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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MHz Tweaker - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
I have an IT service company and have been doing IT for a few decades. I am with you on how incredibly annoying it is to work on some of the hodge podge of hardware that comes in for service. Specifically there are those that refuse to upgrade early P4's or Sempron single core systems with 512 or 256 megs of RAM. Certainly these should have failed by now. They barely run XP let alone modern security needed to protect them. Internally all our workstations are Z97, X99, x79, Z170's with 4690K's, 4790K's, 5930K, 3930K and 6700K CPUs. Every machine has a Samsung or Intel SSD for a boot drive and a Hitachi 4, 5 or 6TB drive for work and storage. All systems also have 16 or 32GB RAM. I am just amazed at how much time the average person wastes waiting on an entry level PC to do things. I mean many of us spend in excess of 40 hours a week at a keyboard. I get much more done when I keep my equipment in tip top shape and fresh. Nothing has a chance to break down. Many companies throw tons of money at "image" but internally the infrastructure is held together with bubble gum and band aids.Oh BTW, I got our first 950 Pro 512MB Yesterday :-)
Deders - Thursday, October 22, 2015 - link
Until Samsung announce again that SSD's are not meant to use sleep, their excuse for computers with 830/840's freezing for 30 seconds after waking up.BurntMyBacon - Friday, October 23, 2015 - link
@Deders: "Until Samsung announce again that SSD's are not meant to use sleep, their excuse for computers with 830/840's freezing for 30 seconds after waking up."Is this a known issue or are you just speculating about what might (probably?) occur in the future?
I am using quite a few 830s and have deployed quite a few more all (up to this point) without this issue. In my experience, they've been some of the most reliable drives I've used. I know of a few 840s without issues as well, but I've tried to avoid them as much as practical as I'm still not convinced the industry fully understands the long term consequences of simultaneously increasing leakage and cutting down the margin of error to get that third (fourth, fifth, etc.) bit in. I suspect it'll be fine on some (larger) process nodes, but the 840EVO issues suggests that there is a lower limit to how small you can get while trying to get that extra bit (and storing long term). In any case, it would be nice to know if there is something I should be looking out for here and whether practical mitigations exist.
bill.rookard - Sunday, October 25, 2015 - link
Agreed. I have several systems with the 830s in them and have zero problems with them. I avoided the 840s because those went with the TLC and I was iffy about them, and the 830s are rock solid and very fast.Chaser - Tuesday, October 27, 2015 - link
Boot times matter to me too. Makaveli must have a remote control while he's making his bagels.carl0ski - Monday, May 16, 2016 - link
I'd say the most annoying part is the Windows boot logo is a fixed time to complete.So even if Windows 7 8 10 boot up faster it still waits for the pretty video.
Turn it off from msconfig and windows 7 on 850 will boot in 3 seconds instead of 10 seconds
beginner99 - Thursday, October 22, 2015 - link
Most people that buy such a product usually are enthusiast and play around like over clocking. 10 sec more per boot is then pretty annoying.Makaveli - Thursday, October 22, 2015 - link
I'm from the era of overclocking with jumpers on a motherboard and far longer post times. If waiting 10 seconds for a machine to boot is too long while trying to get a stable overclock then do it in windows. Or does everyone in this generation have ADD?AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, October 22, 2015 - link
Oh, so time is only valuable to those with ADD? You're a fool.Makaveli - Thursday, October 22, 2015 - link
Go troll else where tool!