What SSD should I get now?

[Craig234]

I got I have an insurance credit for a new SSD, and missed the one I was considering, the black Friday Samsung 1TB $350 (not to mention free far cry 4 code included).

That's too bad - but now, what should I get? This is for gaming.

Leaning toward 1TB to have plenty of room but could be talked out of it.

Seems like Samsung is a leading pick.

The 840 EVO is now $420 everywhere (no far cry 4).

The 850 EVO is $470 pre-order for Dec 26.

One of those? Or something else?

 

[radeson]

i just bought 4x samsung 850 pro 256, with plans to put them in raid. I really like samsung and if you are looking towards only getting one, get a big samsung. And only samsung...

Ill tell you why. Samsung is the only ssd out right now that has this option called rapid mode. What it does is enables you to use 25% of your RAM for a high speed cache. This makes your ssd even faster. I can attest that it is A LOT faster. I went from having a crucial m100 256gb to these, and there is a NOTICEABLE difference. So in conclusion, not only is samsung getting the best benchmark scores out there right now, they also have rapid mode which makes your ssd 2-5 TIMES faster. Not to mention the 850 pro has a TEN year warranty, and a 150tb write limit. That more than DOUBLES anybody else. They are literally crushing the competition..... Spend the extra money and go with the 850 pro. if you wait for the 850 evo it has MLC nand not TLC like the pro or some thing like that if i can remember right. And it only has a 5 year warranty with a 75tb write limit. the choice is yours....

 

[IronWing]

I got I have an insurance credit for a new SSD, and missed the one I was considering, the black Friday Samsung 1TB $350 (not to mention free far cry 4 code included).

Was Far Cry 4 supposed to come with the 850 Pro 512? I saw nothing in the box indicating such.

 

[Craig234]

Thanks for the opinion. Any idea of the percentage performance difference between the 850 EVO and 850 PRO?

Does the 850 EVO or the 840 EVO have that rapid mode feature?

And to anyone whether the 840 EVO or 850 EVO is better if I get an EVO?

 

[Craig234]

Was Far Cry 4 supposed to come with the 850 Pro 512? I saw nothing in the box indicating such.

I don't know about the PRO.

The 840 EVO drives had far cry 4 from multiple retailers.

 

[IronWing]

I don't know about the PRO.

The 840 EVO drives had far cry 4 from multiple retailers.

I checked Samsung's site. I guess it is just with 840 EVOs.

 

[radeson]

I saw the 850 pro on a few sites with the far cry 4 game code on it. This was pre-black-friday. And it was only on a few select sizes. The percent of performance difference is not that big as all samsungs are pretty close to the top of the charts. so if you go with the 850 pro you'ld be paying for the longer warrantee and write limit. i remember I found a website. I forget what it was. Something like ssd benchmark dot com or something. There weren't any user benchmarks out yet for the 850 evo. But the one's they had form manufacturer were enough to keep me steered towards the pro...

 

[OlyAR15]

Just buy whatever is on sale. You are not going to notice a difference in performance in games.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Not to mention the 850 pro has a TEN year warranty, and a 150tb write limit. That more than DOUBLES anybody else.

Oh really? My Intel 710 SSD with a 500TB write limit would like a word with your PR person.

 

[Charlie98]

Just buy whatever is on sale. You are not going to notice a difference in performance in games.

That ^^^^

...but if you insist... 840EVO with FarCry4.

 

[radeson]

the intel 710 series has a and i quote:Max Sequential Read: Up to 270MB/s
Max Sequential Write: Up to 210MB/s, which means that the most ssd drives out there are twice as fast. Also the intel 710 series I found were ridiculously expensive. Probably because they employ HET(high endurance technology) which makes it able to sustain much higher write limits. These are only needed for people or businesses that are writing incredible amounts of data a day. The average gamer would typically fill up their hard drive with games and thats it. Maybe replace a few now and again, and they would never even come close to the 75tb levels most low-end consumer model ssd's have.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Oh really? My Intel 710 SSD with a 500TB write limit would like a word with your PR person.

VL what are you doing in possession of modern technology?

 

[Cerb]

the intel 710 series has a and i quote:Max Sequential Read: Up to 270MB/s
Max Sequential Write: Up to 210MB/s, which means that the most ssd drives out there are twice as fast.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-sata-3gbps,3469-9.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-sata-3gbps,3469-8.html

No, it doesn't mean that. It means they are capable of being twice as fast, or a bit more, if all circumstances allow for it. Sequential write and read are primarily useful for backups and restores, if you're not running a file server. Sure, I do that, but the backups are small, so who cares, and restores are rare.

Also, the 710 are expensive because users will pay for it, being used to paying about as much for HDDs that can't hold a candle to the SSDs.

 

[VirtualLarry]

VL what are you doing in possession of modern technology?

I guess if you call SSDs with a SATA2 interface "modern".

 

[kasakka]

Ill tell you why. Samsung is the only ssd out right now that has this option called rapid mode. What it does is enables you to use 25% of your RAM for a high speed cache. This makes your ssd even faster

On the other hand, according to this, rapid mode is slower in reality. I haven't bothered trying it as I only have 8 GB RAM (which is plenty for everything but not if also used as hard drive cache) so I can't say how it is in normal use.

In real use I'd say just buy whatever has the right size and price for your needs. I currently use three generations of SSDs in my computer:

• OCZ Agility 3 128 GB - Win 7 OS+programs
• Intel X25-M G2 160 Gb - OSX Yosemite (Hackintosh)
• Samsung 840 EVO 1 TB - games, documents etc

I've swapped the OCZ and Intel around as boot drives for each OS and despite tests showing the OCZ is much faster (not to mention SATA 2 vs SATA 3), there is not really any noticeable real world performance difference. The jump from HDD to SSD is massive of course and I recently bought the 840 EVO specifically to improve loading times in games and it worked like a charm for that.

 

[Spungo]

I guess if you call SSDs with a SATA2 interface "modern".

You could replace SATA with a USB 1.0 and nobody would notice a difference. My computer at work virtually freezes when doing intense work with Acrobat. What counts as "intense" work with a hard drive? 2mb/s. I'm not joking. Anandtech seems to agree with my experience:

Let's party like it's 1989!

 

[hawtdawg]

Sandisk Extreme Pro 480gb for 270 is a better deal than the 850 Evo right now.

 

[Cerb]

You could replace SATA with a USB 1.0 and nobody would notice a difference. My computer at work virtually freezes when doing intense work with Acrobat. What counts as "intense" work with a hard drive? 2mb/s. I'm not joking. Anandtech seems to agree with my experience:

(image)

Let's party like it's 1989!

HDDs are only just barely getting to be able to handle >3MBps 4K read and write, at 10-20ms/ea (or more), where almost any SSD can do >=15MBps at <1ms/ea, even on old SATA, and stuck in IDE mode.

 

[R0H1T]

On the other hand, according to this, rapid mode is slower in reality. I haven't bothered trying it as I only have 8 GB RAM (which is plenty for everything but not if also used as hard drive cache) so I can't say how it is in normal use.

In real use I'd say just buy whatever has the right size and price for your needs. I currently use three generations of SSDs in my computer:

• OCZ Agility 3 128 GB - Win 7 OS+programs
• Intel X25-M G2 160 Gb - OSX Yosemite (Hackintosh)
• Samsung 840 EVO 1 TB - games, documents etc

I've swapped the OCZ and Intel around as boot drives for each OS and despite tests showing the OCZ is much faster (not to mention SATA 2 vs SATA 3), there is not really any noticeable real world performance difference. The jump from HDD to SSD is massive of course and I recently bought the 840 EVO specifically to improve loading times in games and it worked like a charm for that.

No it's not, the TR article was also misleading because when the quantum of data accessed exceeds the size of the cache pool it will run/copy at normal SSD speeds & that's how it's always been, pretty much the same way SLC TurboWrite/nCache work on TLC drives. Also the file copy tests are not what RAPID is made is for, it just caches frequently used data in RAM, like Primocache, & so it works just how it's supposed to & exactly what it was made for.

Not all articles on the web tell you the whole story, certainly not when the basis of their formulation is flawed.

 

[Essence_of_War]

One of those? Or something else?

If you're mostly just putting games on them, you could even go with something like the SanDisk Ultra Plus or Ultra II.

If you're in the US, B&H has 960 GB SanDisk Ultra II for $380 w/ free shipping.

Newegg has the 1TB Mushkin Enhanced Reactor for $360 + $1 shipping

The Mushkin uses a silicon motion controller (not the sandforce controllers that I believe the older ones used) and while neither of these will benchmark as well as the 850 Pro/Evo, if you're not running a database server workload you won't notice the difference anywhere but in your pocketbook

 

[Spungo]

HDDs are only just barely getting to be able to handle >3MBps 4K read and write, at 10-20ms/ea (or more), where almost any SSD can do >=15MBps at <1ms/ea, even on old SATA, and stuck in IDE mode.

I don't even know what mode my SSD are. They're probably "Native IDE" mode. Don't know, don't care.

The biggest improvement is when programs start fighting each other. Here's a real life scenario. Suppose you're converting a 200 page Word document to PDF. At the same time, you're merging several other PDFs. This is something I do on a regular basis, and it causes so much lag that I can't listen to music or watch youtube while it's doing that stuff. It's not the CPU. It's all hard drive lag. An SSD would never have that problem. Programs will still fight for time, but it won't cause so much lag that I think the computer is broken.

 

[mikeymikec]

nvm

 

[Cerb]

I don't even know what mode my SSD are. They're probably "Native IDE" mode. Don't know, don't care.

The biggest improvement is when programs start fighting each other. Here's a real life scenario. Suppose you're converting a 200 page Word document to PDF. At the same time, you're merging several other PDFs. This is something I do on a regular basis, and it causes so much lag that I can't listen to music or watch youtube while it's doing that stuff. It's not the CPU. It's all hard drive lag. An SSD would never have that problem. Programs will still fight for time, but it won't cause so much lag that I think the computer is broken.

You should care, because you're describing the case where NCQ kicks ass and takes names . In legacy/IDE mode, everything goes in order, with no concurrent operations. On an Intel, AHCI or RAID assures NCQ support with Windows 7 or newer. On AMD, I'm not sure about older chipsets in RAID mode, but newer ones will be like the Intel ones.

 

[Spungo]

You should care, because you're describing the case where NCQ kicks ass and takes names . In legacy/IDE mode, everything goes in order, with no concurrent operations. On an Intel, AHCI or RAID assures NCQ support with Windows 7 or newer. On AMD, I'm not sure about older chipsets in RAID mode, but newer ones will be like the Intel ones.

Neat. I'll check this out. Thanks!

 

[Craig234]

Are there 'modes' on my Intel 80gb m25 I should know about? Still considering what to get, hard to pass up the 'it's the best!' stuff about the Samsung, but I hear the advice.