Hail SATA: Performance SATA Solid State Drive Roundup @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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Hail SATA: Performance SATA Solid State Drive Roundup - Despite the performance benefits, PCIe SSDs remain an expensive niche market. That means that most of us are not going to be loading up a high end system with PCIe SSDs. Most of us mere mortals will be using SATA SSDs. We tested some of the best SATA drives with enthusiast-friendly price tags.
 
Good writeup. As usual.

Even the last place SSD is a Bagillion times faster than a spinning HDD. Looks like the 850pro if you have the cash and the EVO if cash is tight.

Samsung also announced a 2 TB EVO so the larger sizes are just around the corner.
 
So far , I've been real happy with my 500 gig 850 Evo ad a former 850 pro owner, the price difference made the wallet win over small performance gains
 
Depends. For general OS and most gaming usage, there would be quite literally no difference between a regular SATA SSD, RAID 0 SSDs, NVMe SSDs, or PCI-E SSDs. In fact, most older PCI-E SSDs rely on RAID 0 with regular SATA SSD controllers for their high sequential performance, but random would be similar to the non-RAID 0 SATA variants.
 
I wholeheartedly agree with the 850Pro taking 1st place but I was expect a much bigger lead benchmark wise. I used to tell people get any SSD since performance difference was not noticeable for desktop use. But after switching a friends to a 850 Pro, i was blown away at how snappy everything was. And that was a clone of a Cosair SSD which was a clone of a whatever 5400RPM HD Dell shipped his laptop with. If you gonna use you PC for more than just gaming, get the 850 Pro.
 
I have had a 1TB 850 EVO now for awhile and it has been solid. I upgraded from a 500 GB Samsung 840 (non-EVO) and it was solid too, but the 850 EVO does "seem" to be faster and it definitely is on the benchmarks that I have run. I always thought the Extreme Pro was faster than the EVO, so I'm feeling good about my current storage.
 
TheHobbyist said:
How does SATA raid zero compare to pcie?
Click to expand...

A number of PCIe drives (OCZ RevoDrive 350, G.SKILL Phoenix Blade, Asus ROG RAIDR, and many others) are actually just SATA SSDs in RAID 0 with a PCIe bridge. It's a tough question to answer with any real rigor, though, as getting an apples-to-apples comparison while only varying the interface is basically impossible.

I WOULD like to get second examples of some of the drives tested and test RAID 0 on both onboard and dedicated controllers. We'll see how it goes..
 
Comparing SSDs to each other is like arguing about which wax applied to a supercar trims the most milliseconds off the trap time.

Unless your application requires HPC performance, just get the cheapest drive (hell, get two and save an image once a once).

Compared to spinning drives the cheapest (and/or "worst" performance) is still an order of magnitude faster than the fastest consumer desktop HDD.

And add more ram and kill the virtual memory file use.

Spending an extra $200 so you can claim to have the biggest SSD pecker is pretty stoopid.
 
any chance of review of how much life span you will get from these drives
 
Performance isn't everything. I'd go with an MLC drive over a TLC drive any day, price be damned.
 
mrpc9886 said:
Comparing SSDs to each other is like arguing about which wax applied to a supercar trims the most milliseconds off the trap time.

Unless your application requires HPC performance, just get the cheapest drive (hell, get two and save an image once a once).

Compared to spinning drives the cheapest (and/or "worst" performance) is still an order of magnitude faster than the fastest consumer desktop HDD.

And add more ram and kill the virtual memory file use.

Spending an extra $200 so you can claim to have the biggest SSD pecker is pretty stoopid.
Click to expand...

Yeah....no. Longevity is crucially important and Samsung leads the way in this.
 
Seeing this review really makes me want a Blade, but I don't have that much money to toss around.
 
mrpc9886 said:
Comparing SSDs to each other is like arguing about which wax applied to a supercar trims the most milliseconds off the trap time.

Unless your application requires HPC performance, just get the cheapest drive (hell, get two and save an image once a once).

Compared to spinning drives the cheapest (and/or "worst" performance) is still an order of magnitude faster than the fastest consumer desktop HDD.

And add more ram and kill the virtual memory file use.

Spending an extra $200 so you can claim to have the biggest SSD pecker is pretty stoopid.
Click to expand...

It's a tighter grouping than it once was, but there are certainly material differences- vast differences, even, as you step up from SATA to PCIe. Look at the content creation tests- if that's a big part of your job, spending the extra $200 to have the SSD that will let you complete your tasks twice as quickly is a no-brainer. And even shy of that, looking at the difference in feature sets and performance under real-world scenarios helps inform readers' purchasing decisions. Unless you'd rather just choose an SSD at random.

To your point, for light users and gamers, I've written about why any modern SSD is good enough/functionally the same. Our reviews don't focus on edge cases, but they focus on common real-world applications where these otherwise-dull commodity products start to show idiosyncratic behavior.
 
No body buys the 850 pro expecting unrealistic performance gains, the true benefits is the increased durance and the 10 year warranty. I will continue to buy the 850pro's for their warranty alone, that is worth the extra price.
 
When pretty much any modern drive is fairly fast, I think reliability is next most important.

With the recent Samsung problems (Slowdowns/ data corruption in linux) I can't possibly purchase or reccomend either of those until those issues are resolved. On top of that, both Samsungs are on the linux kernel blacklist for lying about their queued trimming abilities.
 
Robstar said:
When pretty much any modern drive is fairly fast, I think reliability is next most important.

With the recent Samsung problems (Slowdowns/ data corruption in linux) I can't possibly purchase or reccomend either of those until those issues are resolved. On top of that, both Samsungs are on the linux kernel blacklist for lying about their queued trimming abilities.
Click to expand...

I'm not as familiar with the current state of affairs in Linux, I'll admit, so thanks for bringing this up. Which Samsung drives are affected?
 
Chris_Lonardo said:
I'm not as familiar with the current state of affairs in Linux, I'll admit, so thanks for bringing this up. Which Samsung drives are affected?
Click to expand...

I know this is a bit late, but it turned out to be a linux kernel issue. Supposedly Samsung contributed a fix however. With samsung reacting & contributing to the kernel, my next drive will DEFINITELY BE A SAMSUNG.
 
Beautiful write-up, thanks!

When I'm ready to go the 1TB SSD route (and it'll be soon), I'm likely going to lay heavy focus on endurance and warranty. The 850 Pro keeps coming out ahead.

The MX200 1TB has an amazing endurance rating (slightly higher TBW than the 850 Pro), but I'm rather put off that Crucial/Micron only tags it with a 3 year warranty.

The SanDisk Extreme Pro has a nice 10 year warranty, but the endurance rating is complete dogshit at 80 TBW.

I'll probably be getting the 850 Pro. Yes, it's a steep price premium over the Evo, but I see it as approx 30% more cost to get MLC, more TBW endurance, triple the P/E cycles, and double the manuf warranty length.

My plan is to transition my 480GB as my primary/boot drive, use my 256GB as a dedicated pagefile drive, and use the 1TB as my Steam/UPlay/catch-all drive...until 2-4TB drives are priced at what current 1TB drives are, then I'll likely just use 1TB boot and 2-4TB games/data. Should be a fun ride getting to that point. :/
 
I'm a big believer in the MX200 series. Used a whole bunch of them so far. If you are looking for the best SSD that isn't the price tag of the Samsung 850 Pro, that should be your choice.

They have MLC flash and the feature set to hopefully keep the drive in good health for a long time.

If price is no object, sure Samsung and the 10 year warranty.
 
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