Giant Samsung has decided to provide the 840 SSD with an upgrade and releases the 840 Evo. This drive comes with some very interesting and unique features. One of those is TurboWrite, which finally boosts sequential write performance into regions where the 840 Evo becomes highly competitive. According to the motto - SSD for everyone - Samsung also brings price wars to another level. Overall you can be really curious what we will show you on the following pages, since there are quite a few more surprises.


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Specifications / Delivery

Model	840 Evo 120 Gigabyte	840 Evo 250 Gigabyte	840 Evo 500 Gigabyte	840 Evo 750 Gigabyte	840 Evo 1000 Gigabyte
Capacity	120 GB	250 GB	500 GB	750 GB	512 GB
Form Factor	2.5'', 7mm	2.5'', 7mm	2.5'', 7mm	2.5'', 7mm	2.5'', 9.3 7mm
Memory	TLC NAND 19nm ~1'200 P/E-cycles	TLC NAND 19nm ~1'200 P/E-cycles	TLC NAND 19nm ~1'200 P/E-cycles	TLC NAND 19nm ~1'200 P/E-cycles	TLC NAND 19nm ~1'200 P/E-cycles
Technology	Samsung K90KGY8S7M-CCK0	Samsung K90KGY8S7M-CCK0	Samsung K90KGY8S7M-CCK0	Samsung K90KGY8S7M-CCK0	Samsung K90KGY8S7M-CCK0
Throughput	540 MB/s sequential read 410 MB/s sequential write 94'000 IOPS 4K random read 35'000 IOPS 4K random write	540 MB/s sequential read 520 MB/s sequential write 97'000 IOPS 4K random read 66 '000 IOPS 4K random write	540 MB/s sequential read 520 MB/s sequential write 98'000 IOPS 4K random read 90 '000 IOPS 4K random write	540 MB/s sequential read 520 MB/s sequential write 98'000 IOPS 4K random read 90 '000 IOPS 4K random write	540 MB/s sequential read 520 MB/s sequential write 98'000 IOPS 4K random read 90 '000 IOPS 4K random write
Accesstime (read)	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms
Acoustics	no noise	no noise	no noise	no noise	no noise
Warranty	3 Years	3 Years	3 Years	3 Years	3 Years
Price

One of the biggest issues with the Samsung 840 (non Pro) was the sequential write performance of 130 Megabyte per second. Since at this point Samsung just wasn't competitive at all, they really had to do something about this to boost this value into a region where it can compete with for example Crucials M500 SSD. Apart from that Samsung also boosted IOPS performance, when you compare the 840 Evo with the older 840 drive.

At this point you should really ask yourself what kind of sorcery is going on behind the scenes that Samsung was able to triple sequential write performance from one generation to the next. The key to success actually has a name: TurboWrite. That's what the new proprietary technology has been called and basically it is an algorithm, which has been implemented into the firmware of the 840 Evo's new MEX controller. TruboWrite can use a small portion of the DRAM chip, which sits next to the controller on the SSD's PCB and emulate SLC NAND flash. As soon as there are data transfers this emulated SLC cache acts as a high performance buffer. In other words, Samsung brought the concept of DRAM caching into the SSD's controller, which massively boost sequential write performance, which used to be the achilles heel of the 840 Evo's predecessor.

Next to the improvements on the controller Samsung has also been working on their Magician Software. Later in this review we will reveal what this sofware suite is all about. So far we can tell you that it is very well structured and even unexperienced users will have no issues at all configuring the drive the most suitable way.

Page 1 - Introduction / Specs	Page 8 - Sequential write ops
Page 2 - Impressions	Page 9 - Sequential read ops
Page 3 - How do we test?	Page 10 - Random write ops
Page 4 - Sequential write KByte/s	Page 11 - Random read ops
Page 5 - Sequential read KByte/s	Page 12 - Atto / Crystal Disk Mark
Page 6 - Random write KByte/s	Page 13 - Samsung Magician and RAPID Mode
Page 7 - Random read KByte/s	Page 14 - Conclusion