Samsung SSD 840: Preliminary Benchmarks
by Kristian Vättö on September 27, 2012 6:11 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Samsung
- TLC
- Samsung SSD 840
I just got back from Seoul last night where Samsung held their SSD Global Summit for the first time. As a souvenir, Samsung gave us all an 840 SSD because they were only able to ship 840 Pros for the initial reviews. While I haven't had time to run the 840 through all of our tests yet, I just finished running our Storage Bench suite and thought I would give you a quick teaser on its performance:
| Samsung SSD 840 Specifications | |||
| Capacity | 120GB | 250GB | 500GB |
| Sequential Read | 530MB/s | 540MB/s | 540MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 130MB/s | 250MB/s | 330MB/s |
| 4KB Random Read | 86K IOPS | 96K IOPS | 98K IOPS |
| 4KB Random Write | 32K IOPS | 62K IOPS | 70K IOPS |
| Cache (LPDDR2) | 256MB | 512MB | 512MB |
The 840 is very close to the 840 Pro in terms of read performance but since our Heavy suite consists of lots of writes, the 840 can't challenge the 840 Pro. Some of this can be due to the firmware but I'm betting the biggest reason is the use of TLC NAND. Read latency isn't affected that much by the third bit per cell but erase and program times are considerably longer (50% increase in write latency), which results in worse write performance.
Our Light suite is more read centric, which is a good thing for the 840; only the 840 Pro is faster than it. Samsung's engineers also said that they specifically concentrated on read performance on the 840 because it's aimed towards consumers whose usage is often very read centric. I can definitely agree with their engineers and I think Samsung's current lineup is very logical: Cheap TLC based SSD for consumer with good read performance and a more expensive but all-around high performance drive for enthusiasts and professionals.
Our full review will be up soon, so stay tuned!
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B3an - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Samsung are doing a great job with these new SSD's, with performance and power consumption. If they're also as reliable as the 830 then they'll be an excellent choice.iwod - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
I hope this will push down the price of SSD even further with the usage of TLC.Pneumothorax - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Get the 830's while on sale while you can folks... Unless you don't mind waiting for the 840 Pro's price to come down, which is going to take awhile as they're the fastest game in town for and now and the foreseeable future.Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
Yeah, I'd really like to grab a 512GB 830 for my laptop if the prices drop down closer to $400...I'd probably pull the trigger at $450 if the drop happens soon.mtoma - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
I know this is an enthusiast site, but I would very much like to read a review about Kingston V200 drive. I know that V200 has a JMicron controller and has pour specifications vs. Samsung drives and Vertex 4 drives, but, in light of his excellent price, it might be worth buying. I mean, how bad/slow can it be? It is faster than Intel X25MG2 or Intel 320? If it is, could be a good buy for some old generation laptops (with Core2Duo CPUs).XnoX - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
Just made some tests with V200 (SV200S37A) - on Dell 9010 (Intel Q77 express chipset) drive is randomly not detected when booting and after a few restarts requires cold boot to reappear. Guess I'll be using Samsung 830 for the time being.Death666Angel - Friday, September 28, 2012 - link
That drive is as pricey [€/GB] here as the "OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB", OCZ Petrol 128GB, OCZ Octane 256GB, OCZ Solid 3 120GB, Samsung 830 256GB, with the Samsung being 4.5% more expensive and the Vertex3 being 9% cheaper. Not sure why you would want to go with the Kingston unless they are on ridiculous sales. :)eva2000 - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
Thanks for preview, curious where the Plextor M5S falls in the line up SSDs you have ? :)Moizy - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
The 256GB M5S is in Bench, along with many others, M3, M3 Pro, others.haukionkannel - Thursday, September 27, 2012 - link
I am pleasantly surprisec about the speed of 840. The 840 pro is fast, but if normal 840 can get this close is noce thong to see... Next we need 4-6 months beta testing and firmware updates and some information how the nand in 840 will stand usage. And after that we can really tell if Samsung did hit the gold allso this time! But very promising indeed!