Specifications, Pricing and Availability

The Samsung 840 Pro 512GB uses a new three-core controller that dedicates one core for reading, one for writing and the third for handling background data shuffling (background tasks). It's pretty much a core for reading, writing and arithmetic.

Samsung uses their own NAND and DRAM for their SSDs. The flash is Samsung's new 22nm MLC, but Samsung hasn't publicly stated a P/E cycle for their MLC or TLC NAND. This led us to start an endurance test on a 250GB 840 non-Pro. The drive is still in testing with over 800 hours of constant writing, with over 438 TiB written. I'd have to say we don't really have to worry about Samsung's endurance after writing to the TLC model for this long.

As we mentioned in the introduction, 840 Pro is one of the very few SSDs on the market with a claimed 100K IOPS rating. That comes from the random reads. Random writes are at 90K and we easily hit those marks under normal desktop use. In the coming weeks we'll compare both 840 Pro and Vector to an enterprise SSD from SMART and see what happens to the two reigning consumer champions under enterprise loads.

Newegg has the 840 Pro 512GB in stock at the time of writing. The Newegg price is $519.99 (ouch!), but still within the $1 per GB mark. Since this is really a battle between the 840 Pro and Vector in the 512GB capacity size, we need to include the fact that the Vector 512GB currently sells at Newegg for $549.99 (ouch + $30).

Samsung delivers one of the best software packages in the SSD market. In the package you get a software disk, but we typically download the new version from Samsung's website. Samsung just revamped their software that updates the drive firmware, handles secure erases, optimizes the operating system (Windows) and has a few more, less important functions like a built in benchmark suite. Samsung also includes a data migration software package. The 840 Pro also includes a five year warranty.