I'v been doing some reading on both these drives & they do seem pretty close, both in price and performance. More detail here: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/01/08/the-ssd-catchup/1 However, Samsung appear to suggest their SSD has twice the reliability of the Vector: Samsung 5 years limited (client PC use only, 1 year data retention)* 5 years limited warranty assumes a workload of 40GB/day (host writes, 3-month data retention) for enterprise applications. Workloads in excess of 40GB/day are not covered under warranty. OCZ Rated for 20GB/day of host writes for 5 years under typical client workloads. Marketing bollocks or is the Sammy more reliable? Another thing I noticed is how Samsung seem confused on the length of the warranty. They say 5 years in the marketing, but in the warranty detail page it says 3 years. 5 years: http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/memory-cards-hdd-odd/ssd/840-pro/MZ-7PD256BW-spec 3 Years: http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/memory-cards-hdd-odd/ssd/840-pro/MZ-7PD256BW-support 3 Years: http://www.samsung.com/us/support/service/warranty/MZ-7PD256BW & finally: The SSD 840 Pro's performance degraded noticeably having been filled, but only in one of our tests. Sequential write speeds in AS-SSD dropped from 498MB/sec to 444MB/sec, a ten per cent drop. Iv seen this mentioned in a few different reviews & not all using the same benchmarking, a 10% performance drop when the drive has stuff on it? ...I don't really understand why you would not show this on the performance graph. Price aside as they cost almost the same, which would you choose & why?
They're not saying that the SSDs are twice as reliable - simply that they will guaranty the nand for twice the total quantity of host writes within a 5 year period. Tbh, all figures like this are very conservative so it's not possible to make an exact comparison - however, whilst there will normally be an advantage on longevity to toggle nand, a major factor is that OCZ don't make nand & so are working on a more conservative figure as it's down to what (normally) micron sell them. Now, unless you're actually going to be writing huge amounts of data (remembering, of course, that very heavy random writes can increase the host writes beyond the actual data written by 10-20 times - aka write amplification) then it's immaterial... ...however you can, of course, improve the nand longevity (as well as improving the maintenance of speeds) of any SSD by both over provisioning & maintaining free space. Or, unless you're working with solely incompressible data, you'll always get much higher nand longevity from a SandForce - simply that 'if' nand longevity is *that* key a metric for you then you wouldn't necessarily be looking at either the Pro or the Vector. As to the warranty on the Pros, it looks as though Samsung have simply cocked up when reusing a legacy SSD warranty document online. The warranty is 5 years, & it says so in the documentation that comes with the SSDs themselves. & whilst the "The SSD 840 Pro's performance degraded noticeably..." comment will be comparative true, imho, this is completely irrelevant to sensible r.l. usage. Well, okay, if you want to entirely fill your SSD & then expect it to recover entirely in 10 mins then of course it'll matter... ...but, along with best practice being to over provision to a total of ~25% (i'd go 28%+ from habit), for an OS, etc drive (ie where it's neither a temp sequential nor a static data usage), you should be aiming to maintain at least 20% (no less than 15%) of the formatted space being unused. So, imho, if you got yourself into then situation then more fool you. On the Vector side, it has periods of temporary (& more major) slowdowns when ~50% of the standard formatted capacity is reached - & then at subsequent points upwards. This is because the Vector works in a combination of (effectively) SLC & MLC modes - the former being 1 bit of data stored per nand cell, whilst the latter is 2 bits stored per nand cell - the former being both much quicker for writes & having a lower write amplification. Simply put, initially all writes will be in SLC mode but, when the ~50% mark is reached there needs to be reorganisation of data that's on there so that more data can be stored - rearranging x amount of the data from being stored in SLC mode to MLC mode... ...maintaining free cells in SLC mode to ensure optimum write speeds. This takes a matter of minutes but, during that time, write speeds can slow by ~50% or so. Whilst this 'might' sound shonky, it's actually very clever tech - esp as lots of data on an OS, games, etc drive will be pretty much static over time, & so it's primarily read only data that'll be stored in the cells that are in MLC mode - where the write speeds won't matter. As to which to choose, unless you have a *very* specific data type usage where you'd be evaluating all drives on that one metric, between the two then personally i'd buy on price, as they are both top notch drives. Well, i happen to use 2x 256GB 840 Pros (& 2x 256GB 830s), but it was only because, at the time, the Pros were significantly cheaper than the Vectors. Prior to getting the 830s, i had solely used OCZ SSDs & never had any issues.
No problem at all - well, i'm not known for my brevity, so clearly you were in luck. Thinking on, the one reason why the Vector route (& the same applies to the Vertex 4 btw) might not be great is if you were looking at using it for something like time critical HQ video editing... Simply that, unless you could always keep the total usage safely below the 50% mark (say 45% of the standard formatted space to be cautious), you're likely to end up hitting the SLC-to-MLC conversion in the middle of importing/encoding/transcoding/etc - which naturally would be something less than great.
The system will be used for almost all purposes in equal measure: gaming, video/audio encoding, photoshop, 3d rendering etc..
PocketDemon has basically answered this already but the main difference between them will be price and customer support if anything does go wrong. Pricewise samsung has a cashback offer at the moment which I believe is £25 for the 256gb 840 pro. For customer support I would favour ocz as they were very helpful and quick to respond when I had power supply problems. Really comes down to your choice they are both very quick drives (my 830 is lightning fast ).
Although I'm aware that the Vector is supposedly a turning point for OCZ, I would be reluctant to purchase another SSD from them given the failure rates I've seen with past products. Given the performance differences between the two, it's Samsung every time from me. OCZ after sales support and RMA is pretty faultless mind you, but then it has to be. Because they fail... a lot!
A good job i mentioned that then... ...however it's what you're actually using the SSD for that matters. Well, if, using video as an example, you were either editing relatively small clips or using separate HDDs for source & destination then it wouldn't matter at all - as either, in the former case, there'd be a minimal chance of hitting the SLC-to-MLC point or, in the latter, it's not the SSD where the data's being stored... ...&, from your 'list of demands', it seems more likely that you'd need to be putting something like that (though not necessarily your 'work in process' PS files) onto HDD as you're likely to end up be short on space otherwise - with only looking at a (nominally) 256GB SSD. Well, with those 256GB SSDs there's a formatted capacity of ~238GB... ...but if you were to go for the best practice options of 25% total OP + maintaining 20% of the formatted space as free space this would take you down to ~153.6GB of usable space - which certainly isn't huge. [NB see, for example, this about the benefits of extra OP.] Yeah, for massively sequential (esp processor heavy) stuff then fast HDDs are still a viable option - personally i still use 2 pairs of 15K.7 SAS drives as they are pretty nippy for highly sequential r/ws - though, naturally, 'if' you can afford more SSD space then there will be an advantage. Again personally, i'm waiting for the 480GB Crucial M500s to stabilise in price (there's about half of one in the retail channel atm so they're *very* over priced atm for what they are) to add in for that type of purpose as, whilst they certainly won't compete with the Pro or Vector overall, they (should) be excellent drives for highly sequential r/ws; so a great choice for using as data drives for video/audio editing... ...&, for your stated needs, having both a Pro/Vector & a 480GB or 960GB M500 (the 240GB ones are a bit too shonky on sequential writes) sounds like it'd be a decent option for yourself as well - money permitting of course.
The cashback's only £15 for the 256GB Pro - &, other than the limitation on Pixmania & Amazon Marketplace sellers, there's no list as to which retailers actually are part of the promotion to be able to accurately price compare. (the t&cs state "from UK and ROI participating retailers" - which could mean anything) For my own reasons, i emailed Samsung earlier today (prior to seeing this thread) to see if they could provide one - if there's any info i'll update things.
