Introduction
Contents
Over the past few months, solid state drives have come down significantly in price, making them much more cost effective than they’ve been previously. Today, we are going to look at one of Samsung’s latest SSDs, the 830 Series 256 GB, to see how it fares against the competition.
As a result of the recent SSD price reductions, many users may consider opting for a larger drive for their system. For the majority of users, a 256 GB unit will have ample room for installing a variety of programs and games and will be capacious enough to use in a laptop without the need for a supplementary mechanical drive for storage.
Before proceeding, we highly suggest that you read our “Anatomy of SSD Units” tutorial which provides all the background information you need to know about SSDs. Both of the SSDs featured in this review use MLC memory chips.
Figure 1: The Samsung 830 Series 256 GB SSD
In the table below, for comparison purposes we are assessing the Samsung 830 Series with the Crucial M4. Both units use a SATA-600 interface and occupy a 2.5” form factor. Prices were researched at Newegg.com on the day we published this review.
| Manufacturer | Model | Model # | Capacity | Price |
| Samsung | 830 Series | MZ-7PC256 | 256 GB | USD 217 |
| Crucial | M4 | CT256M4SSD2 | 256 GB | USD 209 |
In the table below, we provide a more in-depth technical comparison between the two drives.
| Model | Controller | Buffer | Memory |
| Samsung 830 Series | Samsung S4LJ204X01-Y040 | Samsung K4T2G314QF-MCF7 (256 MB) | Samsung K9PFGY8U7A-HCK0 (8 x 32 GB) |
| Crucial M4 | Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 | Micron IED22D9LGQ (256 MB) | Micron 29F128G08CFAAB (16 x 16 GB) |
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