samsung solid state standouts whitepaper

8/3/2019 Samsung Solid State Standouts Whitepaper

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RevieweRs aRe impRessed by the RemaRkably balancedpeRfoRmance of samsungs new 470 seRies ssds

febRuaRy 1, 2011

solid-state standouts


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What The Reviewers Said

More than a dozen leading news publications and blogs have

evaluated Samsungs 470 Series solid-state drives (SSDs) since

their introduction in late 2010. Their outstanding perormance

has been widely praised by numerous reviewers, who have

subjected them to an exhaustive battery o tests.

Although dierent reviewers have chosen to emphasize a variety

o perormance benchmarks, the predominant conclusion is that

the 470 Series SSDs are among the astest drives currently on the

market, and that they oer outstanding all-around perormance

in both reading and writing data.

Les Tokar, editor and ounder o The SSD Review website, set the

tone or later reviewers in his November 4, 2010 review1, which

noted that The Samsung 470 Series SSD is the top-perorming

SSD tested since our rst [review] was published in 2007. Tokars

article went on to conclude that: This is simply the best drive on

the market.

About this report

This report is intended to help readers better understand the

advantages o Samsungs 470 Series SSDs. By collecting in oneplace the highlights rom multiple reviews and digesting their

sometimes lengthy and technically detailed results into a more

concise ormat, our intent is to provide a comprehensive resource

or consumers evaluating SSD upgrades or their own computers.

Samsung Electronics is grateul to the many journalists and

technical evaluators who took the time to review our new

SSDs. Their ndings are summarized on the ollowing pages.

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The Solid-State Difference

SSDs, unlike conventional hard disk drives that store data on

spinning disks, rely on NAND fash memory chips that are extremely

ast, silent, energy ecient andbecause they have no moving

partsresistant to shock, vibration and other physical damage.

As the cost o SSD storage declines, consumers are increasingly

opting or the speed, reliability and energy savings o solid-state

storage. Objective Analysis orecasts that worldwide SSD

shipments will reach nearly 40 million drives per year in 2015,

generating more than $7 billion in annual revenue.2

Samsung introduced the 470 Series line o SSDs in August, 2010.

These new drives are the companys rst atermarket SSDs designed

specically or consumers upgrading their existing computers.

They are also the rst SSDs to use Samsungs 30-nanometer (nm)

class toggle-mode double data rate (DDR) NAND chips, which

enable extremely high data throughput rates. Equipped with a

3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) Serial ATA 2.0 interace and available

in three storage capacities64 gigabytes (GB), 128GB and

256GBthe 470 Series SSDs read and write data up to three

times aster than typical hard disk drives, allowing them to store

two standard-length DVD movies in just a minute.


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Inside Samsungs SSDs

One o the key dierences between Samsungs SSDs and other

manuacturers drives is the high percentage o components

designed and manuactured by Samsung itsel. As HotHardware.com

reviewer Paul Lilly noted: Pop the hood and youll nd the Samsung

label through and through, rom the memory chips to the custom

controller... as well as a pair o 128MB [dynamic random-access

(DRAM)] modules.3 In contrast, most SSD makers procure their

NAND and DRAM memory, controller chips, or all o the above,

rom outside suppliers.

Samsungs ability to control the production o all major components

oers several advantages. Not only is it able to assure a reliable

supply o key components, it also has the unique ability to ensure

that its NAND fash memory chips and SSD controllers are

optimized to work together or maximum perormance.

SSD controllers are embedded microprocessors that reside

between the drives input/output interace and their fash memory.

Besides managing the reading and writing o data to the fash

chips, controllers typically oversee a variety o other essential

drive unctions such as diagnostics, error correction, wear leveling,

caching and security. Controller technology is oten considered thesingle most important actor aecting SSDs overall perormance.

Its important to put [SSD drive] controllers in the spotlight,

because most SSD innovation happens on this ront, noted

Toms Hardware editors Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos in a

recent roundup o leading SSDs.4 In reality, they contend, its the

controllers [on the drive] that are responsible or most perormance

tweaking and aster interace bandwidth.

Not surprisingly, many reviewers o Samsungs 470 Series drives

take note o their triple-core controllers, which improve multi-taskingperormance by distributing reading, writing and optimization tasks

as needed between the cores. Samsung has clearly put together

a ormidable controller thats more than capable o holding its own

next to the competition, commented HotHardware.com, adding:

We have to give kudos to Samsung where they are due, or putting

together an impressive SSD controller.

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Controllers arent the only hardware highlight o Samsungs

470 Series drives. Geo Gasiors review or The Tech Report, orinstance, cited Samsungs toggle DDR NAND chips as important

contributors to the drives impressive perormance. Faster fash

chips can make a big dierence, he said.5 He went on to explain

how toggle NAND technology enables data rates up to 133

megabits per second (Mbps)more than three times as ast as

conventional single-data-rate NAND chips.

Several reviewers also cited the 470 Series use o 256 megabytes

(MBs) o DRAM cache memory. We were surprised to nd two

cache chips, one on either side o the PCB [printed circuit board],

as every SSD we have seen so ar only includes a single cachechip, notes TechSpot reviewer Steven Walton.6 Cache memory

helps to reduce data-transer bottlenecks by holding requently

accessed data that is needed repeatedly and by speeding up the

writing o small data les. Whether you want to give ull credit to

the controller or the decision to use two 128MB DRAM chips when

most SSDs use a single chip is irrelevant, wrote HotHardware.com.

The bottom line is Samsungs 470 puts up respectable numbers

and hardly ever finches at virtually any desktop workload you can

throw at it.

A nal dierentiator mentioned by most reviewers was the 470Series drives aesthetic appearance and packaging. Unlike most

competing drives plain, utilitarian appearance, Samsungs new

consumer SSDs distinguish themselves with stylish, brushed metal

enclosures highlighted by a thin, orange accent band and corner

insert. Samsung capitalizes on the drives attractive design with

clear acrylic cases that show o their visual appeal to ull eect.

Its almost a shame to hide it inside your desktop or notebook

chassis, commented HotHardware.coms Lilly. Slashgear editor

Ewdison Then described the 470 Series as having a premium eel

that sets it apart.7 Storage Reviews Editor in Chie Brian Beelerpraised the gorgeous design o Samsungs consumer SSDs.

We dont talk about drives being pretty and well packaged very

oten, he admitted, adding This may even be a rst.8


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Test methodologies

Reviewers have relied upon a variety o standard as well as

customized benchmark tests to evaluate Samsungs 470 Series

SSDs. Among the more popular applications used to put the drives

through their paces were:

ATTO Technologys ATTO Disk Benchmark

Crystal Technologys CrystalDiskMark benchmark

Simpli Softwares HD Tach hardware benchmark

EFD Softwares HD Tune Pro hard disk utility

The Iometer Projects open source IOMeterbenchmark tool

Futuremarks PCMark Vantage HDD test suite

Others supplemented those benchmarks with additional tests,

some o which are custom-designed to simulate real-world SSD

use patterns. Typically, they began with drives that were blank

and unpartitioned, unless the tests called or specic partitions

or ormatting.

Boot-ups and software loading

One o SSDs biggest advantages over conventional hard disk

drives is how much aster they allow users to boot up their PCs andload sotware applications. Larry Magid, technology columnist or

the Hungton Post and the San Jose Mercury News, or instance,

experienced a signicant speedup ater installing a Samsung

256GB 470 Series SSD in his desktop PC.

Until I installed this drive, it would take me about ve minutes

between the time I turned on the PC and the time I could actually

start to use it... Now it takes about 30 seconds rom a cold start to

loading Mozilla Fireox, Larry Magid reported.9 He also noted that

his PC now wakes much aster rom sleep mode. Beore, rom

the time I touched the keyboard or moved the mouse while themachine was sleeping, I had to wait 30 seconds or more or the

hard drive to spin up. Now its usable a ew seconds ater I start

waking it up. Its also aster to shut down a machine, because

that oten requires writing to the drive.

TechSpot reported similarly impressive speed increases in

booting up a Windows 7 PC test system. TechSpots Walton noted

u i r,it would take me about fve

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that there is typically very little dierence between most SSDs on this

test because nearly all SSDs perorm exceptionally well in terms oboot-up time. That was until we tested the Samsung 470 256GB, which

loaded Windows 7 about 18 percent aster [9.5 seconds vs. 11.7 seconds]

than the Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB, he said. The result makes the

Samsung 470 Series 256GB the astest SSD we have tested here.

(See Figure A, below).

TechSpot also compared how ast Samsung and 10 other SSDs and hard

disk drives loaded a variety o popular games and sotware applications,

including Photoshop, StarCrat II, Internet Explorer and Microsot Excel,

Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. In all but one test, the Samsung SSD

achieved the astest launch time (although the 100GB OCZ Vertex2 Pro wasa hal-second aster in launching eight simultaneous sotware applications

in a Windows 7 environment).

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Figure A. Samsungs 470 Series SSDs booted up aster in Windows 7 than anyprevious SSDs tested by TechSpot.

Source: http://www.techspot.com/review/340-samsung-470-series-ssd/page6.html


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IOMeter data-transfer rates

Several reviewers used IOMeter le transer tests to evaluate the 470

Series drives sequential data transer rates. IOMeters sotware allows

testers to evaluate how quickly the drives transer both sequential and

random les o varying sizes. In Storage Reviews tests o transerring

2MB sequential les, Samsungs 256GB 470 Series drive demonstrated

an average read speed o 243MB/s and a write speed o 233MB. That

gave it a slightly slower average read speed than SSDs rom Corsair,

Crucial and Intel, but higher average write speeds than every other

model tested except the 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300.

Where Samsungs 470 Series drive really stood out, however,

was in Storage Reviews IOMeter 4K random transer test, where the

Samsung drive blew away Intels 160GB X25-M SSD, the previous

perormance leader in that category, with an exceptional 54.69MB/s

write speed, and a read speed o 12.36MB/s. As Storage Reviews

Beeler notes, . . .the Samsung SSD 470 excels in unaligned 4K

transers. . . actually beating out the Intel in its stronghold.

Read and write performanceHotHardware.com used the latest version o HD Tune Pro (v4.60)

to test a variety o read and write perormance actors including

minimum, maximum and average transer rate, access time andburst rate. This suite o tests oers a wide-ranging perormance

overview and also helps to reveal drives that run inconsistently.

READ Minimum TranserRate (MB/s)

Maximum TranserRate (MB/s)

Average TranserRate (MB/s)

Access Time(ms)

CPU Usage(%)

Samsung 470 Series 256GB 221.8 226.2 225.3 0.18 1.4

Corsair Nova Series V128 128GB 217.9 225.4 222.2 0.08 1.1

Intel X25-M Gen2 80GB 175.2 234.1 227.5 0.09 1.3

Kingston SSDNov V Series 64GB 221.8 233.5 226 0.22 1.3

OCZ Vertex 2 100GB 194.4 206.3 201.1 0.11 1.1

WRITEMinimum Transer

Rate (MB/s)

Maximum Transer

Rate (MB/s)

Average Transer

Rate (MB/s)

Access Time

(ms)

CPU Usage

(%)

Samsung 470 Series 256GB 184.5 194.2 191.9 0.05 1.3

Corsair Nova Series V128 128GB 150.2 192.6 177.5 0.04 1.2

Intel X25-M Gen2 80GB 0.4 82.7 73.5 0.5 0.6

Kingston SSDNov V Series 64GB 7.4 154.9 94.4 0.09 0.7

OCZ Vertex 2 100GB 131.5 200 197.9 0.18 1.2

Figure B. HotHardwares test results show that Samsungs 470 Series SSDs oer the astestminimum data transer rates or both reading and writing.

Source: http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Samsung-470-Series-256GB-SSD-Review/?page=3


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When compared to a selection o Corsair, Intel and OCZ SSDs,

Samsungs 470 Series drive recorded the second-highest averageread speed (just 2.2 MB/s slower than Intels 80GB X25-M drive) as

well as the second-highest average write speed (6 MB/s slower than

OCZs 100GB Vertex 2 drive). In terms o minimum transer rates,

though, the Samsung drive easily outperormed every other model

tested (See Figure B, previous page). HotHardware.coms reviewer

complimented Samsungs SSDs or their solid, all-around perormance.

Samsung didnt turn in the highest average transer rate, but it did

come awully close and trounced the competition in minimum transers,

he said. What this all means is that over the long haul, the Samsung

drive should perorm more consistently no matter what the task.

TechSpot reported a rather strong sequential read speed o

262.1 MB/s ater using CrystalDiskMark 3.0 to compare the perormance

o Samsungs 470 Series drives to 10 other leading SSDs and hard

disk drives. Although Samsungs SSDs were slower than the top-ranked

256GB Crucial RealSSD C300, they oset that decit by dominating

the sequential write-speed test with a speed o 257.2 MB/s. (See

Figure C, below) This is simply o the charts, beating the next astest

SSD by an 18 percent margin, exclaimed TechSpots reviewer.

Figure C. Samsungs 470 Series SSDs dominated TechSpots sequential write speedrankings, with a speed o nearly 260 MB/s.

Source:http://www.techspot.com/review/340-samsung-470-series-ssd/page7.html


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Real-life testing

Although numerous reviewers took note o the Samsung SSDs

outstanding write speeds measured by CrystalDiskMark, PCMark

Vantage and other standard benchmark tests, they were also

impressed by the results generated by their own customized tests

designed to duplicate real-lie SSD users challenges.

Joe Evans o Legit Storage Reviews, or instance, used a ree

application called Teracopy to measure how ast the Samsung SSD

470 could copy large numbers o JPG and MP3 les rom one older

to another on the same drive, requiring the drive to simultaneously

perorm both sustained read and writes. Evans was surprised at

how well the Samsung SSD perormed. The real-world perormance

is impressive, he said, posting some o the best times we have

seen.10

For its real-world benchmarks, Storage Review used several

custom StorageMark 2010 traces designed to simulate common

user scenarios. The rst test aimed to replicate the storage

demands o a home theater PC (HTPC) by playing one 720p

high-denition movie in Media Player Classic mode, playing

another 480p standard-denition movie in VideoLANs VLC media

player, downloading three movies simultaneously through iTunesand recording one 1080i HDTV stream through Windows Media

Centerall within a 15 minute period. In the HTPC test the

Samsung SSD 470 trailed the 120GB Corsair F120 drive

(by 179 MB/s to 248 MB/s), but handily outperormed the 256GB

Crucial RealSSD C300 (140 MB/s) and the 160GB Intel X25-M

SSD (127 MB/s).

A second real-world productivity test included three hours o

running Outlook 2007 in 32-bit Windows Vista while connected to

an Exchange server, surng the Internet with both Google Chrome

and Internet Explorer 8 browsers, editing les in Oce 2007,viewing PDF les in Adobe Reader, and an hour o local music

playback ollowed by two hours o streaming online music rom

Pandora. Again, the Samsung 470 Series SSD trailed the Corsair

F120 (by 166 MB/s to 209 MB/s) while keeping its lead over the

Intel (120 MB/s) and Crucial (114 MB/s) drives.

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Positive Impressions

Although Samsung is still a relative newcomer to the consumer

SSD market, the reviews o its new drives are rolling in, and the

verdict is extremely positive.

Consider the following comments:

We were most impressed with how consistently Samsungs

470 256GB perormed throughout our entire round o testing.

With ew exceptions, the 470 held a steady pace, and it really

fexed its muscle when it came to writes.

Paul Lilly, HotHardware.com.

The Samsung 470 Series 256GB has certainly surprised us.

This quiet achiever came rom nowhere to dominate our

perormance charts with stellar perormance.

Steven Walton, TechSpot

The Samsung 470 reaches higher throughput and is stronger than

most o the other SSDs, including the SandForce party, in our

PCMark Vantage application tests. Additionally, we ound it to be

the best drive on sustained perormance.

Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos, Toms Hardware

The Samsung 470 shines where it matters the most: perormance.

Like other hard drives, we tested Samsung thoroughly with many

dierent applications, and it did an excellent job with most o

them.11

Dong Ngo, CNET

Reviewers agree, Samsungs 470 Series SSDs are among the most

consistently high perorming solid-state storage devices currently

on the market. Although not the astest by every measure, they

oer remarkably consistent balance between read and writespeeds, while avoiding most o the weak points o other drives.

For additional information about Samsungs new solid-state

drives, please visit: www.samsung.com/ssd

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1. Les Tokar, Samsung 470 series 256 GB SSD review (30nm), The SSD Review, Nov. 4, 2010,

http://thessdreview.com/our-reviews/samsung-470-series-256-gb-ssd-review-30nm/

2. Lucas Mearian, NAND fash memory pricing to plummet to $1 per GB, Computerworld, Aug. 19, 2010,

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180943/NAND_fash_memory_pricing_to_plummet_to_1_per_GB?

3. Paul Lilly, Samsungs Hot, New 470 Series 256GB SSD Burned In, HotHardware.com,

Dec. 9, 2010, http://hothardware.com/News/Samsungs-Hot-New-470-Series-256GB-SSD-Burned-In/

4. Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos, Roundup: The Best SSDs or Enthusiasts, Toms Hardware,

Nov. 1, 2010, http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-470-sandorce-best-ssd,2783.html

5. Geo Gasior, Samsungs 470 Series solid-state drive: Toggle DDR NAND arrives, The Tech Report,

Dec. 13, 2010, http://techreport.com/articles.x/20087

6. Steven Walton, Samsung 470 Series 256GB SSD Review, TechSpot, Nov. 22, 2010,

http://www.techspot.com/review/340-samsung-470-series-ssd/

7. Ewdison Then, Samsung 256GB SSD 470 Series Review, SlashGear Nov. 24, 2010,

http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-256gb-ssd-470-series-review-24116133/

8. Brian Beeler, Samsung 470 Series SSD Review 256GB (MZ5PA256HMDR), Storage Review,

Nov. 2, 2010, http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_470_series_ssd_review_256gb_mz5pa256hmdr

9. Larry Magid, Flash Drives Speed up PC Start Times, Hungton Post, Nov. 14, 2010,

http://www.hungtonpost.com/larry-magid/fash-drive-speeds-up-pc_b_783331.html

10. Joe Evans, Samsung 470 Series 256GB SSD Review, Legit Storage Reviews, Jan. 18, 2011,

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1532/1/

11. Dong Ngo, Samsung 470 (64GB, SSD): CNET Editors Review, CNET, Nov. 15, 2010,

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptop-hard-drives/samsung-470-64gb-ssd/4505-9997_7-34212143.html

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