Conclusion, Pricing, and Final Thoughts
Conclusion
PROS
- Outstanding endurance rating.
- Good overall performance.
CONS
- Mixed workload performance lagged behind the 850 Series.
- TRIM-related performance issues (significantly behind 850 Series).
Pricing and Warranty (street price at the time of this writing)
- 860 PRO:
- 256GB – $140 ($0.55/GB)
- 512GB – $250 ($0.49/GB)
- 1TB – $480 ($0.47/GB)
- 2TB – $950 ($0.46/GB)
- 4TB – $1900 ($0.46/GB)
- 860 EVO*:
- 250GB – $95 ($0.38/GB) *
- 500GB – $170 ($0.34/GB) *
- 1TB – $330 ($0.33/GB) *
- 2TB – $650 ($0.33/GB) *
- 4TB – $1400 ($0.35/GB)
* 860 EVO is also available in M.2 SATA 250GB-2TB and mSATA 250GB-1TB for the same prices stated above.
Endurance ratings are significantly higher than all current competing SATA products, coming in ~3x the MX500 rating (MX500 being an SSD that already showed excellent endurance). That said, the MX500 is currently leading in cost/GB, as Samsung did not seem interested in a cost/GB play with the 860 EVO.
Final Thoughts
Samsung's 860 EVO and PRO is a welcome addition to the SATA SSD marketplace, but the class-leading endurance specification and faster controller are tempered by some apparent performance niggles. Perhaps we have been spoiled by each incremental Samsung product release outclassing its predecessor in all metrics, but this time things did not pan out. Four-corner (sequential/random read/write) performance matched or exceeded that of the equivalent 850 Series products, but the 860 lagged behind in mixed workload performance and saw a sharp enough increase in TRIM delay that I suspect it is more of a bug than a simple need for optimization. Samsung is investigating that issue, and I suspect (hope) they will address it in a future firmware update. I feel this round could use a bit of further optimization before we can state that they trounce the competition and are worthy of their price premium – not so long as the 850 Series is on the market and other competing brands achieve similar performance, that is.
The 860 EVO and PRO are good products, but I expected them to surpass the 850 EVO and PRO by a greater degree and in more tests than they did here. We are working with Samsung on these issues and may revisit an award for the 860 Series in the future, but for the time being, the price is just too high for an SSD that did not dominate across all metrics.
I wonder how much cost is
I wonder how much cost is saves by moving to more dense nand and a smaller pcb footprint? Seeing the performance, it looks to me this was more of a shrink than a improvement.
Agreed. It’s as if they were
Agreed. It's as if they were trying too hard to make the SSD as economical as possible to produce, causing it to fall short in some areas.
It is a SATA SSD, they can’t
It is a SATA SSD, they can’t improve the performance much until the SATA bottleneck is lifted on the host side. Perhaps SATA IV is in order but I believe that will never happen. The 850 series already maxed out the SATA bus, so not exactly sure what performance improvements you would like to magically see Samsung improve upon. They already implemented improvements via M.2 PCIe ssd’s. If you want faster than SATA, you have to move on from SATA. Simple as that.
I agree: it’s as if the
I agree: it’s as if the storage “oligopoly” has conspired
to maintain an artificially low ceiling on 2.5″ SSD speeds.
Several years ago, we proposed a “SATA-IV” standard that
upped the transmission clock to 8G (like PCIe 3.0 lanes)
and changed the 8b/10b legacy frame to the 128b/130b
“jumbo frame” that is already standard in PCIe 3.0:
8 GHz / 8.125 bits per byte = 984.6 MB/second
i.e. exact same throughput as a single PCIe 3.0 lane.
Admittedly, that is not a massive increase; nevertheless,
one could easily approximate one NVMe port with
four such SSDs in a RAID-0 array, and the wiring
topologies for such a RAID array are ubiquitous.
FYI: here’s a copy of our SATA-IV Proposal to the
Storage Developer Conference in 2012:
http://supremelaw.org/patents/BayRAMFive/SATA-IV.Presentation.pdf
And, now that the PCIe 4.0
And, now that the PCIe 4.0 standard has been released,
a future SATA-IV standard should support a 16 GHz clock:
16G / 8.125 bits per byte = 1,969.2 MB/second.
Thus, 4 such SSDs in a RAID-0 array should max out
at ~ 7.87 GB/second (no overhead). Yes, the SATA
protocol does have more inherent overhead, but
its installed base is already HUGE. Increasing the
clock rate and upgrading to jumbo frames should be
a piece o’ cake for storage industry manufacturers.
And, RAID controllers could still support PCIe 3.0
edge connectors, while increasing the clock speed
on their SATA connectors to 16 GHz. Maybe Allyn
could offer this suggestion to Areca?
I doubt there will be another
I doubt there will be another SATA spec for SSD drives. SSD drives will move too PCIe and SATA will be for slower bulk storage.
Allyn, I think the last trim
Allyn, I think the last trim chart may have the wrong x-label, not sure, I got confused there.
You are correct! Thanks for
You are correct! Thanks for the catch. It is now fixed.
Hopefully the price of the
Hopefully the price of the 850’s will go down rather than be discontinued.
Allyn, pop quiz of the day.
Allyn, pop quiz of the day.
I have 3 256gb 850 pros in RAID 1 on my boot drive (I have no sensitive data on the raid). I have all my programs/games on this “drive”. I am approaching 200gb of free space left. As you know with todays games that could be 4 new AAA titles. I have toyed with the idea of getting a single 500gb drive windows and all apps, leaving my 7xx gb raid for Steam only. Is there any benefit to doing that with one of these drives or should I just snatch up another 256gb 850 pro and increase my raid?
***I am on Z97 so an NVME boot drive isn’t possible.
RAID 1 with three drives?
RAID 1 with three drives?
Yea… I mean raid 0. Got
Yea… I mean raid 0. Got ahead of my self last night.
So long as you are good at
So long as you are good at backing up, I'd just add another 256 to the RAID-0. If your stripe size is lower, you will see a nice boost to QD1 sequentials that are larger than the stripe size (since those transfers are split across multiple drives). You're good for up to 6 SSDs in RAID on that board. While you'll hit the DMI throughput limit at ~4 SATA devices, there are still advantages to splitting your IOs across additional SSDs – even when they are bottlenecked.
I appreciate it. It all
I appreciate it. It all started when I found a smoking deal years ago on two 256gb drives, and has grown from there. I guess another 256gb 850 pro is on the horizon. The more the merrier right!?
I have a FreeNAS for redundancy and a WD Blue 2tb drive in my system as well for the important stuff. I am pretty sure my ISP hates when I re-install windows yearly and re-download my whole steam library though. 😀
You have multiple drives and
You have multiple drives and you redownload your Steam library upon Windows installation? That’s just irresponsible.
On page
On page “https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Samsung-860-EVO-and-PRO-SATA-SSD-Review-512GB-1TB-and-4TB-Tested/Performance-Focus-0” at the end of the page you guys wrote “Being a PRO series SSD, the 2TB unit contains only MLC flash and no SLC cache.”.
The one being tested on that page is the 4TB version, there is no 2TB version being tested/shown.
Thanks! Fixed!
Thanks! Fixed!
So there will be 4TB M.2
So there will be 4TB M.2 variants? How long until we see a 4TB PCI-e M.2 from Samsung?
It’s down to PCB space. Not
It’s down to PCB space. Not enough room on M.2. Less room on mSATA.
I was wondering, with older
I was wondering, with older platform such as dual Xeon socket 2011 (v1) if there would be M.2 versions of these, would they function via an adapter?
I guess it would also be a general question on older platforms with NVME SSD or even Optain functioning or should I consider upgrade time to Threadripper/Ryzen?
Granted M.2 versions of these
Granted M.2 versions of these drives are not NVME, but a chance to remove cables would be a nice positive. Hence question stands for PCIE to M.2 adapters on older platforms for SATA/NVME/Optain
You’d have to use an M.2 to
You’d have to use an M.2 to SATA (not PCIe) adapter card.
The link at your article’s
The link at your article’s outset concerning the 850 line’s “silent migration to 64-layer V-NAND” actually links to your piece detailing the 850 EVO’s transition from 32- to 48-layer NAND. If a story exists about the switch to 64-layer NAND, I must have missed it.
In a similar vein, do you know if anyone has done testing to compare the 48-layer MLC/TLC versions of the 850 series drives to their 64-layer replacements?
It would be interesting to find out if the mixed workload performance and TRIM issues exhibited by the newly released 860 series were also present on the third revision of the 850 series, possibly indicating a limitation of the denser NAND rather than a bug in the new controller or firmware.
Hey, just to make sure: you
Hey, just to make sure: you did all the benchmarks in an identical environment and there was no possible microcode/Windows update for Meltdown/Spectre in between the benchmarks for the old and new SSDs, right?
Hi…..
860 pro cant support
Hi…..
860 pro cant support Raid ability?????????
It’s been 8 months since the
It’s been 8 months since the review, do you know if the TRIM issue has been fixed?
I’m deciding between the 850 or 860 currently.
Allyn have they fixed the
Allyn have they fixed the TRIM issue?