Some questions about the Samsung SSD's..

J

Jasheon

Limp Gawd
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Dec 28, 2009
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I am looking to get an SSD, but I am a bit confused. There is the 830, 840, and 840pro. Now what I have seen is that the 840's are cheaper than the 830's and the read/write speeds are faster? Why are the 840's cheaper than the 830's but are faster? Am I reading the specs wrong?

Then the 840 pro's are the more expensive and fastest of them all.

Which one is the best bang for your buck? What are the difference between the 3?

Thanks.
 
If you can find the 830 at a good price, it would be the best value choice now. But most likely it will not be available cheaply for much longer, since Samsung will (or has already?) ceased production of the 830.

The 840 is faster than the 830 at 4KiB random reads and writes, but the 840 is slower at sequential writes. Also, the 840 uses TLC flash which appears to have only 1000 erase cycles, as compared to 3000 or 5000 erase cycles for MLC flash. For most people, 1000 should be plenty, but there may be some heavy workloads that would be too much for the TLC flash.

The 840 Pro is faster, but it will probably not be noticeable to most people. Also, there may be some bugs that need to be worked out by Samsung, so I would avoid the 840 Pro until a few months have passed to see if there is trouble or not.
 
Well I was thinking about waiting for Cyber Monday and hopefully getting a great deal then....

For gaming, would the 840 be faster than the 830?
 
Jasheon said:
Well I was thinking about waiting for Cyber Monday and hopefully getting a great deal then....

For gaming, would the 840 be faster than the 830?
Click to expand...

If you are looking at the 830, waiting could be risky, as I already said.

The 840 could be slightly faster for some games. It would depend on the game. But it is probably not noticeable for most people for most games.
 
Why is the 840 so much cheaper than the 830? Doesn't make sense to me...if its faster.
 
Well then the 840 might be the way to go then...since its 100 dollars cheaper than the 830
 
Jasheon said:
Why is the 840 so much cheaper than the 830? Doesn't make sense to me...if its faster.
Click to expand...

Where are you checking prices? The difference between the 830 notebook kit and the 840 is $10 at newegg right now.
 
If you want a 512GB SSD, the best value by far is the Plextor M3, which is $360 at newegg now. If you want to pay extra for more performance, the 512GB Plextor M5P is $460 at newegg now.
 
JoeComp said:
If you can find the 830 at a good price, it would be the best value choice now. But most likely it will not be available cheaply for much longer, since Samsung will (or has already?) ceased production of the 830.

The 840 is faster than the 830 at 4KiB random reads and writes, but the 840 is slower at sequential writes. Also, the 840 uses TLC flash which appears to have only 1000 erase cycles, as compared to 3000 or 5000 erase cycles for MLC flash. For most people, 1000 should be plenty, but there may be some heavy workloads that would be too much for the TLC flash.

The 840 Pro is faster, but it will probably not be noticeable to most people. Also, there may be some bugs that need to be worked out by Samsung, so I would avoid the 840 Pro until a few months have passed to see if there is trouble or not.
Click to expand...

The 840 Pro is listed on Newegg as MLC, is that not correct? the non-pro is listed as TLC....
 
jhinck1414 said:
The 840 Pro is listed on Newegg as MLC, is that not correct? the non-pro is listed as TLC....
Click to expand...

The 840 and the 840 Pro are different in this regard with the regular 840 having TLC and the Pro having MLC.

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6328/samsung-ssd-840-pro-256gb-review

Oh yeah, I really want an 840 Pro, but waiting for results of the failure analysis to come back from Samsung. I don't want to RMA a hard drive after installing an OS, drivers, programs, games, etc.

In the mean time I'll keep using my crappy old rotating drive.

* haven't reformatted in 2 years and my computer is slow as hell lately and I really want a new and fast SSD!!! *
 
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i just bought a 830 512GB SSD to dump my steam folder on (alread have a 830 256Gb as boot drive).
originally i was after a 2nd 830 256GB but the price on the 512 (just under $400) was too good to ignore.

i didn't bother looking at the 840's b/c i knew there'd be discounts on the older 830's. the price drop combined with reports of flaky 840 drives + smaller NAND with less P/E cycles made the purchase easier. also the 830's have a ridiculous reliability record (NAND lasting well past their expected life span).

i you can get a 830 at a decent price, well worth it over the newer 840's.
 
I don't know where to find a 512GB Samsung 830 for under $400, but a 512GB Plextor M3 is only $360 at newegg right now. That is an excellent deal.
 
here is some data from my samsung 830 128gig in pc

power on time 2292 hours (24/7 use).
amount written 641 gig, this is interesting because I dont use this as a storage drive, I even made a ramdisk for browser temporary files, a few games have been installed to the drive that amount to approx 20gig in size as well as windows 7 and some apps. In short the amount I have written myself is way less than 641gig, this is made up from all of the logs, system restore, swap etc. windows writes to.
wear levelling count - 15. so 15/ P/E over just short of 100 days use, so my usage maybe average 50 erase cycles a year? Also interesting that a perfect wear levelling would have me at around 5 write cycles now not 15. I can see that quite easily I could have this drive at 200 write cycles a year, by installing more games and using as a data drive.

Also has 130 crc errors although I am told they mean sata errors not drive side.
 
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