World's Fastest consumer SSD on SATA II

Manofsteel

Weaksauce
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Oct 29, 2013
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Hi,
I just got this delivered yesterday:

http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...isite/SSD/global/html/ssd850pro/overview.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8216/samsung-ssd-850-pro-128gb-256gb-1tb-review-enter-the-3d-era

I installed Windows Technical preview (Windows 10) on it yesterday on non AHCI mode.

Getting less than half speeds on the SSD. It is touted to be 550 MB/s. Is SATA II limiting it or IDE mode in the BIOS?

28t7v6d.jpg


Honestly I was expecting a bit more performance even on SATA II.
 
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Honestly I was expecting a bit more performance even on a SATA II and an old dual core.

This benchmark is not measuring IOPs or random performance but measuring large sequential which should not be that big of a deal unless your usage is copying large GB sized files from SSD to SSD.
 
I regularly use SSD's on Sata2 x58 machines that bench a bit faster than that. You should be able to sustain past 200MB/s easy on sata 2. I suspect that AMD's lackluster sata controller may be at fault.
 
Update the firmware (if available) and make the switch to AHCI. No reason for IDE mode these days even with hard drives and yes I've heard performance improved for some people.

I don't know if it's SSD manufacturers fibbing the numbers, SATA, or me, but I've never reached close to the theoretical 300/600MBps speeds of the interface. Even with that including overhead it seems like another 20% overhead is on those interfaces as you'll even notice most SATA 2/3 drives are listed as 250MB/550MB. A little OT, but it's really annoying. I've never seen close to the numbers in benchmarks even after a fresh install..
 
Installed OS again in AHCI mode:

Looks better:

xcoufn.jpg


s2r537.jpg


Apart from this system feels much snappier and feels like a real upgrade.
 
Apart from this system feels much snappier and feels like a real upgrade.

And that is the point of an SSD. Its not the 500+ MB/s that you will almost never see in a real world application it is the access time and 0.067 ms is way better than the 15+ms you would have with a hard drive.
 
You should not run any SATA drive in IDE mode unless you know for absolute fact you need to. The SATA protocol added some nice features that any hard drive can benefit from. NCQ being the main one.
 
You will see 500MB/s in benchmarks. Real world performance will increase in some applications but not really in most. Remember that most applications do not read or write GB sized files sequentially or try to access 30+ files at once.
 
This benchmark is not measuring IOPs or random performance but measuring large sequential which should not be that big of a deal unless your usage is copying large GB sized files from SSD to SSD.
Welcome to the 96th percentiles of "techies".
 
If i upgrade to a SATA III board on Intel plaform how much jump can I expect?

I've gotten similar numbers to yours on the same mobo with a kingston hyper x drive with win10 preview in ahci mode. SATA3 on my AMD 970 mobo is 350-450 MB/s in most cases with crucial ssd's.
 
If i upgrade to a SATA III board on Intel plaform how much jump can I expect?

You should see max potential, if you would notice it is another story.

The big benefits of the 850 pro is the 10 year warranty and the theory that the 3D NAND will probably outlive you.
 
The big benefits of the 850 pro is the 10 year warranty and the theory that the 3D NAND will probably outlive you.

I told a coworker this today. I mean the 1TB 850 pro I ordered on Black Friday may outlive me as a 42 year old American.
 
Hi,
I just got this delivered yesterday:

http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...isite/SSD/global/html/ssd850pro/overview.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8216/samsung-ssd-850-pro-128gb-256gb-1tb-review-enter-the-3d-era

I installed Windows Technical preview (Windows 10) on it yesterday on non AHCI mode.

Getting less than half speeds on the SSD. It is touted to be 550 MB/s. Is SATA II limiting it or IDE mode in the BIOS?

28t7v6d.jpg


Honestly I was expecting a bit more performance even on SATA II.

AHCI should vastly increase your performance. Why did you not choose AHCI mode?
 
You definitely need a new motherboard with SATA 3 ports. I have a SSD from like 4 years ago that has better numbers than what you just posted.
 
If all you do is watch movies and browse the web, why bother upgrading? Random read and write performance are what you need, and I'm fairly sure if you do test 4k reads and writes, it will be identical on both a SATA II and SATA III system.

Anandtech measured the 850 Pro 128gb 4k random read to max out at 98.1 MB/s. 4k random write is 291.1 MB/s. So you'll see your random writes drop somewhat in performance, but random reads are what you want for opening programs, OS, etc. And that is nowhere close to saturating a SATA II link.
 
The upgrade is just an itch. Was thinking of getting back to a quad again (for the sheer sake of it nothing else). I will try to hold back till Skylake is out.
If all you do is watch movies and browse the web, why bother upgrading? Random read and write performance are what you need, and I'm fairly sure if you do test 4k reads and writes, it will be identical on both a SATA II and SATA III system.

Anandtech measured the 850 Pro 128gb 4k random read to max out at 98.1 MB/s. 4k random write is 291.1 MB/s. So you'll see your random writes drop somewhat in performance, but random reads are what you want for opening programs, OS, etc. And that is nowhere close to saturating a SATA II link.
 
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Well, I can't say anything against scratching the upgrade itch ;)
 
What drive did you have before? Have you run any other benchmarks like AS-SSD, CrystalDiskMark, or Atto?

I'll be on my X58 system for a while yet, so I'm tied to SATA2. My 128GB Crucial M4 has been fine for almost 3 years now, but I'm at 72% full as a boot drive with a single 11GB game on top. With larger games on my playlist, I'd feel better with more headroom. Dropping in an 850Pro looks like it's the best way of bumping space and 4k speeds, while pretty much maxing out the SATA2 interface on file sizes above 4k, but I'd love to see some benchmarks to confirm my thoughts. :)
 
Just did:

4h2kja.jpg


I was sold by 10 years warrantee.

Old drive: (Still using as storage)

5v26fl.jpg


^ This was ran in in IDE mode. Its more or less same in AHCI for HDDs.

What drive did you have before? Have you run any other benchmarks like AS-SSD, CrystalDiskMark, or Atto?

I'll be on my X58 system for a while yet, so I'm tied to SATA2. My 128GB Crucial M4 has been fine for almost 3 years now, but I'm at 72% full as a boot drive with a single 11GB game on top. With larger games on my playlist, I'd feel better with more headroom. Dropping in an 850Pro looks like it's the best way of bumping space and 4k speeds, while pretty much maxing out the SATA2 interface on file sizes above 4k, but I'd love to see some benchmarks to confirm my thoughts. :)
 
Just as a note, since you seem to have RAPID enabled, you are benchmarking your RAM, not your drive.
 
Thanks, could you re-run with RAPID disabled so I can see what it's really doing? :)
 
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