Samsung Is the Latest SSD Manufacturer Caught Cheating Its Customers(extremetech.com)
extremetech.com
Samsung Is the Latest SSD Manufacturer Caught Cheating Its Customers
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326377-samsung-is-the-latest-ssd-manufacturer-cheating-its-customers?source=flipboard
18 comments
Yep this is terrible editorialising. It's faster on every scenario but very long sequential writes where, after 115 GB your performance drops from 2.5GB/s to below 1 GB/s. The older drives dropped earlier (40 GB) from 1.75 to 1.5 GB/s.
Toms article explains it but for those who want details, the SSD controllers reserves some amount of NAND cells for fast writes, what they call SLC cache. What that means is, instead of writing 3 bits per cell (in TLC), they only write one bit per cell on those NAND cells. They do that because writing one bit is much faster than writing 3.
So the controller maintains some "free" cells for fast write. In the BLU version, the 980 Pro controller that's used here has a different strategy which keeps more cells around (110ish GB vs 40 GB) for fast writes. As you fill up your disk, the controller will try to maintain this. You will see a drop when you go above that because the controller will start consolidating the data (the controller will also move data in it's idle time, consolidating the SLC writes to TLC writes).
This is why you do those specific tests as a reviewer, to analyse how the controller works, but it's not a real life scenario. A much more interesting test which we used to do back in the day was measuring performance when your disk is filled up (say 80, 90%). This is usually where you see those SLC cache strategy no longer working (depending on how good the controller is, some just don't consolidate data and you end up having poor performances).
Anyway, it's a pretty irrelevant change for 99% of users and the SSD will be faster on all other scenarios.
Considering they did a hardware revision, updated spec sheets and new packaging, and changed to a better controller (from the 980 Pro), this is nothing like what WD did.
Toms article explains it but for those who want details, the SSD controllers reserves some amount of NAND cells for fast writes, what they call SLC cache. What that means is, instead of writing 3 bits per cell (in TLC), they only write one bit per cell on those NAND cells. They do that because writing one bit is much faster than writing 3.
So the controller maintains some "free" cells for fast write. In the BLU version, the 980 Pro controller that's used here has a different strategy which keeps more cells around (110ish GB vs 40 GB) for fast writes. As you fill up your disk, the controller will try to maintain this. You will see a drop when you go above that because the controller will start consolidating the data (the controller will also move data in it's idle time, consolidating the SLC writes to TLC writes).
This is why you do those specific tests as a reviewer, to analyse how the controller works, but it's not a real life scenario. A much more interesting test which we used to do back in the day was measuring performance when your disk is filled up (say 80, 90%). This is usually where you see those SLC cache strategy no longer working (depending on how good the controller is, some just don't consolidate data and you end up having poor performances).
Anyway, it's a pretty irrelevant change for 99% of users and the SSD will be faster on all other scenarios.
Considering they did a hardware revision, updated spec sheets and new packaging, and changed to a better controller (from the 980 Pro), this is nothing like what WD did.
As someone who actually uses the storage that I purchase, I strongly disagree with the suggestion that this is a largely-irrelevant change. Few if any users only write to empty disks.
If my experience with other QLC drives is instructive — and I hope it's not — I suspect the "runway" you referenced is minimal if you start writing with the disk at, say, 25% capacity.
If my experience with other QLC drives is instructive — and I hope it's not — I suspect the "runway" you referenced is minimal if you start writing with the disk at, say, 25% capacity.
I took a few shortcuts in my explanation and may have implied that the disk full case was similar to what was shown here (it's not completely related). All in all this is really controller dependant. Some controllers do the bare minimum to show good speeds in benchmarks, which means they never do much consolidating once every cell has been written once. This used to be the norm when SSDs were relatively new. 3 years ago this wasn't the case anymore, but for the most bargain brands (of controllers, you may be disappointed by "good" brands using poor controllers, Intel for example).
At 25% capacity you usually don't see any degrading in performance on the best controllers (I would put Samsung in there). QLC makes things harder on controllers (4 bits) but unless you are in a terrible spot (say you just filled 80%, and try to fill more without leaving enough time to consolidate), you are rarely doing terrible.
Which QLC drive did you have a bad experience with ? Samsung's QLC drive as far as I know recover their "SLC" cache pretty much always for example, according to Toms in 5 minutes of idle time [1]. And this is with their cheapest (I think) model out there.
[1] : https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-870-qvo-sata-ss...
At 25% capacity you usually don't see any degrading in performance on the best controllers (I would put Samsung in there). QLC makes things harder on controllers (4 bits) but unless you are in a terrible spot (say you just filled 80%, and try to fill more without leaving enough time to consolidate), you are rarely doing terrible.
Which QLC drive did you have a bad experience with ? Samsung's QLC drive as far as I know recover their "SLC" cache pretty much always for example, according to Toms in 5 minutes of idle time [1]. And this is with their cheapest (I think) model out there.
[1] : https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-870-qvo-sata-ss...
Different products should have different SKU's. Call it the 971 if it's better or 969 if it's worse.
Its amazing to see the disinformation at work. Samsung literally upgrades their 970 EVO SSDs with the 980 PRO controller, making the drive faster in almost every scenario. But media outlets who make a living generating outrage act like "Shamsung" is lying and cheating customers.
And people fall for it. Even people in this thread are calling for a class action lawsuit because they accidentally bought an upgraded 970 EVO - even though all advertised specs are correct. Its ridiculous.
And people fall for it. Even people in this thread are calling for a class action lawsuit because they accidentally bought an upgraded 970 EVO - even though all advertised specs are correct. Its ridiculous.
Even if the new controller is better they should have changed the product name (not just SKU).
Why? Do you rebrand your software projects on every commit?
This is an implementation detail. For 99% of consumers, they look at the advertised performance numbers and make decisions from that. For those people, this change makes no difference.
The SKU is meant for the 1% who like to dig into what kind of flash is being used, what firmware the controller is running, etc. Renaming a product every time the internal implementation is touched would result in a super confusing user experience.
This is an implementation detail. For 99% of consumers, they look at the advertised performance numbers and make decisions from that. For those people, this change makes no difference.
The SKU is meant for the 1% who like to dig into what kind of flash is being used, what firmware the controller is running, etc. Renaming a product every time the internal implementation is touched would result in a super confusing user experience.
For SSDs, the controller basically is the product; a different controller should have a different product name. I realize in this case there's only one workload that's slower, but I've learned that we can't give companies an inch on this topic.
Great the new PC I just built has the "BLU" version.
I've always bought Samsung drives without even comparing.
Edit: OP article says BLU is the new "inferior one", while Tom's hardware says BLU is the old one. According to above comment with The Facts™ it's fine either way.
Jebaited again.
I've always bought Samsung drives without even comparing.
Edit: OP article says BLU is the new "inferior one", while Tom's hardware says BLU is the old one. According to above comment with The Facts™ it's fine either way.
Jebaited again.
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Can we expect a class action from those who bought the most recent inferior version?
I wonder if articles like this could trigger enough people returning their purchases stating this reason… the manufacturer must eventually notice that the cost savings they had by swapping parts was not worth it right?
Samsung has changed the 970 Evo controller to the one used on the 980.
They have updated the packaging, SKU and advertised performance to reflect this.
The new revision isn't slower or faster either. It's a bit faster in some tests, a bit slower in others, and the exact same in real world tests.
This is how you do hardware revisions if you don't have the components.
To claim they're cheating customers and put them in the same boat as WD and other vendors which do not change SKU's and use inferior components is incredibly dis-ingenious.
here's some more reputable links https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-is-swapping-ssd-pa... https://hexus.net/tech/news/storage/148295-samsung-latest-ss...
Gonna add extremetech to my black list now.