The Samsung 850 EVO 4TB SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on July 11, 2016 10:00 AM ESTSequential Read Performance
The sequential read test requests 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The 4TB 850 EVO scores slightly better than the 2TB for sequential reads, but it is still a hair slower than the fastest drives.
Samsung's large drives draw a lot of power during the sequential read test, but at least the 4TB 850 EVO improves over the 2TB and 1TB 850 EVOs.
 |
|||||||||
The 4TB 850 EVO does not suffer from the modestly impaired QD1 performance of the 2TB model, but for the rest of the test the 4TB is slightly slower than the other two.
Sequential Write Performance
The sequential write test writes 128kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, and the drive is filled before the test begins. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The 4TB 850 EVO manages to just barely break the record of the 1TB 850 Pro for the fastest sequential write speeds at low queue depths.
With the fastest performance and the fourth-lowest power usage, the 4TB comes out on top for efficiency.
 |
|||||||||
The 4TB 850 EVO shows substantially better QD1 performance and slightly better QD2 performance than the 2TB 850 EVO while having power consumption that is more in line with the 850 Pro.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
145 Comments
View All Comments
nandnandnand - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Weren't the first XPoint parts going to be 16-32 GB? I find $0.65/GB hard to believe... I expect $3.00/GB.nathanddrews - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.Kevin G - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Where are you seeing this and for what format?I strongly suspect that Intel is going to be price competitive in the NVMe space so that's realistic but I'd expect a massive premium for Xpoint in DIMM format when Skylake-E comes around.
shabby - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Why would xpoint dimm be premium priced? They said its slower than dimm, so it should be cheaper.Kevin G - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Well what competition would the DIMM format have on SkyLake-E?SATA based SSDs are a dime a dozen and M.2 drives using NVMe are just starting to spread. What competition would Intel have with a DIMM format?
Impulses - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
There's a lot of pie in the sky dreaming about Xpoint IMO... Why would it be priced at a premium? Same reason M.2 NVMe & PCI-E drives are, it's what the market will bear that counts. If it's any faster it'll be more expensive, simple really.ddriver - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Don't hold your breath. They made claims of "ram" speed, but demoed 2 GB/s hardware, which is not much faster than nvme SSDs. Ram is 20-30 GB/s...SSDs can still go a long way in terms of bandwidth - just snap more chips on more channels, given an available interface to hook it to, it would be too much trouble for the industry to create something like 8 GB/s SSD. And it only requires a better controller chip, can work with the same old flash memory chips. Currently, M2 can only provide theoretical 4 GB/s bandwidth, running at 32 gbit.
Eden-K121D - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
a PCIe gen4 device could have potential read speeds of 8GB/sKevin G - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
The 2 GB/s demo was using a Thunderbolt enclosure and an M.2 prototype.Full size PCIe and DIMM formats are planned so I'd consider that 2 GB demo the starting point.
benedict - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Horrible write endurance. If you need a drive that big you certainly have enough data to fill it 75 times.