The Samsung 960 EVO (1TB) Review
by Billy Tallis on November 15, 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.
As with the previous ATSB tests, the 960 EVO can't quite keep pace with Samsung's MLC-based 950 Pro and 960 Pro SSDs, but it is slightly faster than the OCZ RD400. On this test the 960 EVO suffers relatively more from a full drive, where it falls behind the RD400.
Average service times are slightly slower for the 960 EVO than Samsung's other PCIe SSDs, and the competing PCIe SSDs are a step further behind.
The 960 EVO is tied for first place with minimal high-latency outliers, but all of the PCIe SSDs are much better than the SATA drives.
Once again the 960 EVO's power efficiency is about the same as Samsung's other drives, showing that its higher instantaneous power draw than SATA drives is compensated by it completing the test quicker.
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DanNeely - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
The Intel 750 doesn't have power data in Bench. My guess would be that the current power benchmarks post-date when the review sample was returned.Sometimes there are oversights, but most of the time when some devices are only shown in a subset of the charts its because data to score them on the others isn't available. Most often due to moving testsuite targets or breaking changes in the benchmark applications.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD15/1440
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1458
Billy Tallis - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Yeah, the Intel 750 was tested by Kristian before we had working PCIe power measurement. It also complicates things by using both the 12V and 3.3V rails, when I only have one meter. Adding power consumption data isn't a high priority for me, because the Intel 750 is always in last place, by a lot: its idle power is higher than the load power of most M.2 drives on many of the tests. The Intel 750 would distort the scale of the power graphs to the point that it would be hard to see the differences between the M.2 drives.willis936 - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
How are M.2 drives mounted during these reviews? Do you use the motherboard's M.2 connector? A PCIe adapter without a heatsink? A PCIe adapter with a heatsink?Billy Tallis - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Unless otherwise specified, M.2 PCIe drives are tested in a simple Lycom DT-120 adapter, which is connected to the riser card used for power measurement, which is in turn connected to the primary PCIe 3.0 x16 slot. Drives like the OCZ RD400A and Plextor M8PeY are also tested in their bundled adapter cards with whatever heatsink that provides, and any other M.2+heatsink results I report are using the Angelbird Wings PX1 adapter and heatsink.R3MF - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Is that v2.0 driver available on day one?(for Windows7 users wanting to do a fresh install)
CrazyElf - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
First, it is the drive that will likely play a role in making M.2 SSDs a much more popular form factor, perhaps to the point where NVMe drives overtake SATA. Most people do not need the write endurance that the MLC SSDs have.Second, the performance is quite good, and although there is still a huge price premium over SATA SSDs, the massive performance increase is much more justifiable in terms of cost premium compared to say, the 960 Pro, which is for people who want the best. It will remain that way, until the 970 Pro and Evo come out, or perhaps until a 3D XPoint SSD comes out.
Third, I expect an enterprise version to come out too, with power loss protection. The only real issue i see is if there is something like the 840 Evo that caused performance drops, but so far Samsung's TLC drives since then have been solid.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I believe the 840 evo was planar NAND, whereas the newer designs are 3D NAND. That may be part of the reason.XabanakFanatik - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I see no mention of Samsung's silent delays of these drives. As of now most models of both the pro and evo are listed as ship by late December or January.Kind of disappointing you would gloss over a 2-3 month delay like that.
haukionkannel - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
It seems that Samsung was lucky that their 250GB unit did fail...http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-960-ev...
It seems to completely another series than 1Tb version.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
What are you trying to say here?