The Samsung 950 Pro PCIe SSD Review (256GB and 512GB)
by Billy Tallis on October 22, 2015 10:55 AM ESTRandom Write Performance
The random write test is confined to a 16GB portion of the drive, which is otherwise empty. This allows the drive to demonstrate much higher performance than on our performance consistency test that fills the drive. Tasks like installing software updates can modify a lot of files, but aren't hitting the entire disk. Random writes to the entire disk are usually found only in enterprise workloads such as large databases.
The 950 Pro's random write speeds aren't benefiting at all from the PCIe interface or the NVMe protocol, and are about 20% slower than the SM951. Since it's happening to both drives it probably isn't a thermal issue, so this may be the result of a firmware change. Still, the Intel SSD 750 is the only retail drive that significantly outperforms the tightly clustered competition.
The higher power consumption during the random write test is a problem, since it's not buying any extra performance.
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After increasing significantly from QD1 to QD2, performance and power drop slightly and stay flat for most of the rest of the test. At the very end, a slight drop in power for the 512GB and a more significant drop for the 256GB may indicate a change in what background processing is going on; the drive may be postponing some garbage collection during the onslaught of writes at the maximum queue depth, or it may be a coincidental case of the background processing catching up and throttling back near the end of the test.
Random Read Performance
Our random read performance test is conducted on a full drive and tests queue depths from 1 to 32. We focus primarily on the lower queue depths that are typical of interactive use, but also look at how the performance and power scales to more intensive loads. For desktop use, searching and virus scanning are typically the biggest sources of random reads, and they can exercise some of the larger queue depths.
The strong random read performance of the 950 Pro provides great justification for its status as the a flagship drive for the consumer market.
The 950 Pro's power consumption is moderately higher but nowhere close to being proprotional to the performance advantage; the 950 Pro doesn't have to run hot to offer great performance.
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Power and performance scaling look very typical here, except I had to expand the performance axis for the 950 Pro. Both drives pass SATA's limits at or before QD16.
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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.