Provantage
Whatever they introduce as the successor to the 960 PRO will probably stand out from the crowd in a way that their premium SATA SSDs cannot. Samsung’s NVMe SSD controllers still seem to be the fastest options, though competitors like Silicon Motion and gtx 1080 8gb Phison are starting to catch up. The 870 Evo is Samsung’s latest update of their mainstream consumer TLC-based SATA SSDs. Apparently, the 870 EVO brings similar generational updates with Samsung’s 3D NAND and SSD controller that were in the 870 QVO.
Additionally, we recently updated to Windows 10 Anniversary Edition and with that update, sustained write performance greatly increased. This means our previous transfer tests cannot be compared with those run on the newer version on Windows 10. This is the reason we have drive’s that differ from the rest of the review on this chart. We use DiskBench to time a 28.6GB block composed primarily of incompressible sequential and random data as it’s transferred from our DC P3700 PCIe NVME SSD to our test drive. We then read from a 6GB zip file that’s part of our 28.6GB data block to determine the test drive’s read transfer rate.
Whereas this 480GB Intel drive is priced at $199 (£199, AU$269), the 500GB gtx 1080 8gb runs for $169 (£169, AU$245). Beyond that, ultimately nothing seems to be hampering the performance of the M.2 SATA drive, as it ran away with the fastest single file and file folder transfer by almost a full second in each regard. One of the first things that stuck out in our testing was the fact that the M.2 SATA version of the Samsung 860 Evo didn’t hit its maximum rated speeds in CrystalDisk Mark. this is probably because of driver issues, but we hope this is fixed in the near future. Data security – Protect data by selecting security options. The 860 EVO supports AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption and is compliant with TCG Opal and IEEE 1667.
Testing is done within VMware ESXi 6.5 with a 20GB test footprint, comprised of two 10GB vdisks that are placed onto a datastore presented off the SSD under load. The test platform leveraged in these tests is aDell PowerEdge R740xdserver. We measure performance through a Dell H730P RAID card inside this server, although with the card set in HBA mode only to disable the impact of RAID card cache. The methodology used better reflects end-user workflow with the consistency, scalability and flexibility testing within virtualized server offers.
The Samsung 860 EVO is one of our all-time favorite 2.5-inch SSDs. For several years it was our top pick as the best SSD for most people, and it’s still the runner up. We reviewed the Samsung 860 EVOway back in early 2018, giving it 4 out of 5 stars for its solid performance and affordability. In our tests, the Samsung’s drive supports sequential read speeds around 492 megabytes per second and read speeds around 519 MB/s. It’s a huge step up over traditional spinning-platter hard drives, and Samsung backs up the hardware with an excellent warranty and software.
These specs, when considered together, allow the M.2 SATA version of the Samsung 860 Evo series to achieve sequential read speeds up to 560 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential writes up to 520 MB/s. The 2.5-inch drives from the same line only falter slightly with a 550 MB/s sequential read, but you’ll only find 4TB Samsung 860 Evo SSDs in this form factor. The newest edition to the world’s best-selling SATA SSD series, the Samsung 860 EVO is specially designed to enhance performance of mainstream PCs and laptops.
Even looking at it from a different angle, I would bet that we still see over 95% of personal computers equipped with a hard drive, or a SATA 3 SSD today. That is an absolutely huge chunk of the industry and one that seems to get overlooked as we try and market systems with data throuGHput capable of over 3GB/s. Absolute fact… where you can see a massive upgrade when moving from a hard drive to SSD, the same can’t be said when switching from SSD to SSD…in typical consumer usage patterns. Flash technology has seen a whirlwind of advance from endurance, to capacity, price point, direction of use…and performance. You can look anywhere on this site and see that we love SSD speeds. We push and push to get our hands on the biggest and baddest, fastest SSD in the world.
In our Samsung NVMe driver test using 0Fill data, the drive gets 1,670MB/s sequential read speeds, 1,537MB/s sequential write speeds, 560MB/s random 4K read speeds and 346MB/s random 4K write speeds. The Samsung 860 Pro is still the king of the SATA drives with a faster sequential read and write speed, on top of MB/s faster random read and write speeds. These will ultimately lead to faster load times, booting sequences and general file transfers, though the difference will be virtually impossible to distinguish. In fact, our testing showed small but noticeable improvements in the Samsung 860 Evo’s performance over its predecessor. Namely, there are 5-20 MB/s improvements in both sequential read and write speeds.
The synthetic tests are to determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. The Samsung 860 EVO line is a fast and reliable choice in the world of high-performance SSDs. These storage drives utilize SATA III, the latest generation of SATA technology, allowing for read speeds up to 550 MB/s. Additionally, TRIM and S.M.A.R.T. are both supported on Samsung 860 EVO drives. The 860 EVO series comes to market in the same 256GB to 4TB capacities as the 860 Pro we recently tested. The EVO series uses 3-bit per cell flash, but it reserves 2.3% of the NAND capacity for background activities and caching.
Samsung SSDs are still the only SATA SSDs to crack 300 MB/s storage bandwidth. They are really in a class of their own when running moderate workloads. This time the 860 EVO gets the better of the 850 gtx 1090 EVO when running moderate workloads, and this is despite a significant capacity disadvantage. With a partition on the drive and 75% full, we are not quite able to hit factory max random read specs.