIe? Do you remember your last video card upgrade? The slot your card plugged into was most likely a PCIe slot. NVMe has no business with SATA, and that's the way you want it to be.
...SATA 3.2 (SATA Express) uses PCIe lanes (2x PCIe 3.0) to provide faster communication between the CPU and the storage media, hence reducing the bottleneck. I understand NVMe is an independent tech from SATA 3.2 (notice that ".2" behind the 3).
*** Edited by Moderator ***
That's a solid question and one that isn't always easy to answer. There are so many new interfaces and protocols, it's hard to keep them all straight. To answer your question, SATA 3.2 now includes SATA Express. SATA Express is a standard that defines two driver interfaces and two physical interfaces. You can connect via legacy SATA or PCIe. For SATA, you will use the AHCI interface. In this way, it will work just like every other SATA SSD that is on the market. For PCIe, the driver interface is either AHCI or NVMe. With AHCI, you still see a PCIe device dangling off of the PCIe root port and you use the same AHCI drivers that comes with your operating system of choice. With NVMe, you get all of the added benefits of the new protocol, but you will need OS driver support. All of that should *crosses fingers* be ironed out in the next year.
What makes things slightly confusing is that any of these combinations are valid, so you have to pay particular attention to whether your M.2 card is SATA or PCIe, and if it is PCIe, whether it is AHCI or NVMe. If you want more information, I recommended looking at the SATAIO page, they have a lot of good information. https://www.sata-io.org/sata-express
My 840 Pro 256GB doesn't allow for RAPID even while using Samsung Magician 4.2
It passes the Genuine Validation check and everything so I don't think this is true, or I'm an unlucky bloke.
Does anyone have an answer as to why this is?
This should be able to clarify
Any ideas fellas?
That's a solid question and one that isn't always easy to answer. There are so many new interfaces and protocols, it's hard to keep them all straight. To answer your question, SATA 3.2 now includes SATA Express. SATA Express is a standard that defines two driver interfaces and two physical interfaces. You can connect via legacy SATA or PCIe. For SATA, you will use the AHCI interface. In this way, it will work just like every other SATA SSD that is on the market. For PCIe, the driver interface is either AHCI or NVMe. With AHCI, you still see a PCIe device dangling off of the PCIe root port and you use the same AHCI drivers that comes with your operating system of choice. With NVMe, you get all of the added benefits of the new protocol, but you will need OS driver support. All of that should *crosses fingers* be ironed out in the next year.
What makes things slightly confusing is that any of these combinations are valid, so you have to pay particular attention to whether your M.2 card is SATA or PCIe, and if it is PCIe, whether it is AHCI or NVMe. If you want more information, I recommended looking at the SATAIO page, they have a lot of good information. https://www.sata-io.org/sata-express
Thank you for addressing my query.
This should be able to clarify
Any ideas fellas?
There is a note on the Samsung Magician download page ATM:
* Notice : Official release of Magician 4.2 will be tentatively postponed until late August in order to ensure compatibility with all devices.
My early release of 4.2 didn't support the 840 Pro, and I seemed to recall Samsung saying that the 840 Pro would get a FW upgrade that would let it use RAPID (but don't quote me on this). Or, it's just that they couldn't work out the kinks, and you'll have to wait until later this month for a fixed version.
I know RAPID doesn't work on my 840 Pros with the 4.2 Beta that I used in the EVO review.
Regards,
Christopher Ryan
There is a note on the Samsung Magician download page ATM:
* Notice : Official release of Magician 4.2 will be tentatively postponed until late August in order to ensure compatibility with all devices.
My early release of 4.2 didn't support the 840 Pro, and I seemed to recall Samsung saying that the 840 Pro would get a FW upgrade that would let it use RAPID (but don't quote me on this). Or, it's just that they couldn't work out the kinks, and you'll have to wait until later this month for a fixed version.
I know RAPID doesn't work on my 840 Pros with the 4.2 Beta that I used in the EVO review.
Regards,
Christopher Ryan
Isn't that something... my magician actually got notified and auto-updated lol, I don't have an EVO since RAPID would probably work if I did, and the download page DID have 4.2 on there a few days ago so it I guess they reverted their decision to offer 4.2 to download.
I did know that reviews stated their 840 Pro's weren't detected in 4.2 to allow enabling RAPID but since it was an auto-update, I was under suspicion it was a minor version updated vs the 4.2 software included in the EVO packaging which allowed enabling of RAPID from being an official update for me.
Ill give a screeny & checksum of my magician installer in-case anyone want to see vs theirs since I don't think this is 4.2 Beta. And if anyone wants I can upload it for others to download.
Guess I'll need to wait for Magician 4.2.1/4.3 or a FW update then.
Good to know I wasn't preventing it's ability to update, and that it's still incompatible at the moment.
Thank you for the verification
There is a note on the Samsung Magician download page ATM:
* Notice : Official release of Magician 4.2 will be tentatively postponed until late August in order to ensure compatibility with all devices.
My early release of 4.2 didn't support the 840 Pro, and I seemed to recall Samsung saying that the 840 Pro would get a FW upgrade that would let it use RAPID (but don't quote me on this). Or, it's just that they couldn't work out the kinks, and you'll have to wait until later this month for a fixed version.
I know RAPID doesn't work on my 840 Pros with the 4.2 Beta that I used in the EVO review.
Regards,
Christopher Ryan
Isn't that something... my magician actually got notified and auto-updated lol, I don't have an EVO since RAPID would probably work if I did, and the download page DID have 4.2 on there a few days ago so it I guess they reverted their decision to offer 4.2 to download.
I did know that reviews stated their 840 Pro's weren't detected in 4.2 to allow enabling RAPID but since it was an auto-update, I was under suspicion it was a minor version updated vs the 4.2 software included in the EVO packaging which allowed enabling of RAPID from being an official update for me.
Ill give a screeny & checksum of my magician installer in-case anyone want to see vs theirs since I don't think this is 4.2 Beta. And if anyone wants I can upload it for others to download.
Guess I'll need to wait for Magician 4.2.1/4.3 or a FW update then.
Good to know I wasn't preventing it's ability to update, and that it's still incompatible at the moment.
Thank you for the verification
Yeah, it seems as though it was pulled. The version most reviewers were supplied with was basically just a 4.2 preview.
The 830 and 470 won't be getting any more FW updates, but the 840 lines should be getting new FW over the next couple weeks/months. I believe most 840 EVOs will be available on the 20th, so its possible that the new updated version of Magician will coincide with the launch -- though the early retail packaging I have included 4.1 on the software CD. I'd expect most retail 840 EVOs will have new firmware and a new Magician version to download.
It would be incredibly awesome if the 830 could get RAPID too, though.
Regards,
Christopher Ryan