Is going from a Corsair ForceGT SSD to Samsung EVO 840 noticeable?

[poohbear]

Hey all, i'm not really in the market for a new SSD, my Corsair Force GT 120gb (Sandforce 2000 controller) is just fine.....but seeing the reviews on the Samsung 840 EVO series with Rapid software technology is giving me the upgrade itch!! I especially like how the RAPID software uses the systems extra RAM as i have 16gb and 5-6gb is always idling. It would be nice to put that extra system RAM to use, but not sure if its worth the upgrade? Would it really be that noticeable a difference? I'm looking @ the Samsung EVO 840 250gb model, but hey $200 is $200 and i'm not sure if i'll even notice a difference.

Any opinions to persuade or dissuade me would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[Hellhammer]

The only scenario where I think that it's worth it is if you need more than 120GB. The RAPID mode in 840 EVO isn't exactly unique either and you could try something like PrimoCache to do the same. However, personally I'm not a big fan of using RAM for general caching because it's volatile and you may lose your data in case of a power loss.

 

[YBS1]

To be honest, I can't even tell a difference in normal usage going from a Crucial M4 256gb to two 1gb Evos in RAID 0. Maybe it would be noticeable during game level loading but I haven't played anything yet. I didn't really expect to notice much difference to begin with, the upgrade was more for storage capacity than speed.

 

[poohbear]

Ybs1 do u have rapid the feature turned on? Please update us cause id really like to know if there is a noticdable difference. I figured an ssd in the past 2 years (that can saturate sata3) is not really gonna show much of performance difference in real world usage, but i wanna hear from real user! Thanks!

 

[Teizo]

I went from a Corsair Force GS to a Samsung 840 Pro and the main difference is the 840 Pro scores higher on the benchmarks I run. They are neck and neck for the most part except random reads.

I only changed because of the write tolerance of the 840 Pro for the most part, though I was intrigued by the reviews just as you are. Day to day desktop performance? Hard to notice, really.

 

[Engineer]

I went from a 180GB Force GT to 2 x 256GB Samsung 830's in RAID 0 and can't tell a difference, other than benches. Hell, I think the boot time is slower because of the Intel RAID OROM initialization at BIOS startup now.

So I doubt that there would be anything that you can notice.

 

[YBS1]

I went from a 180GB Force GT to 2 x 256GB Samsung 830's in RAID 0 and can't tell a difference, other than benches. Hell, I think the boot time is slower because of the Intel RAID OROM initialization at BIOS startup now.

So I doubt that there would be anything that you can notice.

Boot time is slower because of RAID initialization. No I don't have RAPID enabled, I don't believe that will function with the drives in RAID. I mostly went RAID with these to create one very large SSD drive, not sure if the tradeoffs (no RAPID, no trim) are worth it or not. If after sometime I don't feel they are, I will split them up into OS/Programs and Games drives and see how that goes. I'm guessing the benefit I will see from RAID will only be in benchmarks and game level loading.

 

[spinejam]

I have two Corsair 180GB ForceGT's in RAID0 and bench this:

Benchmarks show an improvement however, I can't tell a difference b/w RAID0 and single SSD w/ everyday computing.

 

[Engineer]

not sure if the tradeoffs (no RAPID, no trim) are worth it or not.

That depends on the board and the driver. If using a Z77 or higher board and the Intel RST drivers, you should have TRIM (assuming something hasn't changed). You can even patch your BIOS of P67 boards (and maybe others too) to include the correct Intel OROM to match the driver to get TRIM to work (see thread in this forum).

 

[poohbear]

Can anyone with actual experience of a samsung 840 evo ssd comment on their experience compared to a previous ssd? Really interested in hearing firsthand experience. Thanks!

 

[WinSomeLoseNone]

I would not spend the money to switch unless you are only concerned about benchmarks.

Real-world performance in boot times and typical usage would be undetectable.

 

[aigomorla]

Can anyone with actual experience of a samsung 840 evo ssd comment on their experience compared to a previous ssd? Really interested in hearing firsthand experience. Thanks!

none what so ever..

i have went though single Intel SSD... R0 Intel SSD... Single Crucial... R0 crucial... single corsair force GT... r0 corsair force GT...
Single Samsung 840... R0 Samsung 840... single Samsung Evo... R0 Samsung Evo...

The only things i notice from those ssd's is when my storage gets larger...
Thats it... speed / bootup / loadup..... all near identical....

 

[poohbear]

Ok thanks guys! Ill look @ upgrading & tinkering something else then! Guess an ssd is an ssd! Atleast in the past 2 years.

 

[aigomorla]

Guess an ssd is an ssd! Atleast in the past 2 years.

Recent performance SSD is like every other performance SSD.

If you get some of the older SSD's, it can get really bad... so your 2yr mark is about 1yr off.... get a SSD made within this year, and they will most likely all be unnoticeable outside synthetic benchmarks.

 

[poohbear]

Well the corsair Force GT & OCZ Vertex 3 are 2 years old now. They're sandforce2 controllers, ure saying they're not as fast? They were the first to saturate the SATA3 bandwidth!

 

[TemjinGold]

Hey aigo, your Intel SSDs, were they SATA 3 ones? I have a SATA 2 (Intel G2 160) and wondering if I would notice anything moving to a top end SATA 3. I will probably do it anyway because ever since my drive filled to like 20 gbs free, stuff has started taking a LONG time to open (almost spindle speed.)

 

[aigomorla]

Well the corsair Force GT & OCZ Vertex 3 are 2 years old now. They're sandforce2 controllers, ure saying they're not as fast? They were the first to saturate the SATA3 bandwidth!

i dont think any SSD can saturate even sata2.
The speed difference is because of the interface itself.
However u will get almost double numbers on any SSD by R0 it.
Its when you go after more then 2 SSD's, thats where u hit the wall on sata2, and im guessing double that on sata3.

Hey aigo, your Intel SSDs, were they SATA 3 ones? I have a SATA 2 (Intel G2 160) and wondering if I would notice anything moving to a top end SATA 3. I will probably do it anyway because ever since my drive filled to like 20 gbs free, stuff has started taking a LONG time to open (almost spindle speed.)

loadup speed time no.

i got a couple G2's running in other machines as well.
I ended up R0ing it for space...
As long as it isnt io heavy, u wont notice much difference.

Also i noticed G2's slowing down if u exceed more then 75% capacity on them....

 

[TemjinGold]

Yeah, that's why I'm gonna get a larger one anyway. My application open time is back to near-spindle speeds because of how full it is.

 

[aigomorla]

Yeah, that's why I'm gonna get a larger one anyway. My application open time is back to near-spindle speeds because of how full it is.

u can see i was running 3 G2's in R0.
This used to be one of my old configs i had when SSD's were relatively new..

but at this point, if u can find a cheap G2 160gb.. it might be in your best interest to R0 it for double space.

Another topic which people worry about is the lack of TRIM on R0.
I can tell you i have hammered those G2's in R0 for about 1 yr, and bearly took off 4% of its life.
I needed the larger space more so then the faster speed...

Also synthetic benchmarks show we get an improvement from 2-3 even in R0... but meh... u wont notice it...
(ICH10R... X58 platform... )

2 x intel R0:

3 x intel R0:

After 3 SSD's on a ICH10R u will SATURATE the living heck out of it... lol...
The limit to the ICH10R on SATA2 is 3 SSD's in R0.
Or 2 Samsung EVO's .. or 2 EVO class SSD's...

This is how it will be with SSD's... u will upgrade for SPACE more then SPEED.

I only have 1/5 drives which i can pass TRIM on... i dont really care about TRIM anymore after seeing life on real usage.
Even if that 1 drive could get TRIM, it doesnt use it cuz it doesnt support it...
yet i know it will last longer then any SSD ever created.. cuz that drive is a X-25E SLC.

 

[TemjinGold]

Interesting data there but the 4k numbers on 2x or even 3x seems much lower than that on a modern SATA3 and those write speeds are still atrocious (the G2's achilles heel back in the day). To be clear, my motherboard has native SATA3 ports. I just got my SSD back when that wasn't available so I essentially have a SATA2 SSD drive on a SATA3 port. Not an issue for spindles but wondering if going to a SATA3 SSD on my SATA3 ports will net a difference.

 

[aigomorla]

Interesting data there but the 4k numbers on 2x or even 3x seems much lower than that on a modern SATA3 and those write speeds are still atrocious (the G2's achilles heel back in the day). To be clear, my motherboard has native SATA3 ports. I just got my SSD back when that wasn't available so I essentially have a SATA2 SSD drive on a SATA3 port. Not an issue for spindles but wondering if going to a SATA3 SSD on my SATA3 ports will net a difference.

again.. only in synthetics...

you wont notice when it comes to gaming... or everyday activities.
my advice is go with whatever nets u the most space...

if the G2 160 costs too much... and its too expensive to double your space... then use a G2 and a 250gig Samsung for excess..
If the G2 160 is cheap... R0 it... and then get another 250gig samsung... use the Samsung for boot.. and the R0 G2's for games... as it will have 320gig storage after u R0 it.

 

[TemjinGold]

Sounds good.

 

[lehtv]

I'm still running a Vertex 2 120GB which is SATA 3gb/s. The PC is very responsive, I can't think of any performance related justification to upgrade it until it dies, so I may still be using this 3+ years from now, who knows.

The only reason I might upgrade is capacity, though SSD prices for 250GB and 500GB drives will have to halve in price, or more, for the upgrade to be worth it to me

 

[tstedel]

I went from a Corsair Force GT 240GB to a Samsung 840 EVO Drive and to be honest, I don't notice any speed difference at all. When I benchmark the EVO drive, it seems to do better, but in my real world tests, it actually does slightly worse. Granted, my force gt is now a slave and my evo is now my primary with the OS running on it which may have some overhead. I just decided to copy paste my entire Program files directory (17.6 GB). On the Force GT, it took 2:53, on the EVO with RAPID enabled it took 3:16, and without it took 3:24.

In order to get rid of the overhead of the OS, I might try booting to a live CD and running benchmarks that way.

 

[Hellhammer]

EVO is fast in benchmarks due to TurboWrite but once you've gone through the SLC buffer the write performance drops. It doesn't shock me that the Force GT is faster in some scenarios.