In our midst is the new Samsung 960 PRO bearing the new Polaris Controller and 3rd generation V-NAND. Can this M.2 NVMe SSD take the top spot?
Product on Review: 960 PRO SSD
Manufacturer: Samsung
Street Price: £320 GBP / 512GB: $329 USD
Since the arrival of Intel’s Z170 chipset, storage manufacturers have been producing numerous M.2 SSDs to replace the SATA-based SSD market which appears to have now plateaued. There are obvious benefits to NVMe over SATA – the 550MB/s bottleneck has now been breached by utilising PCI Express Gen 3 x4 and on offer are transfer rates which can completely transform workflow for both the average user and workload professionals. High bandwidth and low latency is the name of the game here!
NVMe uses lower latency and can handle up to 64K queues and up 64K commands each while SATA and AHCI can only handle 1 queue and 32 commands each – the benefits are clearly evident.
Samsung recently announced their new 960 PRO; the next NVMe SSD to supersede their renowned 950 PRO. This drive builds on the success of the 950 PRO delivering Samsung’s 3rd generation V-NAND along with the new Polaris Controller. 960 PRO is available in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB editions and will be available to buy next month.
Can Samsung outperform even the mighty 950 PRO? Let’s find out!
Samsung on their 960 PRO
The new Samsung SSD 960 PRO is the 2nd generation NVMe SSD for Samsung’s client PC SSD. As such, the Samsung SSD 960 PRO is designed for professionals & enthusiasts that are seeking next generation performance and endurance. It offers the ultimate in performance, breaks storage limits for the m.2 form factor and banks on its solid reliability to offer customers the most advanced SSD technology currently available for client PCs Samsung’s unique and innovative V NAND flash memory architecture is a breakthrough in overcoming the density limitations, while improving on the performance and endurance of today’s conventional planar NAND architecture. V-NAND is fabricated by stacking layers vertically over one another rather than decreasing the cells dimensions and trying to fit itself onto a fixed horizontal space resulting in higher density and better performance utilizing a smaller footprint.
Technical Specifications
Below are the technical specifications surrounding all three Samsung 960 PRO models:
Packaging, Bundle & Closer Look
As we’ve seen previously, the 960 PRO arrives in a professionally designed packet which features an arty shot of the SSD and lists the capacity. On the reverse, the features are listed and there are details on the technical specifications.
Inside this packet, there is very little by way of a bundle. There is just an instructions manual and the drive in a plastic tray.
In similar fashion to the 950 PRO, the 960 PRO conforms to 2280 and arrives with a stealthily black PCB. Although the physical design of an SSD may not be overriding factor in a purchase, the decision to dress 960 PRO in black certainly helps from an aesthetics point of view. Had Samsung decided to opt for green for example, this would probably ruin the theme of quite a few carefully designed computer systems.
The 960 PRO utilises PCI Express Gen 3 x4 with NVMe 1.2, not only this but our drive also arrives with Samsung’s 3rd generation V-NAND with the new Polaris Controller which pushes the sequential read and write performance to new levels. Samsung state that we should expect 3500MB/s for read and 2100MB/s for write performance, with IOPS hitting 330K on this 512GB model and 440K in the 2TB model.
Other features also worth a mention are AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption and an impressive MTBF of 1.5 million hours!
Today we’ll be testing out the 512GB version of 960 PRO but there are also 1TB and 2TB options available too – possibly making it a great choice for those with a demand for bigger data storage.
Test Setup & Methodology
Our test system is formatted and a fresh version of Windows is installed with just drives in place – no additional applications. Windows is then updated to the latest release and the drivers are installed.
NOTE: Standard NVMe driver used for Samsung 960 Pro single drive benchmarks. No Samsung driver was supplied for this review.
Included in the list of benchmarks are the following applications:
Benchmarks
Anvil Pro
AS SSD
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
Futuremark PCMark 8
AIDA64
AS SSD
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
Futuremark PCMark 8
AIDA64
Test system
CPU
Intel Core i7-6700K
Motherboard MSI Z170A GAMING M7
Graphics PALIT NVIDIA GTX 760
Memory 32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz DDR4
HDD
– Samsung 960 PRO 512GB (NVM Express)
– Samsung 950 PRO 256GB (NVM Express)
– Crucial MX300 750GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Crucial BX200 960GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 180 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Crucial MX200 1TB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force LX 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Neutron GTX 480GB (Sata 6Gbps)
PSU Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 64-Bit
Intel Core i7-6700K
Motherboard MSI Z170A GAMING M7
Graphics PALIT NVIDIA GTX 760
Memory 32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz DDR4
HDD
– Samsung 960 PRO 512GB (NVM Express)
– Samsung 950 PRO 256GB (NVM Express)
– Crucial MX300 750GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Crucial BX200 960GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 180 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Crucial MX200 1TB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force LX 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Neutron GTX 480GB (Sata 6Gbps)
PSU Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 64-Bit
Benchmarks: Anvil Pro
Anvil Pro from Anvil Storage utilities is one of the most popular storage benchmarking utilities today thanks to the large suit of tests available. You can test pretty much anything from Read/write Speed to IOPs with many variables to tweak allowing you to get either a single or host of results to compare with other likeminded enthusiasts. In our test we ran the standard suite 5 times, subtracting both the highest and lowest scores and determined the final result from the average of the remaining three results.
Benchmarks: AS SSD
AS SSD Benchmark is a straightforward tool for measuring the speed of your SSD drive.
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Benchmarks: ATTO
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
Benchmarks: AIDA64
AIDA64 Product PageThis simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.
Benchmarks: PCMark 8
PCMark 8 Product PageWe use the Futuremark PCMark 8 utility to measure storage via Photoshop performance under both light and heavy loading conditions. Accelerated (open CL) is used to perform this test. The test is measured in seconds to complete.
Conclusion
After the great success of Samsung’s 950 PRO, the announcement of its successor, the 960 PRO, had our attention immediately. The 950 PRO is arguably one of the most popular M.2 NVMe-based SSDs for avid system builders and is the go-to drive for those with a thirst for speedy transfer rates.
The ingredients for success are certainly present with the 960 PRO. This drive uses Samsung’s 3rd Generation of V-NAND and takes advantage of the new Polaris controller. Our first initial set of benchmark runs with the single 960 PRO revealed some extremely poor performance which mostly affected the write tests. After speaking with Samsung we were advised to modify the policy settings in Windows 10 to force Windows to turn off write-cache buffer flushing otherwise known as FUA. This resolved the issues we were having but customers may not be aware of this anomaly and should not be expected to modify such settings to allow the drive to perform at its optimum. We therefore urge Samsung to release their NVMe driver to alleviate this issue before the 960 PRO hits shelves.
As demonstrated on the preceding pages the performance of 960 PRO as a single drive is nothing of spectacular, allows us to achieve brilliant read/write transfer rates and IOPS.
Thankfully, a RAID0 configuration relies on the Intel RST driver and isn’t dependent on any NVMe driver. Combining two of these 960 PROs in RAID0 provides us with some outstanding results – delivering even better performance than the trusty 950 PRO in RAID0. So, if you do have a motherboard which supports dual-M.2s or if you plan to use a PCI Express adapter with M.2 and are on a pursuit to blistering transfer rates and IOPS then you can’t go far wrong with this option.
Samsung’s 960 PRO will be available to buy in November and will be priced as follows: £320 GBP / 512GB: $329 USD for the 512GB model. So this drive joins the market at a fairly reasonable price – there are cheaper NVMe options out there but none that boast such a skillset. Plus of course this drive carries with it a limited 5-year warranty.
The 960 PRO builds on the success of its predecessor. Those with a thirst for supreme storage bandwidth will be pleased to know that phenomenal results can be had by using RAID0.
Interested in finding out how to configure the 960 PROs in RAID0 as a bootable drive? Watch our video below!
VIDEO GUIDE – VORTEZ TV
Pros
+ Excellent read transfer rates
+ RAID0 yields outstanding results
+ Stylish design
+ Compact form factor
+ Uses 3rd Gen V-NAND
+ TRIM Support
+ Dynamic Thermal Guard
+ 5 Years Warranty
Cons
– Good case airflow is needed
– Still waiting on an NVMe driver
– Modification to SSD policy required for optimum performance
+ Excellent read transfer rates
+ RAID0 yields outstanding results
+ Stylish design
+ Compact form factor
+ Uses 3rd Gen V-NAND
+ TRIM Support
+ Dynamic Thermal Guard
+ 5 Years Warranty
Cons
– Good case airflow is needed
– Still waiting on an NVMe driver
– Modification to SSD policy required for optimum performance
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
