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Samsung 850 Pro vs SM863?

S

Simon R.

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 25, 2006
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Not sure where I should post this.

But I haven't been able to find any benchmark comparisons, but I wonder if someone here is in the know :)

I am working as a composer and am looking for the fastest random read speeds from SSD's. I am wondering if those enterprise SSD's (e.g. SM863/PM863) will giver better results than the consumer ones...? All reviews say they are "optimized/aimed at random read/write performance" but I can't find any specific comparisons.

Also, would there be any disadvantages from trying out an SM863 for this setup compared to the 850 Pro? Obviously the price is a little higher on the SM863 but not that much.

I wonder if anyone have experience with using enterprise SSD's in the Mac Pro.
 
First of, since you didn't state, I'm assuming you are working with a 4,1 or 5,1 cMP.

In a 4,1 or 5,1 Mac Pro, for optimal performance, a 2.5" SSD like the ones you mentioned would need to be mounted on a PCIe card like the Apricorn Velocity Solo x2 (single SSD) or Duo x2 (Dual SSDs).

I have no experience with the SM 863, but I can tell you that the fastest single SSD Read/Write performance will come from a Samsung SM951 mounted on a Lycom PCIe card.

I have conventional SSDs and an SM951 mounted in my 5,1 cMP.

Below are BlackMagic Readings.

1. SM951 on Mounted Lycom Card

2. 840 Pro Mounted on Apricorn Duo x2

3. 840 EVO Mounted in HDD Bay
Blade Speed.jpg
512 GB 840 Pro.jpg
840 on SATA bus.jpg


Lou
 
Contact them to check if the controller supports OSX. Most Enterprise SSD controllers used by OCZ, Intel, Mushkin, etc are not Mac compatible.
 
Flowrider, thanks but those sequential performance benchmarks are not interesting - and I am on a cMP, but I can use a PCI adaptor if needed, but random read speeds are not limited by SATA or PCI, so again, not a very interesting question....

SoyCapitan - ahhhh that would make the decision easy enough. Thanks a lot for bringing that up!
 
^^^^Sorry the Information I Posted was of not interest to you?????? I thought that's what you requested???? As far as the SM863 not working in your machine, I see absolutely no reason why it shouldn't. Read this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9455/...nterprise-sata-ssds-up-to-384tb-with-3d-vnand

MAYBE you'll find it INTERESTING!

And it's being sold by Macintosh Specialists, MacMall:

http://www.macmall.com/p/Samsung-Internal-Hard-Drives/product~dpno~13602930~pdp.jdjcbge

And, IFAIK, the Mac Pro is supposed to be an Enterprise level computer. As long as the SSD does not utilize NVME technology, you should be fine.

Lou
 
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Nope, sequential speeds are not useful to me - only random read speeds at low queue depths - that is what seems to be relevalt regarding sample streaming. And unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much improvement in that department - SSD's are still running at a slow 30-50mb/sec random 4k/8k reads. Sequential speeds are good for video editing/streaming, copying files etc - but not for my use.

Thanks for the link - seems the enterprise disks indeed should work in Mac Pro's, maybe I'll give it a shot.
 
Simon R. said:
Nope, sequential speeds are not useful to me - only random read speeds at low queue depths - that is what seems to be relevalt regarding sample streaming. And unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much improvement in that department - SSD's are still running at a slow 30-50mb/sec random 4k/8k reads. Sequential speeds are good for video editing/streaming, copying files etc - but not for my use.

Thanks for the link - seems the enterprise disks indeed should work in Mac Pro's, maybe I'll give it a shot.
Click to expand...

Here is a link with some sm863 4k Random Read/Write speeds -
http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/samsung-sm863-pm863-ssd-review-960gb/

and this is useful perhaps - http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/samsung-850-pro-ssd-performance,review-32985-5.html
 
Pending thanks - I already read those reviews. However they don't distiguish between QD1 and QD32 - and I am mostly interested in low queue depth benchmarks. But I suspect it is only around 10.000 IOPS like the 850 Pro. But latency is lower, maybe that'll have an influence. I guess the only way to find out is to buy one and test it.
 
flowrider said:
^^^^Sorry the Information I Posted was of not interest to you?????? I thought that's what you requested???? As far as the SM863 not working in your machine, I see absolutely no reason why it shouldn't. Read this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9455/...nterprise-sata-ssds-up-to-384tb-with-3d-vnand

MAYBE you'll find it INTERESTING!

And it's being sold by Macintosh Specialists, MacMall:

http://www.macmall.com/p/Samsung-Internal-Hard-Drives/product~dpno~13602930~pdp.jdjcbge

And, IFAIK, the Mac Pro is supposed to be an Enterprise level computer. As long as the SSD does not utilize NVME technology, you should be fine.

Lou
Click to expand...
I found the results VERY interesting. Thanks for sharing.
 
Simon R. said:
Pending thanks - I already read those reviews. However they don't distiguish between QD1 and QD32 - and I am mostly interested in low queue depth benchmarks. But I suspect it is only around 10.000 IOPS like the 850 Pro. But latency is lower, maybe that'll have an influence. I guess the only way to find out is to buy one and test it.
Click to expand...

Go for it and good luck with your purchase.
There is a QD graph about halfway down this report - http://www.servethehome.com/samsung-sm863-pm863-benchmarks/
 
Pending said:
Go for it and good luck with your purchase.
There is a QD graph about halfway down this report - http://www.servethehome.com/samsung-sm863-pm863-benchmarks/
Click to expand...

I changed my mind a bit here though and decided against a SATA disk, went for a Samsung SM951, since it seems to have even lower latency and higher IOPS than the enterprise SATA drives. The reason I was skeptical about going this way is that if I am replacing my cMP with a new one, I can't use the PCI drive anymore (I don't want a PCI enclosure) - but I'll just have to have "wasted" that little money by the time then - obviously I don't really know when/if I am going nMP - totally depends on what Apple does to the next version(s).

Will be interesting to see how much better performance the SM951 will give in my case compared to SATA drives.
 
^^^^My AJA Test Results:

1. Samsung 840 Evo in SATA HDD Bay
2. Samsung 840 Pro Mounted on Apricorn Duo x2
3. Samsung SM951 on Lycom PCIe Card

AJA 840 Evo SATA Slot.jpg
AJA 840 Pro Duo x2.jpg
AJA SM951.jpg


Lou
 
Flowrider, thanks - but those sequential speeds are - as I mentioned - pretty irrelevant to me:) It will be interesting to see how it fares in a sample streamning scenario where random read speeds are paramount. But I hope it will still be an improvement over SATA.
 
Simon R. said:
Not sure where I should post this.

But I haven't been able to find any benchmark comparisons, but I wonder if someone here is in the know :)

I am working as a composer and am looking for the fastest random read speeds from SSD's. I am wondering if those enterprise SSD's (e.g. SM863/PM863) will giver better results than the consumer ones...? All reviews say they are "optimized/aimed at random read/write performance" but I can't find any specific comparisons.

Also, would there be any disadvantages from trying out an SM863 for this setup compared to the 850 Pro? Obviously the price is a little higher on the SM863 but not that much.

I wonder if anyone have experience with using enterprise SSD's in the Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

Enterprise SSD's have a higher duty cycle and are intended for 24/7 use, that's the main difference. I wouldn't waste your money, just get the 850 Pro. I have 840 Pro's and they've never been slow and I run several heavy VM's on them, so the 850 Pro's will be fine.
 
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Unfortunately some people just look at one section of a black magic speed test or synthetic benchmark and think that has something to do with real world computing. I wish the very mention of those benchmarks was not mentioned to people who aren't capturing or streaming high bit rate video.
 
What is the largest capacity SM951 available? I have two 1TB EVO 850s in a 2TB RAID0 array on an Apricorn Velocity Duo. Black Magic Speed test is about 800MBps vs about 500MBps for a single 1TB EVO 850.
 
nigelbb said:
What is the largest capacity SM951 available? I have two 1TB EVO 850s in a 2TB RAID0 array on an Apricorn Velocity Duo. Black Magic Speed test is about 800MBps vs about 500MBps for a single 1TB EVO 850.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately only 512GB.
 
I love this people are repeatably quoting sequential speed test from black magic rather than random I/O read test that the OP was interested in. Something like this (http://benjamin-schweizer.de/measuring-disk-io-performance.html) would help you better understand the random I/O performance of your SSD - trust me it's not 800MB/s, not for random I/O. Andandtech have tested the 850 Pro (http://www.anandtech.com/show/9451/the-2tb-samsung-850-pro-evo-ssd-review/6) and it's around 87MB/s for random I/O.

If Black Magic was updated to do random I/O tests rather than just showing whether you can read or write video to your SSD at an acceptable rate it would be a more useful tool and might actually go some way to educating people on here.
 
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shaunp said:
I love this people are repeatably quoting sequential speed test from black magic rather than random I/O read test that the OP was interested in. Something like this (http://benjamin-schweizer.de/measuring-disk-io-performance.html) would help you better understand the random I/O performance of your SSD - trust me it's not 800MB/s, not for random I/O. Andandtech have tested the 850 Pro (http://www.anandtech.com/show/9451/the-2tb-samsung-850-pro-evo-ssd-review/6) and it's around 87MB/s for random I/O.

If Black Magic was updated to do random I/O tests rather than just showing whether you can read or write video to your SSD at an acceptable rate it would be a more useful tool and might actually go some way to educating people on here.
Click to expand...

You should have seen the attacks I received when I said boot times and multitasking regular apps won't improve significantly just because you go from an SSD on SATA 2, to SATA 3, to PCIE. They just couldn't understand that those operations aren't consuming big bandwidth. The power of self delusion, group reinforcement and consumerism was saddening to see. Big numbers sell, people who buy stuff don't want to do it alone.
 
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^^^^You got exactly what you deserved! And you made many enemies in the process. Keep up the good work.

Lou
 
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