Intel SSD 320 vs Samsung 830 - any noticeable difference?

Hello all,

I am thinking to upgrade my Intel SSD 320 160 GB to a bigger (faster) Samsung 830 256 GB.

Obviously, there is a huge difference between any SSD and HDD, but what about Intel 320 vs Samsung 830? I know Samsung looks faster than the 320 on the charts, but is it really noticeable in real life?

Can someone who upgraded to a similar drive share how it feels?

Thanks!

 

In MOST cases, unless you copy data 24/7, you WON'T notice a difference. Getting an SSD already gets you .1 ms latency, most people won't see the difference between 500 read (if your laptop supports SATA 3) and 285 read. Also the 320 series should get better battery life, at least on load.

 

I upgraded from Mushkin Callisto (2nd gen Sandforce controller) 64GB to Samsung 830 128GB. Absolitely no difference in anything except the extra space that I desparately needed.

 

I just went from an X220 with the Intel 320 160GB to the Samsung 830 256GB. I just finished the install on the Samsung, which I'll post about later. Needless to say, it wasn't what I was expecting, since my recovery discs wouldn't actually read (it hung up on disc 3, saying "insert correct disc...".

I've been working on the computer a fair bit and have moved a lot of files around. I can't tell a difference. I did run a benchmark on both, and there's no question that the Samsung is faster, but it's certainly not perceptible to me.

 

I see a tiny difference from my old Kingston SATA II vs my SATA III Samsung 830. Opening Sony Vegas 9 and CS6 does open faster with Samsung, but not enough to go out and buy a new SSD. Other than that, I don't see any difference.

 

I've read an online article that discussed this. I can't remember which site. Basically, for things like application loading that don't rely heavily on sequential reads and writes, there wouldn't be a huge difference. Your old SSD essentially removed the storage bottleneck and the other components in your system are now the cause for the delayed response. I think tomshardware showed that during a Virus Scan, the SSD was only active for a small fraction of the time it took to do the entire scan.

Note: This is also why idle power consumption numbers are the most important to look at for power savings in client systems. Most SSD's finish their tasks so quickly that they sit idle most of the time. Even though the Samsung 830 shows huge power draw numbers under load, in most real world applications it draws less power over time than most Sandforce-based drives because it idles at half the power.

 

Besides the capacity increase, you won't notice a difference between the SATAII 320 and SATAIII 830. Hime summed it up pretty well in his post.

I haven't noticed a difference between my 320 and 330 outside of benchmarks either.

 

I do notice a difference under *very* heavy DB workloads. But under normal usage? None at all. (And normal usage for me is pretty heavy, given that I code all day...)