The Samsung 960 EVO (1TB) Review
by Billy Tallis on November 15, 2016 10:00 AM ESTPerformance Consistency
Our performance consistency test explores the extent to which a drive can reliably sustain performance during a long-duration random write test. Specifications for consumer drives typically list peak performance numbers only attainable in ideal conditions. The performance in a worst-case scenario can be drastically different as over the course of a long test drives can run out of spare area, have to start performing garbage collection, and sometimes even reach power or thermal limits.
In addition to an overall decline in performance, a long test can show patterns in how performance varies on shorter timescales. Some drives will exhibit very little variance in performance from second to second, while others will show massive drops in performance during each garbage collection cycle but otherwise maintain good performance, and others show constantly wide variance. If a drive periodically slows to hard drive levels of performance, it may feel slow to use even if its overall average performance is very high.
To maximally stress the drive's controller and force it to perform garbage collection and wear leveling, this test conducts 4kB random writes with a queue depth of 32. The drive is filled before the start of the test, and the test duration is one hour. Any spare area will be exhausted early in the test and by the end of the hour even the largest drives with the most overprovisioning will have reached a steady state. We use the last 400 seconds of the test to score the drive both on steady-state average writes per second and on its performance divided by the standard deviation.
The 960 EVO's steady state random write speed is not quite as fast as the 960 Pro, but it's in the same league and much faster than most consumer SSDs.
The 960 EVO sets a new record for combining high performance with consistency. It's a bit slower than the 960 Pro, but less variable.
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Highly consistent performance is a good thing, but it makes for a boring graph. The transitions from peak to sustained performance modes look the same for both the 960 Pro and the 960 EVO.
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The 960 EVO responds to extra overprovisioning with even more consistent (and high) performance.
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ex_User - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Vaporware. 'Nuff said.Magichands8 - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
This is magnificent! Not only has Samsung produced an SSD that under performs its own previous generation product but one that manages to do so while using even MORE power at an even HIGHER price per GB! They even put it on a form factor that makes the drive almost entirely irrelevant! The only thing missing is a feature that makes the modules randomly explode upon contact with the users computer.Dug - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
What are you talking about?BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
You have a unique perspective. :)Daggoth - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I have a question, isn't the z97 chipset capped at 2GB per second due to DMI 2.0? Isn't this a problem for the max sequential reads?Billy Tallis - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I test PCIe SSDs in the primary PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, because the riser card used for power measurement is a 16-lane low-profile card.Bullwinkle J Moose - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
The 960 Pro is much better price over the duration of WarrantyI can generally kill 1 out of 4 SSD's within the warranty period
so if I buy 4 960 Pro's and 4-960 EVO's, here is the breakdown @ 500GB
4-960 Pro's = $330 X 4 or $1320 divided by 5yr warranty = $264 per year for 5 years
or
4-960 EVO's = $250 X 4 or $1000 divided by 3 years = $333.33 per year for 3 years
per year cost under warranty is WAY better for the PRO!
3 year warranty with TLC just doesn't do it for me
Bullwinkle J Moose - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I would REALLY need to be trying to kill at least 1 out of 4 but I could prolly do itSo tell me more about the internal speed Billy.....
How many seconds does it take to copy and paste 100GB to and from the same 960EVO?
and from the 960PRO?
shabby - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Why wasn't the 256gb version tested? Tom reviewed it and it was kinda meh compared to the rest of the mlc drives, it was as bad as the 600p in some cases.Billy Tallis - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
The 250GB was tested. It died. See page 1 for details.