Samsung SSD XP941 Review: The PCIe Era Is Here
by Kristian Vättö on May 15, 2014 12:00 PM ESTFinal Words
I don't think there is any other way to say this other than to state that the XP941 is without a doubt the fastest consumer SSD in the market. It set records in almost all of our benchmarks and beat SATA 6Gbps drives by a substantial margin. It's not only faster than the SATA 6Gbps drives but it surpasses all other PCIe drives we have tested in the past, including OCZ's Z-Drive R4 with eight controllers in RAID 0. Given that we are dealing with a single PCIe 2.0 x4 controller, that is just awesome.
The only major problem in the XP941 is that it doesn't support booting in most Windows systems. If you are a Mac Pro owner, this issue doesn't concern you but for everyone else it's definitely a major drawback. Using an SSD as a secondary drive can make sense for e.g. a video professional where the performance can be utilized as a scratch disk, but otherwise the only real use case for an SSD is as a boot drive. There is hope that 9-series motherboards will bring better support for native PCIe booting but that remains to be seen.
The lack of proper TRIM support is also a minor concern but I'm willing to overlook that because the performance is just so great. I would also like to see hardware encryption support (TCG Opal 2.0 & IEEE-1667) and power loss protection but I understand that for an OEM product, these aren't necessary. Hopefully there will be retail versions of XP941 that address these items.
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | |
| Samsung SSD XP941 | ~$229 | ~$310 | ~$569 |
| Plextor M6e | $180 | $300 | - |
| OCZ RevoDrive 350 | - | $530 | $830 |
Note that the XP941 prices in the table above do not include the adapter or shipping. The adapter comes in at around $25 and RamCity charges $29 for shipping overseas, so you are looking at about $55 in addition to the drive itself. However, you don't have to pay the 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) when purchasing from overseas and I've already subtracted the GST from the listed prices in the table above. To summarize, the total cost with the adapter and shipping included ends up being about $283 for 128GB, $364 for 256GB and $623 for 512GB. In the end the exact pricing depends on the AUD to USD ratio and banks may also charge a bit if paying with foreign currencies.
In terms of pricing, the XP941 is a steal compared to the competition. The M6e is cheaper but it's also only PCIe 2.0 x2 design and can't offer the same level of performance as the XP941 can. Of course, ultimately two or three SATA 6Gbps SSDs in RAID 0 would be the cheapest route but with RAID 0 you run into other issues (such as increased risk of disk failure). For the average user, I'd still recommend a drive like Samsung SSD 840 EVO or Crucial M500/M550 but I can certainly see the enthusiast and professional crowd paying the premium for the XP941.
All in all, I can't wait for Samsung to release a retail version of the XP941. Right now the only problems are the limited availability and lack of boot support but once these are sorted out, the XP941 will be the king of the market. I'm guessing that we'll probably see something from Samsung at this year's Global SSD Summit, or at least I deeply hope so. We'd also like to see more competition from other SSD manufacturers, but until SandForce's SF3700 is ready to hit the market in the second half of 2014, there isn't a drive that can challenge the XP941.
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BMNify - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
rod, if you go ,as well as Everspin, look out for Crocus Technology Russian MRAM HW makers ARM licenced their IP , and Avalanche Technology tooRamCity - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Yes, I will be going to Computech. I'll add those vendors to my visit list and check out what they are up to if they have a booth.RamCity - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
I mean Computex!Jay77 - Thursday, May 15, 2014 - link
I suppose I should read more than the first and last pages if I'm going to make comments.Babar Javied - Thursday, May 15, 2014 - link
There is a mistake/typo in "Performance Consistency & Trim Validation" under the "Trim Validation" section. Below the first graph in the said section, you have wrote "doesn't treat PCIe drives the same even if the utilize the same AHCI" when you ment to say "even if THEY utilize the same AHCI"Ryan Smith - Thursday, May 15, 2014 - link
Fixed. Thank you for pointing that out.BMNify - Thursday, May 15, 2014 - link
so basically you gimped the one and only raid 0 test by not doing it in windows or even better simply boot any linux iso/usb stick and formatted the ssd-xp941 WITH the samsung "F2FS" file system for maximum speed as that is written especially for ssdKristian Vättö - Saturday, May 17, 2014 - link
I did RAID the XP941s in Windows as well but the results were similar so I figured that there is no need to report the results separately.rocky12345 - Thursday, May 15, 2014 - link
I like that there are extra speed speed in these new devices but it seems everyone is so stuck on more speed more speed..lol I am sorry but when a standard SSD can boot a windows 7 in about 6 seconds when are people going to be happy. My Asus laptop has a SSD in it & boots in about 6 to 7 seconds & things like firefox open even before my finger un-clicks the mouse button to open firefox. now everyone is saying standard SSD is to slow..lol to funny. What I would rather like to see is bigger SSD drives at a better price. We already have good speed but the big drives still cost to much for most people when they can make a 1TB SSD at about the same or just slightly more than a standard hard drive then maybe they should be more worried about all these new extreme speed drives but if they make standard SSD drives go the way of the doo doo bird then we are never going to see low priced SSD anything because they will always be treating anything SSD related as new tech just a thought.BMNify - Thursday, May 15, 2014 - link
"but it seems everyone is so stuck on more speed more speed..lol I am sorry but when a standard SSD can boot a windows 7 in about 6 seconds when are people going to be happy..."well obviously speed is not for you, but how do you expect current non volatile ram to lower in price if they don't bring out newer kit to replace it at today's higher price points !
im not sure you understand the driving forces here as regards people wish for faster data access, we really need/WANT a so called "universal non volatile ram [such as those Everspin ST-MRAM DDR3 DIMMs referenced ]" sooner than later at equivalent ddr3 2400,wideIO2,HMC speeds and configurations so we can start to take better advantage of the higher data throughput and data manipulation these bring to the table, its not good enough to x264 encode UHD content in real time right now, then and only then will we start to consider we are starting to get close to enough general speeds, ALIMO.... YMCV