The Samsung 750 EVO (120GB & 250GB) SSD Review: A Return To Planar NAND
by Billy Tallis on April 22, 2016 8:00 AM ESTMixed Random Read/Write Performance
The mixed random I/O benchmark starts with a pure read test and gradually increases the proportion of writes, finishing with pure writes. The queue depth is 3 for the entire test and each subtest lasts for 3 minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. As with the pure random write test, this test is restricted to a 16GB span of the drive, which is empty save for the 16GB test file.
The 750 EVO outperforms any non-Samsung drive of similar capacity on the mixed random I/O test, and the 120GB 750 EVO even beats a few MLC drives with twice the capacity.
The 750 EVO has above-average power efficiency during the mixed random I/O test.
 |
|||||||||
Most drives lose performance during the middle phases of the mixed random I/O test. High performance scores on this test rely on performance bouncing back during the final phase of the test when the workload shifts to pure writes. The 750 EVO's spike at the end is noticeable though not huge, but it also benefits from comparatively good performance in the first two sub-tests.
Mixed Sequential Read/Write Performance
The mixed sequential access test covers the entire span of the drive and uses a queue depth of one. It starts with a pure read test and gradually increases the proportion of writes, finishing with pure writes. Each subtest lasts for 3 minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The drive is filled before the test starts.
Unlike for the mixed random I/O test, most MLC drives are able to maintain a clear performance lead over the planar TLC drives—including the 750 EVO.
The 750 EVO's power consumption is low enough that it is clearly the most efficient planar TLC drive, but its efficiency doesn't beat a typical MLC drive.
 |
|||||||||
The 750 EVO has great read speed, but it bottoms out at a relatively low level during the middle of the test and doesn't bounce back at the end as much as most MLC drives and the 850 EVO.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
109 Comments
View All Comments
Ascaris - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
Isn't that the truth! Nearly every item comes with glowing reviews mixed in with "mine died in xx time, and I am never going to buy from $company ever again." Consumer routers and hard drives seem particularly bad in that way-- if I avoided all of the ones with horror stories, I'd never have either of them.Another thing people tend to overlook in reliability is the role of a good power supply. A cheap PSU can slowly sap the life from all the components in the system by introducing unacceptable levels of ripple, and you'd never know that was a cause or partial cause of the failure. On a laptop with the brick-style power supply, it is a good idea to replace a failed unit with an OEM unit of recent manufacture (less chance of dried-up caps) than some eBay special of unknown origin (other than to say China, which is where the OEM one came from too, almost certainly).
For desktops, the PSU is something people sometimes skimp on. I've never actually had a prebuilt desktop, but I would bet a lot of them have cheap PSUs, as it is probably a place where pennies can be pinched without a huge increase in RMAs before the warranty expires. I looked at new PCs on the site of one of the major online sellers about a year ago, and I was surprised at how many current models still had 120/240v switches on the PSU, which shows that they are older models without active PFC. That does not necessarily mean they're of poor quality, but it does make me wonder about them.
BrokenCrayons - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
I think it needs to come down in price before it'll be an acceptable sort of purchase.zepi - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
SSD's have lost a lot by being so hamstrung by their interfaces. CPU's have limited number of PCI-e connections and motherboards very little space for M.2 slots. SATA 3 is slow and bad protocol for SSD so that race to the bottom is only thing that is of any interest in 2.5" drives.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
SATA 3 may not be super fast, but the only observable difference, IME, between an m.2 drive and a sata drive was 2 seconds on boot. Unless you are a content creator working with laarge video/pictures, m.2 has little to offer over sata.Especially given that 2TB sata ssds exist, while m.2 is limited to 512GB, and that 512GB m.2 is more expensive than a 1TB sata ssd. And the ehat that m.2 drives give off compared to sata.
Margalus - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
It may be "cheap", but it's worthless in my opinion. Only 120GB or 250GB, pretty much too small for anything except a boot drive. If there are no 1TB drives, why bother?TheinsanegamerN - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
Believe it or not, many people could fit their computer needs in 250GB.I only use about 500GB between all of the games I actually play, and the OS itself.
Meteor2 - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
Mmmm, I think a lot of people have digital media collections now. I have no DVDs or Blu Rays, but 600 GB of films and TV series.barleyguy - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
Video doesn't need SSD levels of performance. Any modern spinning disk is fast enough to play video, even up to 4K.Personally, my video server machine is a 250 GB MX200 M-SATA SSD and a 4 TB hard drive.
Meteor2 - Saturday, April 23, 2016 - link
Absolutely but I want a single high-performance disc.Bleakwise - Sunday, April 24, 2016 - link
Why do you want an SSD for cold storage backups? That's just silly.