Samsung SSD 850 Pro (128GB, 256GB & 1TB) Review: Enter the 3D Era
by Kristian Vättö on July 1, 2014 10:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2011
Back in 2011 (which seems like so long ago now!), we introduced our AnandTech Storage Bench, a suite of benchmarks that took traces of real OS/application usage and played them back in a repeatable manner. The MOASB, officially called AnandTech Storage Bench 2011 - Heavy Workload, mainly focuses on peak IO performance and basic garbage collection routines. There is a lot of downloading and application installing that happens during the course of this test. Our thinking was that it's during application installs, file copies, downloading and multitasking with all of this that you can really notice performance differences between drives. The full description of the Heavy test can be found here, while the Light workload details are here.
The dominance continues in our 2011 Storage Benches. The 840 Pro was already the fastest drive in both suites, so it does not come as a surprise that the 850 Pro takes the lead.
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Homeles - Monday, June 30, 2014 - link
Man, the 850 Pro is killer. Samsung really knocked it out of the park. Those prices are just completely out of touch, though.Awful - Monday, June 30, 2014 - link
Yeah the prices are high for now. Game changing stuff though; and prices can only come down. PCIe V-NAND? Yes please!Hung_Low - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Even better, Intel style NVMe controller + this v-nand!! orgasmicavyshue - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
yeah, i've been holding off on upgrading from my existing 128 boot drive + mechanical setup to a full 1TB drive. I think I'll keep holding out until PCIe is better supported/better priced.Angrychair - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
The prices are in line for class leading performance and reliability.The reliability is the critical part, these are drives that are unlikely to wear out in any system almost no matter how heavily taxed.
Ken_g6 - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I see these are MLC drives. Hopefully, Samsung will come out with consumer-level 3D TLC drives that have relatively good reliability, and a price at or below Crucial's drives.frenchy_2001 - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Reliability is a side effect of retreating to 40nm pitch technology.Even if they decided to do TLC with the same cells, they would probably end up being more reliable than 2D nand MLC.
joelypolly - Thursday, July 3, 2014 - link
They already have drives in testing that has written over 8 petabytes so I think the reliability is theremkozakewich - Saturday, July 5, 2014 - link
On that note, I'm wondering how 4-bit MLC would perform compared to 2D NAND.RaistlinZ - Monday, June 30, 2014 - link
Fantastic drives! That consistency is really remarkable. I don't know if most will pay the price premium for these over the EVO however. The average user probably wouldn't notice a difference in general day to day use.