Samsung EVO SSD Overrated?

[Kumagoro]

This always seems to be the SSD which gets recommend recently but having now just got one it seems highly overrated to me.

The benchmarks tend to look good but after testing it seems to me very run of the mill and over priced. However I have only tested it so far in an atom machine which is sata II.

The problem is that the benchmarks tend to show that it hits 50MB/s for 4k reads and in some cases I have seen 80MB/s which is amazingly quick. That however is with rapid mode on, which from what i have breifly read is just a 1GB Ram cache and a not very good one at that. As such of course it looks good in benchmarks as it has just loaded the test files into Ram. If you do a 4GB test you see that the cache is pulling it up as it only hits 27MB/s then. No doubt on a weak CPU system it pulls system performance down, plus its eating up the RAM.

With rapid mode off (so its actual read rate) it hits only 22MB/s which is gash and bottom of the range nowadays it seems.

If you have a decent machine I would appreicate it if you could run the crystaldiskmark 4k test with rapid mode on and off with 1GB and 4GB tests (1 or 2 runs would be good enough)

In comparison the budget Sandisk Ultra Plus 256GB with the marvell controller seems a better performer. It has the simulated SLC write area like the EVO but has MLC flash, its cheaper and it seems has a 4k read of about 37MB/s, assuming its not using some similar benchmarking shenanigans. So if you have one of those I would be interested to see a 4GB 4k test.

[smargh]

Consider an Intel S3500 for consistency. I'm waiting for a cheap second-hand S3700 for my next purchase, to repace my X25-M G2.

[Butuz]

Here's an interesting one.

Here we have a SanDisk 128GB Extreme.


Here we have a Sandisk 256GB Ultra Plus.


Butuz

[RichieM]

I was looking at the EVO's the other day but ended up buying a Kingston V300 instead.
In real world applications you would not notice to speed difference, therefore [to me] doesn't justify the extra money

[Ghostbusta]

I would go with whats the best price at the time. I have both a SanDisk 240GB Extreme in my laptop and a Samsung evo 240gb in my gaming rig. I don't notice a performance difference so unless your chasing benchmark scores just go with the best price at the time.

[bluepumpkin]

I currently use a couple of Samsung EVO drives but I have used Crucial and Plextors before this and there is very little difference. The bigger differences are comparing the speed of the 128GB drivers compared to the 256GB drives, even with the same brand there is usually a significant improvement on the 250GB+ versions. Get what seems value for money at the time unless the specs are 100MB/s different (like a Crucial v4 might be compared to an 840) there is not usually anything in it in real world usage

[azrael-]

In real world usage most SSDs "feel" about the same speedwise. Therefore I personally rank longevity over theoretical speed. And here the EVO falls short because of its Triple Level Cell design and inherently lower write/erase cycles. I'd sooner get the 840 Pro even though it costs more. As it is I'm more than happy enough with my 830.

[Devastater6194]

Got a 250GB samsung basic and it has been rock solid for me. Ignore benchmarks, better going for reliability with SSDs, they are all very fast.

[kalniel]

Got a 250GB samsung basic and it has been rock solid for me. Ignore benchmarks, better going for reliability with SSDs, they are all very fast.

They're all very reliable too

[NokkonWud]

They're always recommended but general consensus is that there's not much between them. I'm currently awaiting the delivery of a Corsair Force 120gb SSD as it has a higher write speed. Will be interesting to see if the difference is noticeable (probably not.)

[Shivy011]

Yes, they are slightly overrated, but I can see why they are. They are extremely stable, reliable, fast and with great support and customer service, so I guess it's worth the extra like £5 or so