Samsung SSD XP941 Review: The PCIe Era Is Here
by Kristian Vättö on May 15, 2014 12:00 PM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench 2013
Our Storage Bench 2013 focuses on worst-case multitasking and IO consistency. Similar to our earlier Storage Benches, the test is still application trace based—we record all IO requests made to a test system and play them back on the drive we're testing and run statistical analysis on the drive's responses. There are 49.8 million IO operations in total with 1583.0GB of reads and 875.6GB of writes. I'm not including the full description of the test for better readability, so make sure to read our Storage Bench 2013 introduction for the full details.
| AnandTech Storage Bench 2013 - The Destroyer | ||
| Workload | Description | Applications Used |
| Photo Sync/Editing | Import images, edit, export | Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Lightroom 4, Dropbox |
| Gaming | Download/install games, play games | Steam, Deus Ex, Skyrim, Starcraft 2, BioShock Infinite |
| Virtualization | Run/manage VM, use general apps inside VM | VirtualBox |
| General Productivity | Browse the web, manage local email, copy files, encrypt/decrypt files, backup system, download content, virus/malware scan | Chrome, IE10, Outlook, Windows 8, AxCrypt, uTorrent, AdAware |
| Video Playback | Copy and watch movies | Windows 8 |
| Application Development | Compile projects, check out code, download code samples | Visual Studio 2012 |
We are reporting two primary metrics with the Destroyer: average data rate in MB/s and average service time in microseconds. The former gives you an idea of the throughput of the drive during the time that it was running the test workload. This can be a very good indication of overall performance. What average data rate doesn't do a good job of is taking into account response time of very bursty (read: high queue depth) IO. By reporting average service time we heavily weigh latency for queued IOs. You'll note that this is a metric we've been reporting in our enterprise benchmarks for a while now. With the client tests maturing, the time was right for a little convergence.
In our most demanding storage test, the XP941 is just amazing. It's about 40% faster than any SATA 6Gbps drive we have tested, which is huge. Obviously it's not the random performance that makes the XP941 shine but the large IO sequential performance where the PCIe interface can be used to its full extent. While most IOs in client workloads tend to be random, the sequential performance can certainly make a big difference and high queue depth random reads can also take advantage of the faster interface.
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UltraWide - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
The random read/write scores are too low for this SSD to make a difference in real world use. I think it's better to wait for the 2nd generation of M.2 to see some more mature controllers with improved IOPS or random read/write speeds.DaveGirard - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
It would be nice if you could test one of these in an external Thunderbolt 1/2 PCI chassis.RamCity - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
That sure is a good idea, and Rob over at barefeats.com tested the XP941 (installed in a standard PCIe adapter) in a thunderbolt chassis but maxed out one thunderbolt port at 1375MB/s, no matter how many XP941's are installed. To get higher throughput the chassis now need individual thunderbolt ports per SSD installed.His review is about halfway down here: http://barefeats.com/hard183.html
Rod (vendor rep for RamCity.com.au)
Peeping Tom - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
The picture of the M.2 above gave me an idea. It would be interesting if storage capacity could be expanded like RAM using multiple M.2, i.e. plug and play. You insert a new stick and the system automatically expands the current partition to include the new drive (rather than creating new, separate partition). No more SATA/power cables, and it would make the system more uniform with the existing RAM/slot architecture. Would take many lanes thoughpoordirtfarmer2 - Saturday, May 17, 2014 - link
Or how about the card being lots longer - a daughter card of sorts - and allow for slapping additional SSD modules to it as the user needs (or can afford).Laststop311 - Sunday, May 18, 2014 - link
Waiting for pci-e 3.0 x4 m2 connectors before buying the rushed tech on and older backbone.Marucins - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
ASRock Z97 Extreme6 - PCIe 2.0 x4http://nimg.cdrinfo.pl/2014/05/Samsung-XP941-M.2-S...
Marucins - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Any information X99, that will support M.2 and SATA Express??Laststop311 - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
This drive can only be used in the Asrock Extreme9 board as it's the only m2 that actually uses pci-e x4 right off the cpu instead of the PCH.Laststop311 - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Sorry and one of thos big pci-e riser cards that turns any slow into a board with an m2 slot. Defeats the small form factore person tho,