Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD Review

Featuring the Samsung ARM9 MCX Controller with triple core CPU, is the 830 Series 256GB the best SATA 3 SSD we have tested yet? Lets find out!

Product on Review: Samsung 830 Series
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Samsung
Street Price: £350

Samsung are a company that need little introduction. In almost any product type they set their hand to they have gained world-wide recognition for outstanding reliability. Though in times past they have been a big player in the mechanical HDD sector, the SSD market has yet to realise Samsung’s potential. Their 470, though some would argue was late to the SATA 2 party impressed us here at Vortez. This weekend we were invited to Barcelona to meet with Samsung themselves at their European Event Blogger 830 Launch. Here they showcased the drive, showing media all significant break-throughs in the technology used and giving us exclusive access to the engineers themselves.

Samsung’s SSD rivals ought to be extremely concerned. All key elements of their SSDs are Samsung branded. The Controller, NAND Flash and DRAM are all sourced by Samsung themselves. Other brands will source their components from 3rd parties and so Samsung already have the upper hand.

The 830 is Samsung’s first SATA 3 – 6Gbps SSD. The 470 was its predecessor and whilst it may have missed the spotlight, the 830 is about to take centre stage. Boasting a 3-Core processor ARM9 Controller they hope to not only deliver solid performance for read and write operations but as we learned at their launch they are keen to emphasise reliability. These two elements are of utmost importance to the end-user, should Samsung deliver on both these planes then the 830 promises to be the SATA 3 SSD we all desire.

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.

SAMSUNG 830 SERIES LAUNCH VIDEO

Closer Look

Samsung kindly provided us with a sample during the early stages of production and as a result, any type of packaging was absent. So for the moment here are the production shots of the bundle that end users can expect from the 830 series.

You will notice that included with this drive is Symantec Norton Ghost. Samsung also bundle their own software “Magician” for maintaining peak performance. More on this later!

A depiction of the bundle for 830 Series

The 830 is slimmer than the typical Solid State Drive measuring in at: 10cm x 7cm x 0.7cm. The top of the drive has this brushed metal cover that reflects Samsung’s ethos of quality and durability. As with the 470 series we have the orange badge in the bottom left corner of the drive signifying the capacity. The 830 Series is available in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB variations.

An overview of the 830 Series

Brushed metal texture gives it that professional touch

The specifications label on the reverse

There are no screws fixing the cover onto the 830 SSD – the cover just unclips. Underneath we can reveal the inner workings. The large chip labelled Samsung is the 830’s controller. This is ARM9 MCX Controller – responsible for read/write operation to NAND flash. Directly underneath this we have the DRAM, this offers a buffer for temporary data storage when saving permanently onto NAND flash. The 6x chips on the right side of the PCB are the NAND flash and there are an additional 2x flash chips beneath the controller. Other SSD manufacturers will be using SandForce driven SSDs with NAND Flash supplied by third parties – the beauty with Samsung is that they are have access to all of the these components, they can source them and although some may classify them as late-comers to the SSD party they ought by no means to be underestimated. SandForce and third party usage has its limitations and of course can come at quite a cost.

The PCB with Samsung branded ARM9 MCX Controller and NAND Flash and DRAM

The ARM9 MCX Controller has a 3-core processor that is capable of dealing with random read/write operations very well. The DRAM and NAND Flash work hand-in-hand with the 3-core processor to manage data much more efficiently.

Diagram showing the advantages of 3-core processor

Software: Norton Ghost & Magician

Bundled with the Samsung 830 are two software suites that are well known within the industry. Symantec’s Norton Ghost and Samsung’s proprietary – Magician maintenance software.

Norton Ghost 15

Norton Ghost is a very capable software suite for use with the 830. It allows for an entire drive to be cloned and restored to another drive and there are extensive backup tasks that can be run in order to manage data. Below are some screenshots of the software in action. Samsung provide the end-user with the full retail version.

Samsung Magician

Those who aren’t familiar with Magician – this software is Samsung’s very own creation and allows you to maintain the drive. It can erase, clone, optimize and much more. Firmware updates are also a key aspect of Magician’s feature-set. Updating firmware on other drives might be tricky and present data loss issues but with Magician these problems aren’t an issue. Firmware updates can be performed in a matter of minutes by a simple click of the mouse and no data is lost.

Testing Methodologies

At the moment our SSD database is only small but over the coming months it will expand. So to analyse the 830’s performance I will be comparing it against 1 x RevoDrive X2, 3 x SATA 3 SSD – Patriot Pyro, Kingston HyperX and OCZ Agility 3, 3 x SATA 2 SSDs (Samsung 470, 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 830 256GB
– Patriot Pyro 120GB
– 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.[i/]

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.

Real World Performance – Windows 7 Boot Time

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 830 – 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 digital stopwatch.

Conclusion

Though the 470 excelled in build quality and performance it arrived late to the scene and suffered a lack of exposure but the 830, its successor appears to have avoided this pitfall.

Inside and outside the 830 oozes superior build quality to that of its rivals. The brushed metal exterior looks and feels great. Underneath this cover Samsung branded components deliver the reliability and performance that firm enthusiasts are after.

Many of the SATA 3 drives that are available on the market at the moment are driven by the latest Sandforce SF2200 controller. Some have suffered stability problems as a result of opting for these SandForce driven SATA 3 SSD. There also appears to be compatibility issues with the Sandforce based SSD connected to on-board Intel SATA Controllers. OCZ Technology’s Support forum is riddled with such queries. I have myself had issues with a SandForce driven SATA 3 SSD.

Those investing in a Samsung 830 SSD would have no such worries. As an end-user this would be of utmost concern. Longevity is important. Samsung’s ARM9 Controller clearly has its advantages, it managed to consistently perform well in all the benchmarks we ran, sequential and random read/write results are all very impressive.

Samsung highlighted to us that their drives will provide sustained performance which contrasts to its competitors’ method of advertising peak performance instead. So while the rated speed of the 830 series might seem lower than the likes of the Kingston HyperX, the performance results proved it to be more than a match without the risks associated to the SF2200 controller. This is partly due to the Samsung controller not compressing data meaning performance is present at all times and not limited by file type. Afterall, most files we deal with such as MP3s and videos are incompressible already.

The Samsung 830 series lives up to all the expectations we have been promised and will definitely be a viable alternative to more established marquees when it is released next month. Price is still to be confirmed but expect it to be similar to the Samsung 470 series.

Bundled with the 830 there are some great tools for managing the data on the SSD. Norton Ghost will allow you to clone the drive and restore data whilst Magician will help to keep the 830 running at optimum performance. Though there is no word on pricing at the moment we are confident that Samsung will price the 830 competitively. Though if pricing is slightly higher – you know exactly what you are getting with this drive.

Pricing update: 64GB: £108 / 128GB: £190 / 256GB: £350 / 512GB: £700. All prices are inclusive of VAT and are approximates. As expected prices are competitive – the 830 is going to do very well in today’s SSD market.

The bottom line is Samsung have thoroughly impressed us with the 830. We are confident it will conquer the SATA 3 SSD market should Samsung price it competitively. Those looking for a high performance storage device with the addition of reliability ought to look no further.

Pros
+ Premium Samsung components
+ ARM9 triple core CPU
+ Consistently strong performance
+ Attractive bundle

Cons
– None