The Samsung 960 Pro (2TB) SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on October 18, 2016 10:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here.
Once again, Samsung breaks its own unchallenged record with average data rates on the Light test. The NVMe drives all show a relatively large disparity in performance when the test is run on a full drive compared to starting on an empty drive, while the faster SATA drives have very little room to perform better on an empty drive.
The 960 Pro shows almost no improvement in average service time, but it doesn't need to since its worst-case full drive performance is better than the competition's best case.
Of the PCIe SSDs only the OCZ RD400 experiences more than a handful of operations that take longer than 10ms to complete. The Samsung 850 EVO is itself an odd outlier because the Light test fits entirely within its SLC cache, so no operations take more than 10ms.
The 960 Pro's power efficiency is once again similar to the 950 Pro: better than the other PCIe SSDs but not as good as a decent SATA SSD.
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TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
Cant wait to see that, as it seems the 960 pro is thermally limited more often then not, especially on write tests. Hope to see even bigger improvements.eldakka - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
But but but, since the controller is Polaris, doesn't the SSD handle your graphics too?I'll see myself out now.
BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
@eldakkaNo. That would be Fiji. Though, I can see how it would be confusing. Even Ryan thought it was a Polaris 10 chip initially.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10518/amd-announces-...
Waiting for a Polaris update to the Radeon Pro SSG. Throw some 960s (Polaris controllers) in to replace the 950s and things will get really confusing. ;')
VeauX - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
Would migrating from an old Sandforce base SSD to this provide the same WOW effect than from mechanical to SSDs back in the days?GTRagnarok - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
No, unless what you're doing involves reading or writing many gigabytes of data at a time in which case it'll be noticeably faster. Otherwise, the experience will be very similar compared to old SATA SSDs.AnnonymousCoward - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
I have an absolutely brilliant idea. AT could just test that, and you wouldn't have to wonder and ask in the comments section!Mr Perfect - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
This is kind of a chicken-and-the-egg problem, but has Samsung said anything about releasing these as U.2? Quite a few new motherboards have U.2 ports now, and putting these drives in the larger 2.5 inch form factor would make it possible to solve the overheating issues with heatsinks.Gigaplex - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
It wouldn't be hard for a 3rd party to create a 2.5" adaptor that incorporates a heatsink.Mr Perfect - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
You wouldn't think so, but I had a hell of a time finding one. All said and done, only one manufacturer seems to make an adapter to turn a M.2 into a U.2. Some company called microsatacables.com http://www.microsatacables.com/u2-sff8639-to-m2-pc...Some more native U.2 drives would be nice.
sircod - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
Are you guys doing a review of the 600p? Not quite the same class as the 960 Pro, but I definitely want to see the 960 Evo compared to the 600p.