Samsung Expands 750 EVO SSD Lineup with 500 GB Model, Changes Positioning
by Anton Shilov on May 25, 2016 2:50 PM EST
When Samsung released its 750 EVO lineup of SSDs based on planar TLC NAND flash memory earlier this year, it seemed like a big surprise, as the company was first to ramp up production of 3D NAND memory and to use it for SSDs. Apparently, Samsung not only decided to expand the lineup with a 500 GB model, but also to make such drives available worldwide and even change their positioning.
Earlier this year Samsung introduced its 750 EVO drives with 120 GB (MZ-750120BW) and 250 GB (MZ-750250BW) capacities, which are based on simplified version of the company’s MGX controller with only two cores and TLC NAND chips produced using 16 nm fabrication process. The drives are equipped with 256 MB of DRAM cache, AES-256 encryption, and support various performance improving technologies typically found in TLC-based SSDs, such as pseudo-SLC cache and so on. Samsung’s 750 EVO 500 GB drive (MZ-750500BW) is based on the company’s 16 nm TLC NAND and offers similar levels of performance as already released SSDs — up to 540 MB/s sequential read and up to 520 MB/s sequential write speed. Besides, the higher-capacity version is rated for 100 TB total bytes written (TBW) endurance.
| Samsung TLC SATA SSD Comparison | |||||||
| Drive | 750 EVO 120 GB | 750 EVO 250 GB | 750 EVO 500 GB |
850 EVO 120 GB | 850 EVO 250 GB | 850 EVO 500 GB |
|
| Controller | dual-core MGX | MGX | MGX | ||||
| NAND | Samsung 16nm TLC | Samsung 32-layer 128Gbit TLC V-NAND | |||||
| DRAM | 256MB | 256 MB | 512 MB | 1 GB | |||
| Sequential Read | 540 MB/s | ||||||
| Sequential Write | 520 MB/s | ||||||
| 4KB Random Read | 94K IOPS | 97K IOPS | 97K IOPS | 94K IOPS | 97K IOPS | ||
| 4KB Random Write | 88K IOPS | ||||||
| 4KB Random Read QD1 | 10K IOPS | 10K IOPS | |||||
| 4KB Random Write QD1 | 35K IOPS | 40K IOPS | |||||
| Encryption | AES-256, TCG Opal 2.0, IEEE-1667 (eDrive) | ||||||
| Endurance | 35 TB | 70 TB | 100 TB | 75TB | 150 TB | ||
| Warranty | Three years | Five years | |||||
Initially, Samsung positioned its 750 EVO SSDs as inexpensive solutions primarily designed for system builders in select markets, but with the addition of a 500 GB model into the family, the company also changes positioning of the lineup. Starting from early June, the 750 EVO family of SSDs will be offered in 50 countries, including the U.S., Europe, China, Korea, and other regions. Moreover, the drives will be marketed not only to system builders, but also to end-users.
The 750 EVO SSDs are positioned just below the V-NAND-based 850 EVO and replace the discontinued 840 EVO, which faced writing performance degradation scandal and caused some troubles for Samsung. Despite formal positioning, performance levels of the 750 EVO are very similar to those offered by the 850 EVO drives. However, endurance of the planar TLC-based drives is unsurprisingly somewhat lower compared to the 850 EVO (which uses 3D V-NAND). Besides, the more advanced drives also come with a five-year warranty.
The 750 EVO 500 GB’s MSRP is $149.99 and the drive is covered with a three-year warranty (or 100 TB TBW). By contrast, the 120 GB version costs $54.98, whereas the 250 GB model is priced at $83.99 at Amazon.
Source: Samsung
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Ascaris - Wednesday, June 8, 2016 - link
I have a three year (and a few months) old Samsung 840 Pro 128GB. It's at about 34TB of total writes right now. If it was a 750 Evo, it would be very close to the end of its rated life (35TB), and just past the end of its warranty as well. Given that the drive would be just about to exceed its rated lifetime right as the warranty ended, it would be way beyond that in two more years, and very possibly would have failed completely by then. At the very least, it would always be a concern until it did give up the ghost one day.What are the "enterprise-grade disk I/O based workloads" I subjected the drive to on my personal PC at home?
Web browsing, mainly. I often leave a lot of browser tabs open (hundreds, sometimes), consuming a great deal of memory, and it would hit the page file pretty hard in those situations. The speed of the SSD allowed it to perform well enough to keep it from nearly grinding to a halt, but it has caused the total written to increase as fast as it has.
I'm glad Anandtech doesn't agree that certain bits of information that people are interested in don't matter enough to justify being mentioned in any of their articles. I'm glad to know that some of the lower-priced SSDs can't handle the kind of usage my at-home, completely non-enterprise workload throws at them. I spent a bit more than the bare minimum on my 840 Pro, but at a total-writes number that would have the 750 near the end of its rated life, my 840 Pro still has 83% of its rated life left, so I'm good for the better part of a decade to come. Maybe I'm not a normal consumer (and I would presume that few people who read Anandtech really are), but I'm certainly not doing anything enterprise-grade either.
joex4444 - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I like the part where you distinguish 10K IOPS random reads at 4K QD1 from 10K IOPS random reads at 4K QD1.name99 - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
"When Samsung released its 750 EVO lineup of SSDs based on planar TLC NAND flash memory earlier this year, it seemed like a big surprise, as the company was first to ramp up production of 3D NAND memory and to use it for SSDs."I would expect that there's not TOO much commonality between 3D-NAND and planar NAND fab equipment. Given that fact, if you have the equipment in place, it makes sense to keep using it for as long as you absolutely can.
Basically no different from Intel in the old days using n-2 fabs to manufacture Southbridges and n-1 fabs to manufacture Northbridges, or TSMC using their 40nm equipment to build low-end ARMs destined for things like smart scales or printers.
saratoga4 - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Exactly. It's a totally different process for planar vs. 3D nand, so whatever they've got that is planar is going to keep churning out planar chips. Expect to see them keep selling planar until those fabs are shut down or moved onto other products.Ariknowsbest - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
Rather have the 850 Evo the price difference is too small to justify. If I would buy a TLC drive, I would buy the one with the best value for money.