Excited about the 840 EVO?

ochadd

ochadd

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 9, 2008
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I've been giddy about Samsung's new drive after reading about the RAPID software. A bargain priced SSD, high end performance, volume RAM caching, and Samsung support. Expecting good things after using NVELO/Crucial setups in several machines, with no problems, for more than a year. Can't see recommending drives of any other flavor for people who need the advice. Anyone disagree this thing hits the sweet spot in most areas?
 
It's nice to see new models coming out. But that "rapid mode" is just a stupid gimmick.
 
We'll see how rapid mode plays out in the real world and if / when they'll extend support to the 840 Pros.
 
staticlag said:
It's nice to see new models coming out. But that "rapid mode" is just a stupid gimmick.
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I think it's more than a gimmick. Windows does a pretty good job at read caching imho but caching writes is a sweet thing. You get near instantaneous response times while effectively extending the life of a SSD due to the optimized lazy writes out of the user's view. Been using RAM drives that do it for me but I've got to force the data to make use of it. It's loaded from disk on boot up and written back to disk at shutdown. Having more writes hit the cache would be great.
 
I can't help but wonder why the [H]ard crowd is so seemingly disinterested (to put it very nicely) in the new Samsung 840 EVO ssd's? And [H]ard/OCP itself hasn't even bothered to acknowledge the existence of the Samsung 840 EVO ssd's, while many other websites reviewed them several days ago. All that's fine, but I can't help being a little curious about the apparent indifference from top to bottom here towards this new product. Does just about everyone here feel that the 840 EVO ssd's are that mediocre and not worthy of any attention?
 
Take away the Rapid stuff and they do not out perform the 840 Pros. The Pros are faster. Once Samsung gives us Raipd stuff, the 840 Pro is the better drive.

Why WOULD we be excited about a slower drive than what we have now?
 
I've got a 1TB drive on order right now (stupid back orders...). Will make a great drive for my game library. Should also compliment the Pro I already have.

As for [H] not reviewing, just look at the sticky requesting resume's for SSD' reviewers and you'll see why there hasn't been a review yet. ;)
 
Brahmzy said:
Take away the Rapid stuff and they do not out perform the 840 Pros. The Pros are faster. Once Samsung gives us Raipd stuff, the 840 Pro is the better drive.

Why WOULD we be excited about a slower drive than what we have now?
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Sorry, but I don't quite understand what you mean by "Once Samsung gives us Raipd stuff, the 840 Pro is the better drive." The EVO drives have the "Rapid stuff". Are you saying that the Pro ssd's need the "Rapid stuff" to be the better drive? If the EVO drives with the "Rapid stuff" are still slower than the Pro then it would seem that the main thing going for them is lower prices.
 
I ordered a 250GB 840 EVO (and got it for ~$160). Mainly based on the Anandtech review and suggestion of another Hardforum member I know in real life. I've never used an SSD in my desktop before, so I'm not exactly sure what kind of learning curve there will be to get it functioning flawlessly, but I'm excited to find out.
 
Curious142 said:
Sorry, but I don't quite understand what you mean by "Once Samsung gives us Raipd stuff, the 840 Pro is the better drive." The EVO drives have the "Rapid stuff". Are you saying that the Pro ssd's need the "Rapid stuff" to be the better drive? If the EVO drives with the "Rapid stuff" are still slower than the Pro then it would seem that the main thing going for them is lower prices.
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Without Samsung's software memory caching, drive to drive, the 840 Pro is faster (in some ways quite a bit faster, than the Evo.) The Rapid caching software enhances the performance of the Evo, which is the first drive the caching software has been enabled on. Samsung is planning on releasing future Rapid software versions to accommodate the 840 Pro drives. So, in the end, the better drive is still the Pro. Look at the benches, read the reviews.

Obviously larger, cheaper SSDs are a good thing, but they aren't large enough or cheap enough, yet, to replace spinners for static file storage. When I can get a 2TB SSD for $180-$200 x 4 in a RAID5, now we're talkin'. That's still quite a ways out yet.
 
Brahmzy said:
Without Samsung's software memory caching, drive to drive, the 840 Pro is faster (in some ways quite a bit faster, than the Evo.) The Rapid caching software enhances the performance of the Evo, which is the first drive the caching software has been enabled on. Samsung is planning on releasing future Rapid software versions to accommodate the 840 Pro drives. So, in the end, the better drive is still the Pro. Look at the benches, read the reviews.

Obviously larger, cheaper SSDs are a good thing, but they aren't large enough or cheap enough, yet, to replace spinners for static file storage. When I can get a 2TB SSD for $180-$200 x 4 in a RAID5, now we're talkin'. That's still quite a ways out yet.
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Thanks for your reply. I've read several reviews and seen the numbers. I've also seen the prices. Which, EVO or Pro, has more bang for the buck in your opinion?
 
Curious142 said:
Thanks for your reply. I've read several reviews and seen the numbers. I've also seen the prices. Which, EVO or Pro, has more bang for the buck in your opinion?
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Bang for the buck probably goes to the Evo. I didn't mean to downplay the Evo - it's a really great drive - I guess what would get me excited is a new SSD that would greatly outperform the 840 Pro and make me think about upgrading. It's only a matter of time before that happens, but that to me, is exciting.
When the 840 Pros dropped, I got pretty excited because they really did blow everything else away in almost every single metric. They have been the best drives I've owned yet.
 
Looking at the Evo's myself. I order for my work and we have been using the Samsung SSD's for awhile now. Started with 830's and moved to the 840's. For us when purchasing laptops its cheaper to buy one and replace the hdd with an ssd then order one with a installed ssd. The EVO should be a decent speed bump from the standard 840.
 
Just got done installing my 1TB Evo. Yeah, RAPID mode works and works well.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 Shizuku Edition x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 708.976 MB/s
Sequential Write : 1054.148 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 753.342 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1126.370 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 82.438 MB/s [ 20126.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 820.371 MB/s [200285.9 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 506.520 MB/s [123662.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 818.183 MB/s [199751.7 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [D: 29.3% (272.8/931.4 GB)] (x1)
Date : 2013/08/22 18:24:26
OS : Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)
 
Brahmzy said:
NICE. C'mon Samsung, help out us 840 Pro guys.
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That's one thing I might get bummed about. If you have multiple EVO's the RAPID software can only work on one drive according to the software. If the same holds true for Pro's, I'll have to choose between gaming and OS for the speed up. I have enough ram to give over a couple gigs to both drives, so why not let me have both?
 
Jeremy C said:
That's one thing I might get bummed about. If you have multiple EVO's the RAPID software can only work on one drive according to the software. If the same holds true for Pro's, I'll have to choose between gaming and OS for the speed up. I have enough ram to give over a couple gigs to both drives, so why not let me have both?
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Yeah, RAPID does nothing for my R0 Pros in my main gaming rig, but I've 4 other single 840 Pro boxes that'd love this.

AllBlackFan said:
Almost as excited as these people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPdCS8p6LjA&feature=youtu.be
:eek::eek::D
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LOL! Hilarious vid.
 
Curious142 said:
Thanks for your reply. I've read several reviews and seen the numbers. I've also seen the prices. Which, EVO or Pro, has more bang for the buck in your opinion?
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EVO.
Issues with ssd after a point you wont notice any difference in real use.
still using crucial 128gb M4 with primocache which does the same idea as rapid software does.
Utlize ram for speed boost isnt a new thing ramdisks does it also just become more mainstream for most.

so as I look at ssd the upgrades have started to be more about storage capacity 256gb or 500gb.
 
Brahmzy said:
NICE. C'mon Samsung, help out us 840 Pro guys.
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You could just use this for now (free 90 day beta test):
http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/download.html

This software can be configured to do what RAPID does for any drive even hard disks or drives raid arrays. To do this set the cache to read/ write and enable the Deferred write.

However please note that both of these do have risk of data loss. If the PC crashed or lost power while data was still in write back cache you would have some filesystem corruption.
 
Last edited:
ivanhebc said:
The Pros are faster. Once Samsung gives us Raipd stuff, the 840 Pro is the better drive
z8vLbZJ
.
Click to expand...

Which is why I have both. :D The Pro is my OS/other stuff drive, the Evo is now my Steam/games drive. The Evo is smaller than the 2X1TB VR's in R0 I had, but is far, far faster. Less clutter in my case as well, so it's a win-win.
 
Yeah one thing about accelerated read cache is, it is only beneficial if whatever you're doing has already been done before and only previously in that session as up to the limit of the cache.. On a work machine where you're doing repetitive tasks all day every day, it can be great. I've used Fancy cache in the past and have seen benefit. On my main gaming rig, not so much. I turn it on, I play some games or do some heavy lifting stuff, then I power it off. Bam, cache is gone. The cache has to re-warm at every boot with whatever tasks you're going to do.
 
Brahmzy said:
Yeah one thing about accelerated read cache is, it is only beneficial if whatever you're doing has already been done before and only previously in that session as up to the limit of the cache.. On a work machine where you're doing repetitive tasks all day every day, it can be great. I've used Fancy cache in the past and have seen benefit. On my main gaming rig, not so much. I turn it on, I play some games or do some heavy lifting stuff, then I power it off. Bam, cache is gone. The cache has to re-warm at every boot with whatever tasks you're going to do.
Click to expand...

So then once RAPID is enabled for the Pro, it sounds like it would be better to have it on the OS drive rather than the gaming drive.
 
Jeremy C said:
So then once RAPID is enabled for the Pro, it sounds like it would be better to have it on the OS drive rather than the gaming drive.
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Kinda all depends on usage, how large of a cache you'll be setting, types of games etc.

With enough RAM, and a big ol' cache, depending on the game, you could have a good portion of the game sitting in cache. If you don't game for weeks on end, yeah, you'll want the OS volume cached.
 
I'm looking to build soon and can only afford an SSD for the OS... Was looking at the Samsung 840 Pro 256GB... But the EVO is a much better price.. Think I'd notice much of a difference if I got the EVO over the Pro?

I'll most likely snag a 1TB one next year for games and such. This will be my first SSD.
 
Well, I installed my new 500gb EVO. It was a hassle, but it's done. It's noticeably faster than my hdd, but it hasn't knocked my socks off yet. Also, the Magician software won't let me activate RAPID mode. I get a message saying that there has to be no disk operation in progress to enable RAPID. Apparently there's always some disk operation in progress. And on a minor note, Samsung's website won't let me register the drive. So, an ssd is nice, but it doesn't seem to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Just my $.02.
 
Need more info ^^^

And yes, they are the greatest things since sliced bread. Something is wrong.
 
Brahmzy said:
Need more info ^^^

And yes, they are the greatest things since sliced bread. Something is wrong.
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Running Win7 x64. The benchmark scores in the Magician software are:

Sequential Read: 1202
Sequential Write: 1104
Random Read: 69030
Random Write: 37468.

The sequential numbers seems to be fine, but the random numbers seem pretty bad. I'm sure this isn't all the info that's relevant, so let me know what else you need. I appreciate your help.
 
Yeah, something isn't right with those numbers. Using Magician I get:

Read: 1111
Write: 1054
R-Read: 172770
R-Write: 197878

I think these numbers do have more to do with your ram than they do the drive. Have you turned off RAPID and tested again?
 
Jeremy C said:
Yeah, something isn't right with those numbers. Using Magician I get:

Read: 1111
Write: 1054
R-Read: 172770
R-Write: 197878

I think these numbers do have more to do with your ram than they do the drive. Have you turned off RAPID and tested again?
Click to expand...

I turned off RAPID and got these numbers

Read: 547
Write: 471
R-Read: 81628
R-Write: 53752

So, the Read & Write are half of what the were with Rapid, and the random number are better, but not drastically. Thanks for the help.
 
UrielDagda said:
I'm looking to build soon and can only afford an SSD for the OS... Was looking at the Samsung 840 Pro 256GB... But the EVO is a much better price.. Think I'd notice much of a difference if I got the EVO over the Pro?

I'll most likely snag a 1TB one next year for games and such. This will be my first SSD.
Click to expand...

you wont notice a difference in real world usage. think that was stated in the anandtech review
 
wooj said:
you wont notice a difference in real world usage. think that was stated in the anandtech review
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Thanks, I think I'll go with the EVO then. Regardless, since it'll be my first SSD, I'm sure I'm going to orgasm on that first boot, even if it's not equal to the 840 Pro. lol

Too bad my funds are going to prohibit me getting a 2nd larger one for games, but from what I've heard most games generally won't show much of a difference anyway, save a rare few.
 
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