Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD3. Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. CrystalDiskMark6. ATTO Disk Benchmark7. AS SSD8. PCMark 79. IOMeter10. Real World Testing11. Closing Thoughts12. View All Pages

2011 has certainly been the ‘Year Of The Solid State Drive', with many manufacturers vying for sales in various, competitive sectors. Today we are looking at the new Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD which embraces the SATA 6 Gb/s interface, claiming speeds up to 520 Mb/s read and 400 Mb/s write. Is this drive capable of going head to head against the latest Sandforce powered 2281 units? Today we aim to find out.

Samsung are not new to the Solid State Sector, having made memory and logic controllers now for some time, specifically for the OEM market. We reviewed their 470 series 256GB drive last week, and while good, it seemed rather overpriced considering the SATA 3 Gb/s bandwidth limitations. It makes sense therefore that they want to step into the high performance league.

The 830 Series is being sold in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities. All four drives feature the same 520 Mb/s read performance, but due to the architectural design the 128GB drive is rated at 320 Mb/s write and the 64 GB model just 160 Mb/s write. The 256 GB and 512 GB models are both rated at 400 Mb/s write.

All drives are shipped with a full 3 year warranty for peace of mind.

Technical Specifications

• Dimensions (L* W* H): 100 x 69.85 x 7 (mm)
• Interface: SATA 6Gb/s (compatible with SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 1.5Gb/s)
• Form Factor: 2.5 inch
• NAND Flash Memory: 2x nm Samsung Toggle DDR MLC NAND Flash Memory
• Performanc: Sequential Read: Max. 520 MB/s (64GB/128GB/256GB/512GB)
• Sequential Write: Max. 400 MB/s (256GB/512GB)
• 4KB Random Read: Max. 80,000 IOPS (128GB/256GB/512GB)
• 4KB Random Write: Max. 36,000 IOPS (256GB/512GB)
• TRIM Support: Yes (Requires OS Support)
• Garbage Collection: Yes
• S.M.A.R.T: Yes
• Weight: Max. 62.5g (256GB/512GB)
• Reliability: 1.5 million hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)
• Power Consumption: Active : 0.127W (Typical) Idle : 0.078W (Typical)
• Shock: 1500G & 0.5ms (Half sine)

The Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD ships in a very subdued and attractive black box with the product name and capacity clearly listed on the front.

The Solid State Drive itself is protected inside a tough plastic section, which rests above the peripherals.

Samsung supply a very good bundle with the drive, including literature on the product, ‘Magician' software and the very useful Norton Ghost V15. The USB to SATA powered adapter means you have a complete solution for mirroring your current boot drive, for easy upgrade and replacement.

The drive is shipped in a lovely brushed aluminum black chassis which feels ‘textured' to the finger. On the back, the label lists drive specifications. This is a thin 7mm chassis which will be ideal as an upgrade for tight superportable laptops. The drive measures 100 x 69.85 x 7 mm and it weighs 62.5 grams.

The 830 Series features the new Samsung controller – S4LJ204X01-Y040. This is a custom 3 core design from British chip maker ARM which fully supports the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. Samsung have opted for 256 MB cache via a single DDR2 based chip (K4T2G314QF-MCF7) and they are using their own NAND flash memory – K9UHGY8U7A-HCK0. This NAND flash memory is built on 20nm architecture and is comprised of 8 chips … each IC, 64GB density.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.

For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.

This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.

Main system:

CPU: Intel Core i7 2600k
Cooler: Thermaltake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Memory: ADATA DDR3 2000mhz 9-11-9-24
PSU: ADATA 1200W
Graphics: Sapphire HD6950 Flex Edition
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise
Monitor: Dell U2410

Other Drives (used in Core i7 2600k system above):
Patriot Pyro SE 240GB
Patriot Wildfire 240GB
MemoRight FTM Plus 240GB SSD
Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB
Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD OCZ Agility 3 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 240GB
ADATA S511 240GB
Intel 510 120GB
Corsair F100 100GB
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
Crucial Real SSD C300 64GB
MemoRight FTM.25 115GB SSD
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB

PCIe drives test system:

OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB HDD/SSD &
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB Test System:
CPU: Intel Core i7 990x @ 4.8ghz
Cooler: Corsair H100 Performance Liquid Cooler
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Black Edition
Memory: 12GB Kingston DDR3 @ 1600mhz 9-9-9-24
PSU: ADATA 1200W
Graphics: Nvidia GTX580
Chassis: Lian Li X2000F
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise
Monitor: Dell U2410

Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark
CrystalMark
AS SSD
PCMark 7
IOMeter
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call Of Pripyat

All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.1 x64.

The overall performance of the drive is very impressive, especially sequential read performance, which scores very close to 520 Mb/s. Write performance is 405.7 Mb/s, again an extremely strong result, although lagging behind the faster Sandforce 2281 powered drives.

When we enable the alternative ‘compressible' setting called ‘0x00 fill' the performance holds close to the previous result, although we noticed an increase in 512k write performance, gaining around 30 Mb/s.

Above, some compares with other leading manufacturer drives released this year. The results are favourable all round, although the Sandforce 2281 powered drives have definitely the performance edge in several areas.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Performance results are good, although as we already know, due to ultimate write performance, the Samsung 830 512GB drops behind the Sandforce 2281 powered drives.

Above, some results from other leading Solid State drives, for direct comparison.

AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.

Exceptionally strong read results, although the write performance lowers the overall scoring parameter with this incompressible data test.

Above, some comparison results from other leading solid state drives.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

Good scores for the Samsung drive, very closely matched against a Sandforce 2281 powered drive in this particular suite.

IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.

We use a custom Kitguru configuration for 4k random write to measure performance.

Our test results actually surpassed Samsung's official rating (36,000 IOPS for a 4k random write test), scoring just over 38,000.

It doesn’t matter how good any of the synthetic suites are, the real meat of the testing has to be under absolute real world conditions. This proves difficult as to record results we have to narrow down fluctuation. Therefore while we would say these are the most useful results to get from this review, there is always going to be a slight margin for error – its not absolutely scientific.

Firstly we installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Edition onto each of the drives and performed a clean update from Microsoft with all patches and security fixes. We then install a basic suite of software, such as Office, Firefox and Adobe Design, then we install AVG free antivirus. We used a digital watch for this startup and repeated the test five times for each drive – once we had these five results we averaged the results and took that for the final figure.

The Samsung 830 Series 512GB scores 23 seconds, only a second behind the leading Sandforce 2281 powered drives, not really noticeable in the ‘real world'.

Very strong overall performance, scoring 19 seconds, almost keeping up with the leading Sandforce 2281 drives.

The Samsung 830 Series 512GB is an impressive solid state drive directed firmly towards the performance enthusiast user. From my point of view it is very refreshing to identify a manufacturer aiming to compete against the profusion of Sandforce 2281 powered drives, saturating the market today.

The included extras are both significant and practical, Symantec's Norton Ghost 15 for instance can help ensure an upgrade scenario is as painfree as possible. Samsung also provide a USB to 2.5 inch SATA converter cable for instantaneous drive mirroring capability. We also really like the chassis design and materials used, as it reflects the premium status.

The performance of the 830 Series 512GB drive is satisfying, scoring almost 520 Mb/s in some of the sequential read tests. In fact, read performance generally was right up at the same level of the leading Sandforce 2281 powered drives. In real world terms you would be hard pressed to acknowledge any performance variables between this drive and the leading Sandforce units. Write performance isn't quite at the same level, although 400 Mb/s should be more than enough for the majority of everyday demands.

This 512GB drive is the flagship model, offering huge storage capacity for demanding enthusiast users. The price in the United Kingdom is around £675 inc vat, which is quite competitive. If this is too rich for your blood, then check out the full range here, just be aware that the 64GB and 128GB models are slightly less imposing when it comes to writing data.

Pros:

• Controller is very good.
• fantastic read performance.
• bundle is loaded.

Cons:

• It is slower than the leading Sandforce 2281 drives.
• 64GB and 128GB models won't be as fast as this.

Kitguru says: A great drive from Samsung and well worth shortlisting.

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