Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB - A Game Changer in the Making

Test Setup & Timing Tests

Test Setup

The drives will be tested on our recently revamped storage testbed. The main changes are the faster Core i5-2500K processor and an accompanying Z77 motherboard which has native Thunderbolt connectivity.

• Intel Core i5-2500K (3.3GHz)
• ASUS P8Z77 Pro Thunderbolt (Intel Z77 chipset)
• 2 x 2GB DDR3-1600 memory
• MSI GeForce 8600 GTS
• Windows 7

We have also revised our benchmarks, ditching older benchmarks such as HD Tune and also including an all new timing test to better evaluate the drive’s real world performance. The list of benchmarks used are as follows:

1. AS-SSD benchmark 1.7.4739
2. CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
3. PCMark 7 (Storage suite)
4. Iometer (version 2006.07.27)
5. Timing Tests (Cold start, Reboot, Apps Launching)

The Samsung SSD 850 PRO will be closely pitted against its predecessor, the SSD 840 Pro, which also happens to be the winner of our last Great High-end SSD Shootout. We are also comparing it against other SSDs from top tier brands with their own memory controller or NAND foundry, such as the Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme, OCZ Vector 150, SanDisk Extreme II and the Toshiba Q-Series. Here are the full list of drives tested:

• Samsung SSD 850 PRO
• Samsung SSD 840 PRO
• Samsung SSD 840 EVO
• Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme
• OCZ Vector 150
• Sandisk Extreme II
• Toshiba Q-Series

Timing Tests

Recently added to our evaluation of SSDs is how they perform in real world everyday situations, namely booting up from a cold start, reboot and launching applications. As for the applications used, we made the drives launch 11 applications from the Adobe CS6 suite of utilities simultaneously, which includes resource intensive applications such as Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro amongst others. As a point of reference, a 7200rpm mechanical hard disk would take over 5 minutes to open all the applications.

The new SSD 850 PRO got off to a promising start and it was about on a par with the older SSD 840 PRO. It was the fastest drive to boot from a cold start and also the quickest to reboot. The time it took to launch the entire Adobe CS6 suite of apps was also very competitive at 11.4 seconds - just a tenth of a second slower than the SSD 840 PRO. All in all, its timings were amongst the lowest we have recorded.