Samsung is the SSD slayer.
Samsung’s efforts in the SSD market really have been quite remarkable. Ever since unveiling it’s 840 series in 2012, the company has absolutely dominated the consumer SSD market, delivering blitzkrieg speeds at affordable prices. The new 850 Pro aims to lengthen the companies lead, and appears to have accomplished its mission.
Key to the new drive is the use of 3D V-NAND ash memory, a proprietary type of memory developed by Samsung where the memory is layered both horizontally and vertically. This is powered by the existing MEX controller found in other Sammy drives, but the speed has been bumped up by 100MHz, now maxing out at 400MHz. A SATA 3 interface provides the interconnect between the drive and the motherboard, which is limited to a maximum speed of 6Gb/sec, which is fast becoming the bottleneck in today’s consumer SSDs.
To test the drive we first fired up the popular Crystal Disk Mark, which showed that the drive zoomed along at a whopping 550MB/sec read and 522MB/sec write when it came to sequential files, about the maximum we can expect from SATA 3 devices. Our second benchmark, Anvil Disk Benchmark showed similar speeds for large le sizes, while 4K read dropped to 40MB/sec and write fell to 139MB/sec, both still very good for a SATA 3 SSD.
Samsung has done it once again, pulling off top-tier speeds while keeping the price well within the range of mere mortals. If you’re looking for a new SSD, this is the one to get. BENNETT RING
Delivering the ultimate in performance at an affordable price, welcome to our new favourite SSD.