Intel 520 vs Samsung 830 SSDs

V

Valkyrie

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 31, 2009
Messages
118
I am looking at a 120GB SSD for my system disk.
I have narrowed it down to the Intel 520 120GB or Samsung 830 128GB.
From what I can tell, those seem to be the best and most reliable SSD's?

I read Intel uses some kind of compression and garbage cleanup during writing, whereas the Samsung uses idle time to perform garbage cleanup?

Opinions? Which would be better/reliable for system boot disk?
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
My opinion, you can't go wrong with either, and whichever you get, if it fails, it is just bad luck and won't be because you picked the wrong one.

I like the Intel toolkit a bit better than the Samsung Magician software.

I prefer the Marvell controller that the Samsung 820 has over the Sandforce controllers which the Intel 520 (and 330) have. I'd never buy an SSD with a Sandforce controller, unless it was Intel.

The Intel is permanently over-provisioned, which I like. AFAIK, the Samsung 830's (like the Crucials) have no inherit over-provisioning.

The Intel has a five year warranty vs. three for the Samsung. Everything else being equal, I will always pay a bit more to get a five year warranty over a three.

I have a Samsung 512GB 830 that I am very happy with. However, if the Intel 480GB 520 was available at about the same price when I made that purchase, I would have gone for the Intel for the warranty even though the Sandforce controller would make me a bit apprehensive.
 
Like JRS, I am not a fan of sandforce controllers after having the same drive die twice in less than 6 months. But I'm pretty sure the 830 is using Samsungs own controller, not a marvell. For me, my top 2 SSDs are the M4 and the 830. I have multiple of both at home and work, they are both incredibly fast and are supposed to be very reliable. Plus there have been a lot of killer sales recently, so keep your eyes open.
 
Yes, I remember reading that the Intel 520 has Sandforce, and the Samsung 830 uses their own brand.

What do you mean by over-provisioned though?
 
Interesting... Good link.
So from what I understand, I could manually overprovision the Samsung 830 to match the intel by just partitioning it as a 120GB instead of 128GB and get the same protections?
 
Valkyrie said:
Interesting... Good link.
So from what I understand, I could manually overprovision the Samsung 830 to match the intel by just partitioning it as a 120GB instead of 128GB and get the same protections?
Click to expand...

Yep.
 
By the way, the Samsung 830 does, of course, come with some overprovisioning, as do all SSDs.

A 128GB Samsung 830 has 128GiB of flash on its circuit board, but only has a usable capacity of 128GB, which comes out to about 7% overprovisioning. That is fine for a Samsung controller, or a Marvell controller.

Sandforce controllers, however, perform better with more OP, so you have to give up some of your capacity if you want to get better performance. This is probably because Sandforce does not support large DRAM caches like the other controllers do.

Note that MS Windows displays your drive capacity in GiB, even though it incorrectly labels it as "GB".
 
I have been reading some reviews and something they keep mentioning is the BSOD problem with Sandforce controllers, and that Intel has reduced the problem but it still occurs sometimes. What is that about?
 
Corsair Performance Pro is too pricy for me. How does Crucial M4 compare to the Samsung and Intel? Why did you pick it?
 
Valkyrie said:
Never heard of this one, how is the reliability?
Toggle NAND?
Click to expand...
They've been around for awhile and I think the reviews speak for themselves. Also...
503x501px-LL-2d824111_as-ssd-benchPLEXTORPX-128M32.20.20129-43-11PM.png

m33gz.jpg



EnderW said:
Samsung 256GB is gonna be $190 tomorrow
http://slickdeals.net/f/4798900-256...content=u87320&utm_campaign=tu10#post51246644
Click to expand...

This. I own both the M3 and Samsung and they're both great. If you need 256GB grab the above deal, if not I'm selling a sealed 128GB in the f/s section :)
 
Valkyrie said:
Never heard of this one, how is the reliability?
Toggle NAND?
Click to expand...

They use an updated Marvell controller that's newer than the m4's. They also use better Toggle NAND and have awesome reliability and firmware. Imo, Plextor makes the best Marvell-based drives. The Plextor m3's perform roughly on par with the Corsair Performance Pro series (same controller) but offer a better warranty and they're much cheaper.

As far as the Samsung/M4/Plextor, the performance and price is roughly the same between all 3 of them so I'd pick the Plextor for the warranty alone.
 
That sale price is tempting... but, alas, over my budget. :(

Do the Plextors work well with OSX? This will be a dual boot computer...
 
Valkyrie said:
That sale price is tempting... but, alas, over my budget. :(

Do the Plextors work well with OSX? This will be a dual boot computer...
Click to expand...
I don't have any experience with the Plextor SSDs, but from what I've read, the Samsung 830 is the best drive for the Mac
 
Valkyrie said:
Corsair Performance Pro is too pricy for me. How does Crucial M4 compare to the Samsung and Intel? Why did you pick it?
Click to expand...

It has been by far the best selling SSD last year, and that was even before they started going on sale. It's the best combination of speed and reliability. No sane buyer should really be looking at anything not named M4 or 830.
 
Well... I think I will be going for the Samsung 830. I may splurge on the one on sale... Seems to be a lot of good reviews and is Mac friendly. They all seem pretty close, but I feel this one is probably the best fit for me.
Thank you for all the help!
 
I have 2 830's (256gb) and they run very well. All I have heard is very good feedback about this drive, and I can vouche for that thus far. I also have a Sandisk Extreme which feels a bit faster, but for reliability I would definitely go with Samsung.
 
Wait, what issues? I thought the Intel 520 allocated an extra 7% overprovisioning, which was a good thing? What did they fix?
 
Valkyrie said:
Wait, what issues? I thought the Intel 520 allocated an extra 7% overprovisioning, which was a good thing? What did they fix?
Click to expand...
would also like to know, I'm not aware of any issues
I have a Intel 520 240GB and I've had absolutely no problems with it
although if I was buying today, I'd probably go with a Samsung due to all the sales lately
 
Since a 120GB Intel 520 has 128GiB of flash on the circuit board, it is possible they have more than 7% overprovisioning. But it is hard to tell, since if Intel implemented RAISE, then they would have needed to devote 8GiB of flash to RAISE, leaving 120GiB / 120GB for about 7% overprovisioning. On the other hand, if Intel has disabled RAISE (which there is reason to believe they have done, based on their quoted UBER for the 520 versus the achievable UBER given by Sandforce when RAISE is employed), then they would have 128GiB / 120GB which is about 14.5% overprovisioning.
 
Ok, but what is the problem that they fixed? Either way you talk about has at least some overprovisioning, so that seems like it would be fine...
 
What problem? The only problem I know about that was in the news that Intel claims to have fixed is the Sandforce BSOD problem. But it seems Intel has only fixed some of the BSODs, not all of them. I don't see how that has anything to do with overprovisioning, though.
 
If you're going to plug this SSD into anything Apple than the choice should be simple:

Buy the samsung 830.

If you were going with windows or Linux then the Plextor would be a better choice. The current Intel SF-based drives are too damn expensive and don't offer the all around performance of a Crucial m4, Samsung 830 or Plextor M3.
 
Hmm... Yes, from the sound of it, the Samsung 830 will be my choice. It is going to be a dual boot pc, but I need it to work in OSX mainly.
Still curious about what problems PGHammer was talking about though...
 
Valkyrie said:
Hmm... Yes, from the sound of it, the Samsung 830 will be my choice. It is going to be a dual boot pc, but I need it to work in OSX mainly.
Still curious about what problems PGHammer was talking about though...
Click to expand...

The capacity loss related to overprovisioning; while it's a quibble (seven percent of the drive's capacity), it's been getting a lot of press (mostly bad).
 
Intel spent months debugging Sandforce's controller & firmware before releasing a
SF drive and in the end they still ended up w/broken features that couldn't even be fixed thru firmware updates (see the refunds offered over the broken AES encryption option). I would have actually given an Intel Sandforce drive a shot if they had managed to finally address all the validation issues, but if even the mighty Intel couldn't wrangle SF's silicon I'm not sure there's any hope for them.

Besides, last I checked the 520 is selling at a large premium compared to the 830 or other Marvell drives (Plextor M3 & M3P, OCZ Vertex 4, or even Crucial M4 which is damn good for the price and thoroughly tested by now), why even bother taking the 520 into consideration? At best Intel's warranty and service just offsets SF's flakiness in my mind. I own 2 Intel drives (old X25's) and 1 Samsung 830 btw. and I would've picked up an M4 in November if it was significantly cheaper than the 120GB 830 I bought instead.

P.S. As others alluded to, Samsung 830's garbage collection behavior is a good match for a Mac upgrade where you'll lose TRIM unless you hack it on (no clue if they've perfected that, always head mixed reports). Ironically the SF drives were also a good match for a TRIM-less environment but yea, it's SF. I'm not familiar w/the M3P's GC tho, it might be just as viable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top