Man, Samsung is marching forward with their VNAND while others seem to be stagnating quite a bit. Not only that, the prices for the 850 drives have been coming down pretty fast, possibly due to Samsung getting good yields on their VNAND.
I've been tracking the 500 GB model and it came down a lot in price in H1 of this year. Since mid-summer it has kind of plateaued. The BX100 can be gotten for 140 dollars equivalent here in Sweden(counting VAT, exchange rate noise etc). The 850 EVO is at 170 or so.
By 2016, we will see a mad rush to V-NAND by all the major actors in the SSD space. I'm kind of curious about NVMe. Does it have as big of an effect as going from HDD to SSD? Not really, right? But do people see significant increases in how fast programs boot up or maps load in games etc? Because I'm seeing 5X increases compared to 850 EVO yet I wonder what the real world increase is in daily use.
NVMe lowers the protocol overhead, improving latency and random performance. You can search for comparisons between SM951 AHCI and SM951 NVMe to see what improvements you can expect. The improvement from AHCI to NVME definitely is not as big improvement as from HDD to SATA SSD.
Honestly i was looking into the NVME solutions for a new skylake build im planning, and if im being realistic with myself, its just not worth the extra cost. If i were a professional doing disk intensive stuff like video editing, or whatever, it would be worth it. But, i'm primarily a gamer, and that would amount to basically an unnoticeable difference for my usage. I'm actually not even sure an m.2 pcix is worth it over a sata drive.
the difference is $60 dollars between 850 256 and 950 256. The 950 is nearly 4x faster. Using your logic why did you buy Skylake over Hasewell which equals higher priced board, processor and memory for a 5-8% increase in speed?
I bought one for $340 around August and a second one for $310 last month... Seems it's the frequency of sales that has increased much more so than a major price drop, still, the same drive was over $450 last year. Seems to take a couple years to see any major shift in SSD pricing tho, it's not a huge yearly drop.
Everyone is moving to some type of 3d technology and capacities are about to go through the roof. I would expect by end of year 2016 prices will likely drop a great deal again.
Probably. But at the same time Intel/Micron has their 3D NAND coming out next year as well and is supposed to offer up to 10TB SSDs so it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Quite curious about pricing on the 4 TB model, as well as whether they're going to offer any 42 mm M.2 cards (I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T450s with some empty M.2 slots, but they're the short kind).
It's a Pro drive and the 2TB EVO is fetching $700+... So I'd expect it to be like $1,500 at launch, easily, unless they foresee a 2.5" drive price war or something.
Chances are you'll be able to buy two 2TB EVOs for less and get better sequential transfers (specially if you have a PCI-E OS drive that can keep up in that regard).
'Course you could pair two 4TB Pros too if that's how you roll.
Looks like my bet was on point, 4TB EVO (not even the Pro) is now up for pre orders right at $1,500. Until they have more competition they can milk the market all they want, EVO prices have barely budged in a year (outside of sales).
Not that we've heard. There's not much point to U.2 in the consumer segment unless you need the extra volume of a 2.5" form factor for heat dissipation or more flash, and Samsung isn't feeling too constrained by either.
The lesser 850 EVOs have been dropping a fair bit in the UK. The 256GB is down to 71 UKP, the 500GB now at 122 UKP. Funny part is, I see people on eBay paying more for used SSDs at these capacities. My gf calls this the "Argos Effect", ie. an assumption eBay must be cheaper because it's ebay (they don't check new pricing before bidding).
The 850 Pro has been dropping aswell, though I recently managed to win a new 512GB for 145 which was good.
I bought a 500 GB 850 EVO last week for just $110! And finally after YEARS on this crappy RAID of 4x (ancient) Seagate Barracuda 16MB cache 7200 RPM drives will FINALLY be replaced by a much more elegant solution that is WORLDS faster!
Oh, and I also got a new Seagate Constellation ES.3 drive to replace my even more ancient 1 TB Barracuda data drive!
Woooo hoooo! Once I get through all the Re-loading BS I cannot WAIT to see how fast my rig moves!
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23 Comments
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Shadow7037932 - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Man, Samsung is marching forward with their VNAND while others seem to be stagnating quite a bit. Not only that, the prices for the 850 drives have been coming down pretty fast, possibly due to Samsung getting good yields on their VNAND.SmashingTool - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Have they been coming down? I bought an 850 Evo for $340 on March 31st. It's $343 today. That's nearly 6 months with no drop on that model.SmashingTool - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
1TB Model, obviously.Mondozai - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
I've been tracking the 500 GB model and it came down a lot in price in H1 of this year. Since mid-summer it has kind of plateaued. The BX100 can be gotten for 140 dollars equivalent here in Sweden(counting VAT, exchange rate noise etc). The 850 EVO is at 170 or so.By 2016, we will see a mad rush to V-NAND by all the major actors in the SSD space. I'm kind of curious about NVMe. Does it have as big of an effect as going from HDD to SSD? Not really, right? But do people see significant increases in how fast programs boot up or maps load in games etc? Because I'm seeing 5X increases compared to 850 EVO yet I wonder what the real world increase is in daily use.
camelNotation - Wednesday, September 23, 2015 - link
NVMe lowers the protocol overhead, improving latency and random performance. You can search for comparisons between SM951 AHCI and SM951 NVMe to see what improvements you can expect. The improvement from AHCI to NVME definitely is not as big improvement as from HDD to SATA SSD.Kutark - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
Honestly i was looking into the NVME solutions for a new skylake build im planning, and if im being realistic with myself, its just not worth the extra cost. If i were a professional doing disk intensive stuff like video editing, or whatever, it would be worth it. But, i'm primarily a gamer, and that would amount to basically an unnoticeable difference for my usage. I'm actually not even sure an m.2 pcix is worth it over a sata drive.Never the less, just some thoughts.
svan1971 - Monday, February 15, 2016 - link
the difference is $60 dollars between 850 256 and 950 256. The 950 is nearly 4x faster. Using your logic why did you buy Skylake over Hasewell which equals higher priced board, processor and memory for a 5-8% increase in speed?dgingeri - Wednesday, September 23, 2015 - link
I bought a 512GB 850 Pro last December for $339. It's now $231. I'd call that a drop.Impulses - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
I bought one for $340 around August and a second one for $310 last month... Seems it's the frequency of sales that has increased much more so than a major price drop, still, the same drive was over $450 last year. Seems to take a couple years to see any major shift in SSD pricing tho, it's not a huge yearly drop.Ewitte12 - Monday, November 30, 2015 - link
Everyone is moving to some type of 3d technology and capacities are about to go through the roof. I would expect by end of year 2016 prices will likely drop a great deal again.jimmy$mitty - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Probably. But at the same time Intel/Micron has their 3D NAND coming out next year as well and is supposed to offer up to 10TB SSDs so it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.evilspoons - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Quite curious about pricing on the 4 TB model, as well as whether they're going to offer any 42 mm M.2 cards (I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T450s with some empty M.2 slots, but they're the short kind).Impulses - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
It's a Pro drive and the 2TB EVO is fetching $700+... So I'd expect it to be like $1,500 at launch, easily, unless they foresee a 2.5" drive price war or something.Chances are you'll be able to buy two 2TB EVOs for less and get better sequential transfers (specially if you have a PCI-E OS drive that can keep up in that regard).
'Course you could pair two 4TB Pros too if that's how you roll.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Considering the new density I would expect the 4TB drive @$999 with the 2TB Pro dropping to $549-599 and $299 for the 1TB.And this is only 32 --> 48layers, the next years we will see 64 --> 96--> 128layers. I think 3D V-Nand will reach a bottleneck at 192layers.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
If I had money to burn I would get:1TB 950Pro NVM for OS+games
2x4TB "950 EVO" for data
Future 10TB HAMR HDD
Impulses - Saturday, July 9, 2016 - link
Looks like my bet was on point, 4TB EVO (not even the Pro) is now up for pre orders right at $1,500. Until they have more competition they can milk the market all they want, EVO prices have barely budged in a year (outside of sales).cyrand - Wednesday, September 23, 2015 - link
Do Samsung have any plans to release 950 Pro in 2.5 form factors connected by u.2. Similar to the intel 750?Billy Tallis - Wednesday, September 23, 2015 - link
Not that we've heard. There's not much point to U.2 in the consumer segment unless you need the extra volume of a 2.5" form factor for heat dissipation or more flash, and Samsung isn't feeling too constrained by either.mapesdhs - Friday, September 25, 2015 - link
The lesser 850 EVOs have been dropping a fair bit in the UK. The 256GB is down to 71 UKP, the 500GB now at 122 UKP. Funny part is, I see people on eBay paying more for used SSDs at these capacities. My gf calls this the "Argos Effect", ie. an assumption eBay must be cheaper because it's ebay (they don't check new pricing before bidding).The 850 Pro has been dropping aswell, though I recently managed to win a new 512GB for 145 which was good.
Budburnicus - Friday, March 11, 2016 - link
I bought a 500 GB 850 EVO last week for just $110! And finally after YEARS on this crappy RAID of 4x (ancient) Seagate Barracuda 16MB cache 7200 RPM drives will FINALLY be replaced by a much more elegant solution that is WORLDS faster!Oh, and I also got a new Seagate Constellation ES.3 drive to replace my even more ancient 1 TB Barracuda data drive!
Woooo hoooo! Once I get through all the Re-loading BS I cannot WAIT to see how fast my rig moves!
russman - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
Anyone know where we are at with this. We are half way through 2016 and I'm still only seeing 850's up to 2TB and 950's up to 512GB...Decked - Tuesday, June 14, 2016 - link
I've also been waiting for this, I see Toshiba have released their 1tb m.2 variant so hopefully not too long for Samsung to get theirs out to market.Impulses - Saturday, July 9, 2016 - link
4TB models are now coming out, crazy how long it took, crazy how little prices have shifted in the meantime.