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 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.
Thanks to the excellent IO consistency, the 850 Pro dominates our 2013 Storage Bench. At the 1TB capacity point, the 850 Pro is over 15% faster than any drive when looking at the average data rate. That is huge because the 850 Pro has less over-provisioning than most of today's high-end drives and the 2013 Storage Bench tends to reward drives that have more over-provisioning because it essentially pushes drives to steady-state. The 256GB model does not do as well as the 1TB one but it is still one of the fastest drives in its class. I wonder if the lesser amount of over-provisioning is the reason or perhaps the Extreme Pro is just so well optimized for mixed workloads.
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Cerb - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
The SSD just quitting could brick the drive, and could hose up the FS. Like ECC RAM, if you need power loss protection, you need it regardless of file system. IMO, they should all at least be equipped with enough to gracefully finish in-progress writes and shut down (not necessarily empty buffers, but set up a state that they can be guaranteed to be able to roll back from).sonicology - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Typo?"Scaling below 20nm was seemed as a major obstacle but the industry was able to cross that..."
seemed a major obstacle or seen as a major obstacle, but not seemed as a major obstacle
Bladen - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Is it just me, or does the "Performance Consistency" page have interactive charts, all of which are entitled "(SSD name and capacity) - 4KB Random Write (QD32) Performance", but with different results in each of the graphs for the same SSDs and capacities? Also, descriptive text is missing below the last two.I'm presuming they are supposed to be a read and another read or write one, presumably at a lower queue depth.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
They're the same data in different scales.paesan - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I purchased a 512GB MX100 when they first came out for $199. No way the extra speed from the 850 pro is worth over twice the price as the MX100. Nobody is going to keep that drive for 10 years anyway. In 10 years the drive will be obsolete. Most users won't even notice the difference in speed in their every day usage.MrSpadge - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
BTW: that image is surely not an X-Ray but "just" an ordinary SEM image (scanning electron microscope).Spatty - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
This is correct. SEM image after a FIB.drwho9437 - Wednesday, July 2, 2014 - link
As I mentioned elsewhere, it is probably a STEM bright field image after a FIB liftout of the gate stack. Certainly not an X-ray; he should be correct the article...Cerb - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
"The wear out causes the insulators to lose their insulating characters" - shouldn't that be characteristic(s)?jann5s - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I'm wondering If this technology will also end up in SD (XD) memory cards?