SanDisk SSDs are the best? Is this an inflated / paid review?

I thought Tom's Hardware was a fair reviewing site but this seems a bit too biased to me. What do j00 think?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269.html

Reason I ask because in these 2 reviews, it shows the 850 PRO as the king:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8170/sandisk-extreme-pro-240gb-480gb-960gb-review

http://www.techspot.com/review/852-sandisk-extreme-pro-ssd/page3.html

 

Every review site is biased in some way. Undisclosed handing over of bills and hardware under the table is the name of the game. It's really no different for PC hardware and tech sites as it is with, say, games media (viva la #GamerGate!) On a macro scale what you're looking at is gradual industry consolidation. Global mass media conglomerates/oligopolies fueled by advertising dollars are behind 99% of what you read online. Tom's Hardware and AnandTech are owned by the same media company, Purch. At least TechSpot still has some semblance of independence, but their occasional partnership with Sh*taku I mean Kotaku in gaming op-ed pieces makes me cringe.

 

There's no need to raise red flags on differences this small. A slight change in benchmark setup can flip the two drives.

 

Youd also have to take into account the setups drivers, firmware, controller, components etc etc. Just too many variables.

 

I know I'm going to be tarred and feathered for what I'm about to say, but I've had problems taking their reviews seriously on more than one occasion.

Well, you've seen quite a few SSDs by now, so let me ask you the following:

Can you *really* tell a difference in performance - short of benchmarking - between Extreme Pro and 850 Pro?

Honestly, I can't.

My choice for recent builds was Extreme Pro after my first 850 Pro just died on me out of the blue which wouldn't have been a big deal in its own right - other SSDs have vanished in front of my eyes before - if it were not for Samsung's behaviour during the 840 TLC "slowdowngate" which left me with little desire to support their business...

My $0.02 only...

 

Agreed, I never felt a difference between 2 SSDs in real world usage to be very honest. Didn't even feel a difference when I had my SSDs in a RAID x 3 (RAID 0)

 

There is a god, walking amongst us mere mortals in this forum, who can.

 

3 way RAID 0 is probably noticeable if you do a lot of sequential I/O. But Extreme Pro vs 850 Pro? Nope.

 

o hai

No but seriously I swear the 850 Pro felt less snappy than the Extreme Pro, and according to jaybee I'm not the only one who feels that way.

It was a pleasant surprise though, because the Extreme II felt very laggy, and I dare say if someone dd a back-to-back comparison of the Extreme II vs Extreme Pro, they should be able to perceive the difference.

 

I told the guys at OC Forums about this opinion that many people like TomGX, tilleroftheearth feel the SanDisk Extreme PRO is snappier than the 850 PRO, the editor there said the benchmarks speak for themselves as the 850 PRO beats the SanDisk Extreme PRO in every category which is true

 

Well let me just ask you this: do you buy GPUs based on their 3DMark score?

Not discounting benchmarks of course, but I've learned it's best to just test the damn thing for yourself and experience firsthand what it's like. Just like how the new Intel NVMe SSD absolutely kills in the benchmarks, and preliminary testing does seem to indicate it translates into real life performance. But I still reserve final judgment until I have a chance to try it out myself.

(I know you being in Dubai and getting killed on shipping sucks and all, but if you're in NA or Europe, Amazon's extremely generous return policy means you can buy without fear of being stuck with a PoS)

 

True, you guys have that luxury of returning items. and I agree with you, user experience tells far more than benchmarks usually as they're just synthetic. Example, my 780GTX SLI sucks in a few 3DMark benchmarks where I see the FPS dropping below 20 FPS but it has played every game I've thrown at it so far just well including GTA V

 

While that statement may very well hold true, how many people can actually feel the benchmarks in real life?

My thing being, I'm a creature of habit and maintain a client base that values reliability over anything and everything else. Most of the drives I've installed over the past few years were Intel and Crucial/Micron ones. While definitely not the fastest ones around, they've been very reliable - knock wood - and have given me zero issues. So for standard client builds, I'll probably stay with these two manufacturers.

On my own systems...I'll try anything/everything if it sparks my curiosity strongly enough. My next purchase - tar and feathers coming my way again I feel it - will be OCZ Vector 150. There's something inside of me itching to test this one, can't put my finger on exactly why...

My $0.02 only...

 

The Vertex 460 looks strong too. Slightly better than the Vector 150 in steady state testing. And cheaper.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/61...d-review-the-skulltrail-of-ssds-/index11.html

The Tom's Hardware recommendations seem valid. In the 1TB size class the performance choice is the SE Pro. In their review of steady state (real world) performance, not a synthetic benchmark, the SE Pro wins high performance (heavy usage). In light usage 850 Pro wins. On Amazon, the SE Pro is $100 cheaper. TweakTown and theSSDreview results are the same in steady state testing. Tom's said:

Sounds reasonable not biased.

Matrix Leader6, you know the 512GB 850 Pro is the lower performing drive compared to the 1TB and 256GB 850 Pros, so the results are lower in steady state vs SE Pro 480GB and other drives.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/6628/samsung-850-pro-512gb-ssd-review/index8.html

In the 256GB size class, the 850 Pro is behind SE Pro, SE II, Vector 150, Vertex 460 in steady state high performance.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/6714/samsung-850-pro-256gb-ssd-review/index6.html

Of note: This same reviewer from Tom's is also on TweakTown. In the last generation he recommended 840 Pro and Vector until the PCMark 8 Consistency Test came about. Look at the 840 Pro results in the link above.

Times change as better testing methods evolve. The synthetic benchmark becomes less and less relevant. Some review sites see it and are evolving to real world testing.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015...world_benchmarks_in_ssd_reviews/#.VTAEyhZD_oa

 

True that about the 512GB 850 PRO being the slowest of the 850 PRO SSDs.

What's even more interesting is, in the reviews I've read, it seems that the 256GB SanDisk Extreme PRO is faster than its bigger brothers like the 480GB and the 960GB. With the 960GB being the slowest of the threes (not in all tests) due to them packing 16 something in the NAND I can't remember the exact term I read. This is the only case where I've seen the lower capacity SSDs performing better than the higher capacity ones. I am so tempted to try these SanDisk Extreme PROs to be honest but unless I'm able to sell my 1TB 850 PRO I won't be able to do it.

 

I still sadly look at toms reviews from time to time when purchasing parts. Even though I saw THIS specific video back when it came out, back when I was a teenager just getting into building gaming rigs, water cooling, and overclocking...


Pentium 4 only hits 84F with no heat sink, slightly above ambient? Of course amd hit nearly 700f...
Either someone is an idiot, or someone got paid.

 

So Pentium 4 is cooler without cooling than with cooling. Got it.

Hotwell, look at you!

 

Note that they show it slowing down then freezing up. The point was that the AMD has no safeguards from overheating. Whoopdedoo.

 

No matter how much it slows down, it can not achieve a temperature lower than that with cooling attached. The CPU package has no sensor to detect cooler removal (fan connector is still connected). If temperature is low there won't be any thermal throttling. The temperature has to be noticeably higher than normal for the safeguard to kick in. And with that little air cooler, there's no way a P4 can stay below 84F/29C under load. Actually the maximum operating temperature of the P4 was around 70C and it would not try to throttle itself below that level.

The FPS sequence may be not wrong, but the temperature measurement is definitely broken.

 

Definitely bogus. 400C is very hot, it would have melted the plastic CPU retainer, because most plastics melting point is well below 300C. And I wouldn't doubt that it would have actually caught fire at those temperatures, especially with such a quick spike in temps. There's no way that a chip would run at 400C though, and a simple heatsink/fan able to keep it under 80C either. Temps coming off that heatsink would be on the order of at least 200C or so, lol.