1TB Samsung 870 EVO
Can Samsung teach old SATA new tricks?
IS THERE ANYTHING left in the tank when it comes to solid-state drives based on ye olde SATA interface? It’s a reasonable question, what with the obvious limitations of what is a positively antiquated interface.
After all, the latest M.2 PCI Express Gen-4 drives have around 8GB/s of theoretical bandwidth to play with. SATA is pegged at a mere 600MB/s. That’s just raw bandwidth. SATA also makes do with an elderly control protocol called AHCI, which was conceived with spinning magnetic platters, not NAND memory chips, in mind. The latest M.2 drives run the solid-state-optimized NVMe protocol.
All of that probably explains the roughly three-year interval between the new Samsung 870 EVO and its 860 EVO predecessor. In between, we’ve had the 870 QVO, of course. But as its name implied, the QVO is based on quad-level QLC NAND memory chips, which come with some significant limitations.
The new 870 EVO, by contrast, sticks with faster and more expensive TLC triple-level cells. And yet the question remains: does SATA have anything more to offer? On paper, the new 870 EVO has Samsung’s latest 128-layer TLC memory chips. It also packs the latest Samsung MKX SATA controller, as first seen in the 870 QVO. Elsewhere, there isn’t evidence of dramatic change. You still get 1GB of cache memory on this 1TB model, and just like the 860 EVO, the range goes all the way to 4TB.
BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE?
Samsung isn’t exactly effusive when it comes to the technical changes that the 870 EVO, its new NAND chips and MKX controller bring. But a 38-percent improvement in queue depth on random read latency is on the list. All told, however, the changes don’t bring much by way of immediate and obvious benefits to the quoted performance metrics. Peak reads remain at 560MB/s, exactly the same as the 860 EVO, while writes top out 10MB/s higher at 530MB/s.
Claimed random read IOPS performance, meanwhile, is actually fractionally lower, with the 870 EVO rated at 98K to the 860 EVO’s 100K. Random write IOPS are likewise a tiny bit down from 90K IOPS to 88K. As for endurance and warranty, it’s all the same. Once again, cover extends to five years and 600TB of writes.
But what of actual, independently tested performance, as opposed to Samsung’s claims? The harsh reality is that this new drive does little to up the SATA game. In the one area where you might hope for some clear gains, namely 4K random access, the new 870 EVO is actually pretty patchy.
It’s slower across the board than the old 860 EVO by that measure, albeit the comparison isn’t quite like-for-like as the 860 EVO reference drive-tested was the 500GB variant. Even so, we found the 870 EVO to be inconsistent under 4K testing, with performance varying significantly from one run to the next. Peak sequential throughput, meanwhile, was virtually identical to the old 860 EVO.
One aspect that has changed hugely since the 860 EVO was launched, however, is price. Back in 2018, the 860 EVO 1TB launched at $329.99. This new 1TB 870 EVO arrives at a recommended price of $129.99. That’s a pretty spectacular improvement, especially when you compare it to spiralling prices for other components, such as graphics cards.
In most technical regards, then, the 870 EVO barely registers a flicker. Overall, it might actually be the slower drive—but not to any extent that you’d really notice it. Instead, it’s best to think of this new SSD as more of a continuation of its predecessor, just priced hugely lower, or at least priced hugely lower compared to the 860 EVO’s launch price. The biggest problem for the new 870 EVO is that you can now get an 860 EVO 1TB for around $20 cheaper. While that remains true, we’d recommend opting for the older drive.