Cell division
The 840, on the other, hand uses the company’s 21nm Toggle three-bit per cell TLC (Triple Level Cell) NAND and is the first drive to market using this type of NAND Triple Level Cell NAND (TLC) Triple Level Cell or TLC NAND is an alternative to shrinking the NAND die to try and get a better density by increasing the number of bits per cell. Instead of using 1-bit per cell (SLC) or 2-bits per cell as in normal MLC NAND, TLC uses 3-bits per cell.
Same enclosure, yet vastly different tech in the SSD 840 and SSD 840 Pro
The more bits that can be packed in per cell means more GB per die and therefore more GB on a wafer without the need to shrink the die. However everything in the garden isn’t rosy. The performance of TLC NAND suffers in comparison with the other two types due to the number of control voltages used for reading and writing to the memory.
SLC has just two voltage levels to check, so random reads are very fast while MLC, with its four voltage levels, takes twice as long. TLC has eight voltage levels, so it takes twice as long again, so random reads take longer and, potentially, so does any programming.
But that’s not the only drawback with TLC featured in the basic SSD 840, the elephant in the room is NAND endurance. The actual P/E (program/erase) figures for TLC are not available yet, but as a ball park figure, it’s thought to somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 cycles compared to the 5,000 – 10,000 of MLC or the 100,000 cycles of hyper expensive SLC NAND flash.
Given these various factors, just how well do the 840 and 840 Pro compare to each and what more do they have to offer in relation to the SSD 830? Read on.
Samsung SSD 840 Pro
The 840 Pro range capacity starts with the 128GB (£120) and goes up to 512GB (£450) and I've the 256GB (£203) unit to test. The Pros are only available as bare drives and come with a 5 year warranty.
SSD 840 Pro layout
Given its business focus, the firmware (DXM02B0Q) for the 840 Pro is aimed at producing high performances under heavy loads. In addition to the 256-bit encryption, it also has WWN (World Wide Name) enabled and LED indicator support. These last two features are particularly useful when the drive is integrated into storage or server systems.
Next page: Benchmark Tests
COMMENTS
Sorry, got to say it.
It's rectangular with rounded corners.
Again, sorry.
Re: Halve the price of the 512Gb model
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the point and need for SSD.
Video editing is a good example, seek times on HDD are of the order of 10ms half that if you go for a performance drive higher if you go for a green one. SSD are much faster, of the order of 0.1ms. But how would that affect your video editing? Can you think of any scenario in which those 10ms would be pertinent with video editing?
where ssd is useful is in launching apps, where 100s of different files need to be accessed at the same time.
128GB is enough for system files and most of your apps. after than you want a media drive. there is no benefit to storing your video on SSD except in pure I/O operations such as duplicating or remuxing, other than that the disk is never the rate determining step.
Re: Halve the price of the 512Gb model
SSD is just one layer in storage. there are a whole raft of storage types of varying speed and costs from L1 cache to tape drives.
SSD has it's place. If you need a terabyte then you're not using it properly. there is little to no performance advantage to storing say video files on it. it's just a waste of money.
An SSD cache drive would seem to fit with your needs more.
I don;t care so much how long they last
But I want to know properly how much lifetime is left...
If I have to replace my disk every 2-3 years then I'd do that for the performance, but proper stats are essential.
Re: Box
"Isn't overly and unnecessary packaging an environmental concern anymore? It's a computer part, not even for the average consumer consumer - they could well ship it in a recycled cardboard box."
I thought the OP was referring to the aluminiun shell of the SSD, not the packagaing... but if you're interested in saving the planet by going without packaging, and you're in the market for a tablet, do order yourself a Nexus 7. Some half wit has designed a box that is too small to protect the contents, although doing wonders to save the rain forest I'm sure (not). The device runs right to the very sides (so no protection for lateral loads), and sits at the very top of the box, so that there's only the thickness of the box lid before the tablet screen takes the loading. To make matters worse, the buffoons ship it in a nothing more than a very cheap and loose jiffy bag of the sort that you would expect to protect something with a value below £5, and TNT then deliver it looking as though it's done ten minutes in a cement mixer accompanied by a couple of bricks.
Bring back proper packagaging, and b0ll0x to the tree huggers.
