The Samsung 960 Pro (2TB) SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on October 18, 2016 10:00 AM ESTRandom Read Performance
The random read test requests 4kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, which is filled before the test starts. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The Samsung 960 Pro slightly widens what was already a commanding lead in low queue depth random read performance.
The 960 Pro's power usage is higher in proportion to its increased performance. Only a handful of the smallest and lowest-power SATA SSDs are more efficient, but at half the overall performance.
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While they are unmatched at lower queue depths, both the 960 Pro and the 950 Pro under-perform expectations at QD32. This hardly matters for a consumer SSD.
Random Write Performance
The random write test writes 4kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test is limited to a 16GB portion of the drive, and the drive is empty save for the 16GB test file. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
The 960 Pro's random write performance is a big improvement over the 950 Pro, catching up with the OCZ RD400 but still well behind the Intel 750.
In addition to greatly improving random write performance over the 950 Pro, the 960 Pro greatly improves power consumption and jumps to the top of the efficiency ranking, just ahead of the Crucial MX300.
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Where thermal throttling prevented the 950 Pro from improving past QD2, the 960 Pro scales up to QD4 and plateaus at that level for the second half of the test, with somewhat steadier performance than the OCZ RD400 that draws more power and thus has more thermal throttling to contend with. The Intel 750 with its massive heatsink entirely avoids thermal throttling.
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Billy Tallis - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
The Intel 600p is very high on my to-do list. Since it's also using the Microsoft NVMe driver I want to run it through some more tests before publishing the review, but it should be done before I get the 960 EVO.WatcherCK - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
Curious about the operating temperatures of the drive, Im guessing that Destroyer gave it a good thermal workout :) Puget Systems have done some testing on the effect of adding cooling to M2 SSDs:https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Samsung...
Aquacomputer also make a PCIe Riser card equipped waterblock for M2 drives for those who want to water cool their SSD, the kryoM.2
Does anyone know if moving an M2 drive to a riser card improves cooling for the drive? I would think there is a little bit of improvement bringing the drive off the surface of the motherboard... How if at all is everyone keeping their motherboard mounted SSDs cool?
BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
@WatcherCKYes, moving an M.2 drive to a riser card improves cooling (at least in my system). I checked temperatures mounted on my motherboard with a spot cooler directly on the 950Pro. I then compared it against mounting on a Silverstone ECM20 and an Asus Hyper M.2 X4 Mini (no spot cooler). If you are able to direct good airflow to the riser card, as I was, the Asus riser card is significantly cooler even though it had no spot cooler. If you use a thermal pad on the back of the M.2 drive on the Silverstone EMC20, it may in fact do even better than the Asus, but it my system, the larger standoffs allowed more air to flow behind the M.2 drive on the Asus solution. In any case, I can't seem to induce thermal throttling on my 950Pro in my setup regardless of how hard I try. Again, it will depend on how much airflow you can deliver it.
Gradius2 - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 - link
Those SSDs suffering from HEAT. If you don't put a forced cooling on them, it will DEGRADE the speed no matter what! This is why you won't see much than 3GB/s !iwod - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
Where are these performance heading. Where Do we need to go. The destroyers and heavy definitely dont represent 95% of the consumer users usage. Do we need more higher Random Q1 Read Write? Or do we need higher Seq Read Write? If so then we dont need our firmware and powerful CPU core for QD32. Will that save cost? Why are we still within the 5W power usage? When can we get those dropped down to 2W or less.zodiacfml - Wednesday, October 19, 2016 - link
blazing fast. i will not be able to make useod this speed except for W10 upgradesprofdre - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
@ Billy Talis: Would it be possible to test on another mainboard? There seems to be a clear bandwidth issue for sequential transfers, as other tech sites as https://www.computerbase.de/2016-10/samsung-ssd-96... achieved almost 3400 MB/s in CrystalDiskMark for the 512 GB model. At first they struggled to reach more than 3100 MB/s. (Samsung values were achieved with CrystalDiskMark according to computerbase).calbear88 - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Great table in the article summarizing the different Samsung NAND technologies. Here's a summary of the different types of NAND and which products they were in.27nm MLC 830 PM830
21nm MLC 840 pro
21nm TLC 840
19nm MLC XP941
19nm TLC 840 Evo
16nm MLC SM951
16nm TLC 750 Evo PM951
32 layer 86bit v-NAND MLC 850 Pro
32 layer 128bit v-NAND TLC 850 Evo
32 layer 128bit v-NAND MLC 950 Pro
48 layer 128bit v-NAND MLC 960 Pro SM961
48 layer 128bit v-NAND TLC 960 Evo PM961
Meteor2 - Wednesday, November 23, 2016 - link
How is new dies and an entirely new controller 'just a generational refresh of the 950 Pro', from any angle?anaconda1 - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
The Samsung 2.1 driver has DPC latency issues on my end. I am usign a Samsung 960 500GB Evo nvme and using it with the Native Microsoft Driver (Windows 10 with latest updates installed) or the Samsung 2.0 driver, all is ok, DPC latency reports are fine - Latencymon and latency checker both report trouble free operation. However, installing the 2.1 driver, both Latencymon and dpc latency checker report problems with storport.sys and problems with DPC. Rolling back the driver from the Samsung 2.1 to the Microsoft or the Samsung 2.0, all goes back to normal