Samsung SSD 850 EVO (120GB, 250GB, 500GB & 1TB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on December 8, 2014 10:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2013
Our Storage Bench 2013 focuses on worst-case multitasking and IO consistency. Similar to our earlier Storage Benches, the test is still application trace based – we record all IO requests made to a test system and play them back on the drive we are testing and run statistical analysis on the drive's responses. There are 49.8 million IO operations in total with 1583.0GB of reads and 875.6GB of writes. I'm not including the full description of the test for better readability, so make sure to read our Storage Bench 2013 introduction for the full details.
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2013 - The Destroyer | ||
| Workload | Description | Applications Used |
| Photo Sync/Editing | Import images, edit, export | Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Dropbox |
| Gaming | Download/install games, play games | Steam, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Starcraft 2, BioShock Infinite |
| Virtualization | Run/manage VM, use general apps inside VM | VirtualBox |
| General Productivity | Browse the web, manage local email, copy files, encrypt/decrypt files, backup system, download content, virus/malware scan | Chrome, IE10, Outlook, Windows 8, AxCrypt, uTorrent, AdAware |
| Video Playback | Copy and watch movies | Windows 8 |
| Application Development | Compile projects, check out code, download code samples | Visual Studio 2012 |
We are reporting two primary metrics with the Destroyer: average data rate in MB/s and average service time in microseconds. The former gives you an idea of the throughput of the drive during the time that it was running the test workload. This can be a very good indication of overall performance. What average data rate doesn't do a good job of is taking into account response time of very bursty (read: high queue depth) IO. By reporting average service time we heavily weigh latency for queued IOs. You'll note that this is a metric we have been reporting in our enterprise benchmarks for a while now. With the client tests maturing, the time was right for a little convergence.
The faster NAND and better IO consistency results in increased performance in our 2013 Storage Bench. The 1TB version shines in the test and isn't far from the 850 Pro, but the 500GB and 250GB models end up being middle-class performers. Especially the performance of the 250GB model is a bit underwhelming because it is beaten by the Ultra II, even though the 850 EVO should have a performance advantage thanks to V-NAND.
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hojnikb - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
Or 50$ less and get a mx100/ultra IIapoe - Tuesday, December 9, 2014 - link
$10 more than the 250GB 850 Evo and you can get a 480GB Crucial M500 or TWO Sandisk Ultra II's. Even though it's a year and a half old at this point, for most end users the speed difference is negligible but the doubled capacity is not. Like the article says, the pricing (at least the MSRP) seems to be in a weird place...HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
Samsung thinks they're Apple.In SSD's.
alacard - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
thanks for the review. is it my imagination or is the 120gb model missing from the destroyer benchmark?Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, December 9, 2014 - link
I don't usually run the 2013 suite on 120/128GB drives because it's more geared towards large and higher performance drives. Users with such heavy workloads shouldn't be buying small drives anyway for performance and capacity reasons.Memristor - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
Regarding the price, newegg.com already offers them below the suggested retail price. See here:http://promotions.newegg.com/samsung/14-6480/index...
wallysb01 - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
Only by $10. That’s not really enough. I got the 480 GB Ultra II for $160 over black Friday, that’s $90 less than this sale on the 500GB 850 EVO. That was maybe an atypically good deal, but even at more regular discounts the Ultra II/MX100 is priced at about $180-$190, maybe $200, which is more like $50-$70 less than this “sale” price 850 EVO.This review is right. Until the price comes down ~$50 per 500GB, I don’t see much reason for people buy the 850 EVO.
fokka - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
comparing msrp to a black friday deal doesn't make sense.Luscious - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
Where's the m.2 version?And if Samsung is stubbornly sticking with 2.5 inch drives, why no Sata Express version?
The hardware for both is out there, and has been for some time.
ZeDestructor - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
It's a SATA drive, so the interface will be SATA and not SATA Express/PCIe. Consequently, an M.2 variant will perform the same, since those variants would also be SATA driven, much like the older mSATA drives - same thing, different form factor, and unnecessary to review seperately.