The Samsung 950 Pro PCIe SSD Review (256GB and 512GB)
by Billy Tallis on October 22, 2015 10:55 AM ESTFinal Words
Testing of Samsung's 950 Pro revealed some curiosities. Nevetheless, even when showing symptoms of possible thermal throttling, the 512GB sustained respectable performance and in tests that were representative of interactive use it performed extremely well. Users waiting on a full range of Skylake systems to come to the market may need a PCIe to M.2 adapter in order to put the drive in a slot that provides four lanes at PCIe 3.0 speed, but with the added benefit that such adapters can be bought with heatsinks to reduce the chance of triggering thermal throttling.
It's hard to judge pricing when there are limited options in this market segment. The Intel SSD 750 clearly needs to come down in price to be completely sidelined by the 950 Pro. Comparing against SATA drives, the 950 Pro's impressively high scores seem to make a good case for its price premium, but consider how often a particular use case will actually be able to take advantage of the peak speeds offered, which makes the 950 Pro a more prosumer oriented product. The 950 Pro isn't for everyone, and if cost is a sensitive issue then the 950 Pro should be weighed against Samsung's other offerings. But simply for a top of the line drive, the 950 Pro is priced reasonably for enthusiasts.
As a sign of where the SSD market is going, the 950 Pro clearly shows that SSD performance can be improved. Before too long, "high-end SATA SSD" will be an oxymoron; it's time for the transition to PCIe! The transition to NVMe seems less urgent given what Samsung was able to do with the SM951 and XP941 using AHCI, especially due to compatibility and drivers at this time. The power management issues in particular will need to be taken care of before NVMe moves beyond the enthusiast segment, especially for mobile computing.
The PCIe 3.0 x4 interface certainly gives the drive plenty of headroom. And based on the performance of the 950 Pro, it's doubtful that an M.2 drive will be able to saturate the interface before running in to thermal limits while still remaining in the same form factor. Future drives in this area will probably have to implement aggressive power saving techniques in order to keep average temperatures low enough to accommodate bursts of activity. The 950 Pro and the PCIe ecosystem in general have a lot to improve upon here.
The M.2 form factor is also constraining drive capacities to a degree. The back side of the 950 Pro is empty so a 1TB model should be geometrically possible if not economical, but the extra NAND packages would be even more susceptible to thermal problems. Samsung is instead choosing to wait for their 256Gb third-generation V-NAND before offering a larger model of the 950 Pro.
So far, Intel is the only manufacturer that has produced an enthusiast drive using the U.2 connector to provide PCIe x4 to a 2.5" drives. U.2 support is far less common than M.2, but the next time Samsung wants to introduce a major performance boost, they may go for the 2.5" U.2 option. We have already seen U.2 connectors directly on a pair of ASUS motherboards announced this week, and a number of Skylake consumer motherboards will come with M.2 to U.2 adapters specifically for this purpose.
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SunnyNW - Saturday, October 24, 2015 - link
Actually shame on you for telling others what their priorities should be. Boot times are Very important to me and was one of the main reasons I upgraded from a hdd to a ssd in the first place. I dont want to have to wait more than the 15 seconds it takes my system to boot right now. People have to boot/restart their machine for various reasons and variable amounts of times, I dont want to have to wait more than 20 sec or so Every time I update software/drivers that require a reboot (windows update, gpu driver update, etc.). Almost every time I leave my house for more than 8 hrs or so I shut down my machine, I just dont have good luck with sleep on it, not sure if it's because of the radeon or what but ehh.Rajinder Gill - Saturday, October 24, 2015 - link
If you leave the house for 8 hours, your time cannot be worth enough money to be worried about 20 seconds of BOOT time :)SunnyNW - Sunday, October 25, 2015 - link
LOL!!! You are one Hilarious (my most polite way of saying pathetic) character. If you had any clue as to how much I Actually earn for my time, from all my various ventures especially my business, your ugly little smiles at the end of all your comments would more accurately be portrayed with a symbol that expressed your jaw wide open and hitting the floor. : 0 And how many times are you going to mention S3, lol, let me guess it's something you just recently learned about so you spout off about it Every single chance you get. Please don't reply to my comments in the future. I come here for intelligent interactions, not some nonsense from someone that has No Clue. Thank You in advance, Oh and just for you ;)Rajinder Gill - Sunday, October 25, 2015 - link
S3 resume, USE IT! One more time just for you :)xype - Monday, October 26, 2015 - link
SunnyNW, I never met one single person who made a shitload of money "with their time" who spent that time arguing online on tech sites, and arguing trivialities like SSD boot times—congrats, you’re the first!No person I know that makes $150+/hour gives a shit about boot times, and the people who do (working in IT, specifically high availability infrastructure ops) are in a whole different market from the one that AnandTech usually covers.
SunnyNW - Monday, October 26, 2015 - link
You are entitled to your opinion. But I agree, this was the first time I made a reference to my personal life finances thru comments and there is no need for that here. I just become Very annoyed when one judges others' priorities and I was already upset from other bs. Anyway not one of my finer moments.SunnyNW - Monday, October 26, 2015 - link
Lastly Ill add that 'making wrong assumptions' (especially when insulting) and 'questioning others priorities' are my pet peeves. On any other site I would not have replied in the first place. I dont know why but I feel differently when it comes to anandtechs community, I feel there is a higher standard here and many of the comments are usually very informative and worthwhile discussions. I work extremely hard and do not need someone telling me how much my time is worth. I hate when people sit behind their computer making assumptions about someone that they know absolutely nothing of, I do not expect that from the community here. I highly respect most of the commenters on anandtech and would like that in return. I feel anandtech is full of mostly intellectual persons. There are not many commenters on anandtech like mr. gill and I just let him get to me way more than I should have. Again I shouldnt have to explain myself to you but iunno here I am doing just that...I just turned 22 recently so gimme a beak, I'm learning.Rajinder Gill - Saturday, October 24, 2015 - link
If the sleep issues are due to the Radeon and BOOT time is that important, then perhaps a S3 resume complaint VGA would get you back to the desktop quicker. ;)SunnyNW - Sunday, October 25, 2015 - link
What is a "S3 resume complaint?" I have no complaints with my GPU and am very content with the 15 seconds it takes my machines to reach the desktop.ewitte - Thursday, November 12, 2015 - link
Working in IT the most annoying thing is boot times on OTHERS machines. I still run into spinning drives and insufficient memory which could be upwards of 10 minutes before performance stabilizes after a reboot.