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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Gigaplex - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I think they're trying to say the performance isn't great. Failing means we don't get to see the performance numbers.Dave Null - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
This is indeed frustrating. I was expecting the 960 Pro drives I preordered to arrive last week. Now Amazon is reporting January.Something major must have happened for Samsung to miss its release date so badly, but nobody is reporting it.
Flying Aardvark - Wednesday, November 16, 2016 - link
I went with the 600P 1TB instead.. had it for 2 weeks now.. I love it. Being M.2 I didn't buy it for heavy workloads anyway so it won't throttle. But if I needed performance I'd go with the Intel 750 instead of what I got.Phattio - Wednesday, November 16, 2016 - link
my 960 Pro 512GB arrives today. ordered from best buy online.Kristian Vättö - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link
There is a simple explanation: NAND shortage.XabanakFanatik - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link
Of course! I'm glad you had an article about it. Oh, wait.I'm fairly certain that people need to know that despite your reviews coming out on time that they won't be able to buy the products for months.
zanon - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Interesting to see the rate at which these continue to progress, and I'm glad Samsung continues to ramp performance aggressively. One thing I wish you could find some way to integrate is at least a summary of reliability features like how a drive handles power loss, and (depending on feasibility if you are mainly testing short-term loaners) maybe some followup a few months down the line with longer term performance/reliability observations. While Samsung has long been at or near the pinnacle of out-of-box raw performance, they've also had a history of playing a bit fast and loose with reliability and support, and I think that deserves some sort of recognition. I have a lot of Intel 730s that replaced or were chosen over Samsung drives of the time after a number of poor experiences with the long term usage 840 series for example, and while the 840s were superior in many respects on paper and Day 1, by Day 100+ and under stress they developed issues that were not immediately apparent.Also, a small typo on the final page, looks like at least one of the $/GB (the 750@1TB) isn't right.
Billy Tallis - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I am working on some longer-term data and performance retention testing, but the amount of extra equipment that requires means not many drives will get that treatment. Unexpected power loss testing might be more feasible, but for the near future the testbed is too busy for me to add something like this to the routine.The Intel 750 doesn't fit conveniently in the price comparison chart because of its unusual capacities. The prices listed are for the 400GB and 1.2TB models, and the 800GB model isn't listed in the table.
Bullwinkle J Moose - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Speaking of long-term data retention......If I had 2 SSD's, one unplugged and stored in a closet and one plugged in with power on but idle and unused, would the one plugged in retain data longer even though it is unused????
patrickjp93 - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link
Yes. There is wear leveling and data refresh in modern SSDs (840/Evo being the exception with cell band drift)