We take a look at one of Samsung’s 470 Series SATA 2 – 3Gbps Solid State Drives and find out whether it can hold up well against the opposition.
Product on Review: Samsung 470 Series
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Samsung
Street Price: £339 inc. VAT (At time of review)
With prices slowly dropping on SSDs, never has there been a better time to invest in a rapid storage device for your windows boot drive. Being lower in capacity compared to the traditional hard drive has meant that many abstain from investing in 30-60GB for their boot drive which is understandable. But since 100GB+ is now available at a much more affordable price, there is a keen attraction to making the move over to replacing the mechanical HDD with the superior SSD.
Moving to an SSD presents you with some key advantages over the traditional HDD. First of all they are typically 3x faster than a standard drive – thus enabling better performance for multi-tasking, booting up and rendering exercises. Due to an SSD using a PCB with NAND Flash memory there is virtually no noise to be heard from the drive, they are also more robust – less failure rate and longer-life span. In summary, they are far superior and a good choice to move to if you have the cash.
Today we will be taking a look at our first Samsung SSD from the 470 Series. A drive that uses the SATA 2 interface, promising to deliver 250MB/s read and 220MB/s write transfer speeds. SATA 2 SSDs may well have been superseded by SATA 3, offering 500MB/s+ but the price of SATA 2 has dropped quite considerably so many a consumer will still be extremely interested in such an investment – especially if they are upgrading from a traditional HDD.
Samsung’s Take on 470 Series
Samsung’s Solid State Drives are the perfect way to enhance an existing PC. By plugging it in you can upgrade the whole performance, allowing for easier and faster multitasking, booting-up and rendering. You’ll wonder what you ever did without one. Within its stylish new lightweight design, which now features a robust and durable brushed metallic casing, is a quieter and noticeably faster performance. Everything from storing important work files to operating multiple programmes at the same time is effortlessly handled. This SSD is so good that it not only helps you work but also adds a new level of professionalism to your day.
About Samsung
From stylish phones to semiconductors, from DRAM to digital TVs, Samsung encompasses a variety of businesses that harness speed, creativity and efficiency to invent, develop and market the products that are defining how we live today. With more than a quarter of Samsung employees engaged in research and development, each of our businesses is focused on discovering new technologies, products and services that will open a new world of possibilities for the people who use them.
Technical Specifications
• Capacity 256GB
• Application PC (Desktop/Notebook)
• Form factor 2.5-Inch
• Dimensions (Height x Width x Length) 9.5 x 69.85 x 100 mm
• Weight Max 68g
• Interface Serial ATA 3.0Gbps
• Storage Memory SAMSUNG 32nm Toggle DDR NAND Flash memory
• Controller SAMSUNG ARM base 3-core Controller (MAX controller)
• Cache Memory SAMSUNG 256MB (2Gbit) DDR2 SDRAM
• Sequential read Up to 250 MB/sec
• Sequential write Up to 220 MB/sec
• Random read Up to 31,000 IOPS
• Random write Up to 21,000 IOPS
• Active power use 0.24W
• Idle power use 0.14W
• Allowable voltage 5V ± 5%
• Reliability (MTBF) 1.5 million hours
• Operating Temperature 0°C to 70°C
• Shock 1500G
• TRIM support Yes
• S.M.A.R.T. Yes
• GC (Garbage Collection) Auto
• Toolkit Software Samsung Magician software
• Warranty Limited 3-year warranty
Packaging & Closer Look
The 470 is presented in a clear plastic case. The front actually has nothing to indicate what this product is or what it’s about. We have to spin it over for some brief details regarding the features and specifications. The front does give us a preview of the 470 SSD with its metallic exterior.
Cunningly, Samsung have displayed 470MB/s in large typography with “Read + Write” in smaller type. This 470MB/s is in fact a combination of both read and write transfer rate since we are dealing with SATA 2
The front of the 470 case/packaging
The rear of the case
Opening the case up we have the SSD itself and a user manual. Aside from this there are no added extras within the bundle.
The bundle is scares of any bonus material
The SSD itself has a metallic plate cover with a brushed aluminium appearance to it. The Samsung insignia is placed right in the centre with the capacity clearly indicated in the bottom left corner. For a 2.5” device this is a good looking product.
A brushed aluminium look
The front of the Samsung 470 – a good looking SSD
Spinning the SSD over we have the typical mounting holes for fitting the drive into your computer case, the product label containing the serial number – critical information and standards involved with the 470. Since this SSD is SATA2 we have the SATA 2 port connector and SATA power connector at the back of the drive.
The back of the Samsung 470
Testing Methodologies
At the moment our SSD database is only small but over the coming months it will expand. So to analyse the 470’s performance I will be comparing it against 1 x RevoDrive X2, 2 x SATA 3 SSD – Kingston HyperX and OCZ Agility 3, 2 x SATA 2 SSDs (Kingston V+ and Corsair F40) and a traditional 3.5″ Samsung Spinpoint 250GB HDD.
The system is formatted and a fresh version of Windows is installed with just drives in place – no additional applications. Windows is then updated to the latest release. Included in the list of benchmarks are the following applications:
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
AIDA64
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
Iometer
SiSoftware SANDRA
Windows 7 Boot Time Test
Test system
CPU Intel Core i5 2500K
Motherboard ASUS P8P67
Graphics ZOTAC GTX 480 AMP!
Memory 4GB Kingston HyperX Genesis CL9 1600MHz
HDD
– Samsung 470 256GB
– Kingston HyperX 240GB
– OCZ Agility 3 240GB
– OCZ RevoDrive X2 240GB
– Kingston V+ 128GB
– Corsair F40 40GB
– Samsung Spinpoint 250GB SATA-II
PSU OCZ 750W Fatal1ty
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Synthetic Benchmarks: ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
“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.”
Synthetic Benchmarks: AIDA64
AIDA64 is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning AIDA64 Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems.
Synthetic Benchmarks: CrystalDiskMark 3.0
CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software that analyses different types of hard drive. Giving sequential benchmark write and read statistics in MB/s. A simple program that is very useful.”
Synthetic Benchmarks: Iometer
Iometer is based on a client–server model, where one instance of the Iometer graphical user interface is managing multiple ‘workers’ (each one representing a separate Dynamo.exe process) which are doing the I/O. Iometer performs Asynchronous I/O – accessing files or block devices (later one allowing to bypass the file system buffers).
Iometer allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file.
Iometer allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file.
For the purpose of this test. The 4K 50%/50% read/write file will be under the examination – reporting back on MBs per Second and Average Response Time.
Synthetic Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA 2011
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Real-world Benchmark – Win7 Boot
Synthetic testing is valuable in the examination of Solid State Drives. But some of the tests may not mean all that much to some readers so the final test in this review is a real world test showing the Windows 7 boot time.
In order to perform this test (and indeed all other benchmarks), a fresh install of Windows 7 Professional was installed on the 470 – the image of this install with no additional applications or drivers was exported for importing onto each drive at the time of testing. This will provide a clean and fair environment for comparing the boot times on each of the drives. The times were monitored using a stopwatch.
In order to perform this test (and indeed all other benchmarks), a fresh install of Windows 7 Professional was installed on the 470 – the image of this install with no additional applications or drivers was exported for importing onto each drive at the time of testing. This will provide a clean and fair environment for comparing the boot times on each of the drives. The times were monitored using a stopwatch.
Conclusion
Although SATA 2 has been superseded by SATA 3, many consumers are facing the problem of cost – in similar fashion to when SATA 2 first launched. Naturally, as new tech arrives its predecessor product pricing will drop. Thankfully the price of SATA 2 drives are beginning to become available for less than £1 per GB.
Hardcore enthusiasts may relinquish 3Gbps SSDs but consumers will still favour these drives since they are cheaper and still offer superior transfer rates when compared to mechanical drives. The Samsung 470 is a fantastic little 2.5” SSD that in a variety of benchmarks even exceeds its stated transfer rates for read and write operation.
Being relatively new to the SSD consumer market, Samsung have delivered a quality product in the 470. It looks professional with its brushed metal exterior and it does admirably in terms of performance and boot-up times and comes with 3-years extended warranty.
Available in capacities of 64GB, 124GB and 256GB the Samsung 470 may still surprise some. Prices are as follows: 64GB – £94 inc. VAT, 124GB – 168 inc. VAT and 256GB – £339 inc. VAT. The recently reviewed OCZ Agility 3 can be picked up for less than the Samsung 470 in its comparable capacities and this is SATA 3 – offering transfer rates of 350/400MB/s in most cases. Samsung seriously need to consider dropping the price of their SSDs in the 470 series if they want consumers to invest.
The bottom line is: The Samsung 470 delivers great performance for a SATA 2 SSD, it looks great and even comes with 3 years warranty. The only real let down is the price. Samsung need to address this.
Pros
+ Solid performance throughout
+ Good build quality
+ 3 years warranty
Cons
– Same price as SATA 3 SSDs
+ Solid performance throughout
+ Good build quality
+ 3 years warranty
Cons
– Same price as SATA 3 SSDs
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