Samsung SSD 840 Pro (256GB) Review

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• nextel2010 - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link

  I couldn't agree more. I have two Samsung 830's, and they have been bulletproof. I used them to replace two Intel 520's, one of which was BSODing several times a day, and the other intermittently, both on previously stable systems. The SF-2281 controllers on those still need work, in spite of Intel's best efforts to date. The 830's have reliable, proven controllers. In practice, they are as wicked fast as the 520's. I never regretted switching over from Intel. While the 840's are likely to take the performance crown, to me, the 830 is fast enough, and new controllers make me nervous. Give me a year of proven stability, and I'll consider switching (of course, the 850 will be out by then...).

• FunBunny2 - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link

  The only problem with waiting a year: with Moore still in control (mostly, really, integration) controllers go out of style in a year. I wonder how long any stable manufacturers (let alone the likes of OCZ) will still have a controller 3 or 5 years out?
  
  IOW, just as we don't really need the "improved" iPhoneX every so often, the same is true in the SSD space. It's planned obsolescence.

• Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link

  After moving my Steam folder from my SATA II Intel 320 160Gb to my SATA III Samsung 830 64GB and seeing basically no difference in load times, I have to say that I'll probably keep my eyes peeled for deals on the 830, rather than jumping on the 840. If I could get a 512GB for my laptop for under $400, I'd jump on it and not worry about the difference in performance.

• HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link

  Agree on the massive discount, but... so far I haven't seen a "massive discount." The 256gig drive I've been eyeing has been hovering around the $200 price point for a long time now. That's not massive to me. Newegg priced it once for $180 and that was pretty decent for a "massive" discount, but they only did that twice and haven't done it in a long while (ie., since I had the cash to invest).
  
  This is especially relevant when I expect the 840 Pro to drop around that point ($200-ish) once supply matches demand within a couple of months. I'm not interested in beta testing TLC for Samsung either.
  
  And I'd probably pay an extra $20 ($220) to have the superior performance/perf per watt of the 840 when push comes to shove.

• dananski - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link

  Very impressive indeed. Quite a decent improvement on their main performance competitor - their own 830. Don't think it'll be necessary to upgrade from said 830 in my desktop, since that is lovely and fast already, though with the far lower power consumption this could be an ideal laptop upgrade for pretty much anyone :)

• Eeqmcsq - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link

  Mmm... bumping up against that SATA 6 Gbps wall. I can't wait for SATA Express to bust through this wall. I know the faster interface won't make much difference for typical real-world use cases, but SSD performance has increased so quickly over the past few years, I don't want to see its progress slowed by an interface bottleneck.

• iwod - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link

  Yes we really need those quick. And hopefully straight to PCI-E 3.0 as well so it would provide us a true Bi-Directional 2GB/s
  
  I think we will hit diminishing of returns once we hit that high numbers with the current software.

• nathanddrews - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link

  While a 2GB/sec sequential access would be awesome - no disagreement there - it won't feel like much of an upgrade without a significant gain in random IO. A drive that hits the 6Gbps peak in random 4K access would impress me more.

• Grok42 - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link

  Whatever the next interconnect is, I hope they build it for the next 10 years. I'm tired of all these incremental improvements requiring different cables. Maybe I've just been building computers too long?

• Denithor - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link

  SATA Express isn't going to require a different cable. Go read the article for more details.