1. Meet the Samsung 950 Pro M.2 512GB NVME SSD
Samsung has already released M.2 drives with PCIe interfaces for OEM customers, but now the company is bringing a PCIe drive to the retail market. The Samsung 950 Pro is Samsung’s first consumer M.2 and NVMe drive that uses the full performance of four PCIe 3.0 lanes. It is an upgrade from its predecessor, the SM951, in that it uses 3D V-NAND rather than planar NAND.
With Intel's Skylake platform bringing enough I/O bandwidth to support multiple lanes of PCIe 3.0, Samsung's new 950 Pro SSD can push the hardware to its limits.
The 950 Pro comes in only two capacities for now: 256GB or 512GB, with a 1TB model promised for next year. The 1TB drive will have to wait until 48-layer 3rd-generation V-NAND is available.
US pricing is pegged at $200 for the 256GB model and $350 for 512GB.
Samsung is quoting sequential read speeds of up to 2,200MB/sec for the 256GB 950 Pro, and 2,500MB/sec for the 512GB model. 4KQD32 write IOPS are pegged at 85,000 for the 256GB drive and 110,000 for the 512GB, with read IOPS of up to 270,000 and 300,000 respectively.
The 950 Pro only carries five years of warranty. The quoted TBW (total bytes written) is higher on the 950 Pro than on the 850 Pro, with 200TB for the 256GB model and 400TB for the 512GB.
Here are the complete specs:
| |
MZ-V5P256BW |
MZ-V5P512BW |
| General Feature |
Application |
Client PCs |
| Capacity |
256 GB |
512 GB |
| Form Factor |
M.2 (2280) |
| Interface |
PCIe 3.0 x4 (up to 32 GB/s) NVMe 1.1 |
| Dimension (LxWxH) |
Max. 80.15 x 22.15 x 2.38 (mm) |
| Weight |
Max. 10g (512GB) |
| NAND Type |
Samsung V-NAND |
| Controller |
Samsung UBX controller |
| Cache Memory |
Samsung 512 MB Low Power DDR3 SDRAM |
| Special Feature |
TRIM Support |
TRIM Supported (Required OS support) |
| S.M.A.R.T Support |
S.M.A.R.T Supported |
| GC (Garbage Collection) |
Auto Garbage Collection Algorithm |
| Data Security |
AES 256-bit for User Data Encryption
TCG Opal Family Spec and eDrive(IEEE1667) to be supported by FW update |
| WWN Support |
N/A |
| Performance |
Sequential Read |
Up to 2,200 MB/sec |
Up to 2,500 MB/sec |
| Sequential Write |
Up to 900 MB/sec |
Up to 1,500 MB/sec |
Random Read
(4 KB, QD 32, Thread 4) |
Up to 270,000 IOPS |
Up to 300,000 IOPS |
Random Write
(4 KB, QD 32, Thread 4) |
Up to 85,000 IOPS |
Up to 110,000 IOPS |
Random Read
(4 KB, QD 1, Thread 1) |
Up to 11,000 IOPS |
Up to 12,000 IOPS |
Random Write
(4 KB, QD 1, Thread 1) |
Up to 43,000 IOPS |
Up to 43,000 IOPS |
| Environment |
Power Consumption |
Active average 5.1W, Maximum 6.4W,
Idle : 70mW, Device Sleep Mode Support (L1.2 mode): 2.5mW |
Active average 5.7W, Maximum 7.0W,
Idle : 70mW, Device Sleep Mode Support (L1.2 mode): 2.5mW |
| Reliability (MTBF) |
1.5 Million Hours Reliability (MTBF) |
| Operating Temperature |
0 °C to 70 °C (Measured by SMART Temperature. Proper airflow recommended) |
| Humidity |
5% to 95%, non-condensing |
| Vibration |
20~2000Hz, 20G |
| Shock |
1500G , duration 0.5m sec, 3 axis |
| Software |
Management SW |
Magician Software for SSD management |
| Warranty |
5 Year Limited Warranty or 200 TBW Limited Warranty |
5 Year Limited Warranty or 400 TBW Limited Warranty |
Currently, most systems offer 16 lanes from the processor, mainly for graphics cards, and one-lane slots for anything else from the chipset. With Intel's Haswell generation of processors the SATA Express connector and M.2 slot started appearing, but systems with a four-lane PCIe 3.0 connection available are still rare. This changes with Skylake and the 100-series chipsets that can support 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes of connectivity through the chipset, and up to three PCIe 3.0 x4 drives in Intel's RST mode for RAID combinations.
NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a command set for PCIe-based storage first and offers an important improvement over Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) for SSDs. The first PCIe SSDs either implemented proprietary interfaces requiring custom drivers, or they implemented older AHCI and ATA command set and as such appeared to the OS to be a SATA drive in every way (except for the 6Gb/s speed limit).
To allow SSDs to better take advantage of the performance possible through PCI Express, a new host controller interface and command set called NVMe was developed. NVMe offers lower latency communication between the SSD and the CPU, and lower CPU usage when communicating with the SSD. Howevr, it is not backwards-compatible, so in order to use an NVMe SSD you need an NVMe driver, and in order to boot from an NVMe drive your motherboard's firmware needs NVMe support.
Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 have both built-in NVMe driver that implements all the basic functionality necessary of NVMe for everyday use. But most vendors are providing a custom NVMe driver.
The Samsung 950 Pro M.2 512GB NVME SSD comes in the 80mm-long 2280 format. As with all M.2 SSDs, it uses an M-key connector, which is mandatory for four-lane PCIe speeds.
Notably, Samsung has opted to not bundle a PCIe adaptor card with the drive. While that would make the 950 Pro usable in any desktop computer right out of the box, it would mean higher pricing and more packaging.
The 950 Pro uses a 500MHz triple-core "UBX" controller, which is not very different than the 400MHz "MEX" controller found in the 850 Pro. Both capacities have 512MB of LPDDR3 memory and both support the NVMe 1.1 protocol. AES 256-bit encryption is supported with TCG Opal and eDrive support promised, but only in a future firmware update. However, the 950 Pro is using the new controller as the SM951, but uses it with 3D NAND. Samsung has renamed their 3D V-NAND to V-NAND for simplicity and this SSD contains V-NAND. This is MLC (multi-level cell) 32-layer 128Gb memory and the 512 GB capacity contains two 256GB chips. We first saw Samsung's 128Gb 32-layer V-NAND in the 2TB 850 Pro.
The 950 Pro also has a technology called Dynamic Thermal Throttling (DTT), in order to cope with additional heat generated the M.2 storage device. DTT is described by Samsung as a method for "controlling the temperature of the device to reduce overheating and maintain a high level of sustained performance."
2. ATTO Disk Benchmark, CrystalDiskMark
Testbed:
MOTHERBOARD: ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ ATX DDR4
CPU: Intel I7-6700K 4.00 GHz
POWER SUPPLY: Corsair HX1200i ATX12V
GRAPHICS: PNY GTX 980 4GB XLR8 Pro OC
MEMORY: Corsair Dominator Pl 32GB 2800
STORAGE: Intel 750 Series 1.2TB NVMe SSD
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
We start our tests with the ATTO Disk Benchmark. The tool measures storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. The benchmark performs file transfers ranging from 0.5 KB to 8192 KB. ATTO can be adjusted to do overlapped I/O, in a variety of queue depths. We tested the SSD using the benchmark's default settings, using 256KB file length performance and QD4. ATTO probably gives the most accurate results for compressible read and write data.
The ATTO results match listed specifications. The 512GB SSD attained 2.5GB/s read and 1.5GB/s write. Howevr, you can see a bit of a drop in the larger data samples (8MB), althoufgh the overall speed progression is smooth.
ATTO is another fairly straightforward test we ran that shows the sequential transfer rate improvements over the 850 Pro. Of course, the Samsung 950 Pro M.2 512GB NVME has no competition in the graphcs below:
The next benchmark is the CrystalDiskMark. The software provides throughput data based on sequential reads and writes, and random (512K/4K/4KQD32) reads and writes of various sizes. It uses mostly incompressible data, and therefore provides a quick and reliable method to check disk performance.
In this test, the 950 Pro’s sequential read and write speeds actually exceed Samsung’s claims: the drive peaked at 2698MB/sec sequential read and 1540MB/sec write write:
The performance of Samsung's SSD was the same no matter if the stored/retrieved data is compressible or not.
In addition, low 4K random write performance above 200MB/s finally has become commonplace with SSDs.
3. AS SSD benchmark
We move on with the AS SSD benchmark, which contains five synthetic as well as three practical tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and the random read / write performance of an SSD. These tests are carried out without using the operating system's cache. The Seq-test measures how long it takes to read and write an 1GB file. Most importantly, this sequential benchmark uses incompressible data for all of its transfers.
The 4K benchmark tests the read and write performance for random 4K blocks. The 4K-64-THRD-test corresponds to the 4K procedure except that here the read and write operations are distributed on 64 threads:
Checking out the Copy Benchmark below, it is pretty remarkable that, in both tests, the ISO file was transferred in just 0.66 seconds!
The 950 PRO's performance in sequential reading with incompressible test was the highest we have observed from an SSD so far, at 2133 MB/s. The same applies for sequential writing, where the drive wrote the incompressible files at 1424 MB/s (average).
At the 4K random reading tests, the Samsung 950 Pro SSD reached the top of the chart below, with an average reading speed of 51.29 MB/s.
The 950 drive was again very fast at the 4K random writing tests, giving 154.2MB/s:
Multi-threaded requests for random reading of 4K incompressible files were not an issue for the Samsung 950 Pro512GB SSD, ranking first in both the read and write tests:
4. Anvil Storage Utilities
The next benchmark is the Anvil Pro, an ‘all inclusive’ storage utility. The software is tests transfer speeds as well as IOPS The IOPS tests can be configurable with preset testing scenarios for read (Seq 4MB, 4K, 4K QD4, 4K QD16, 32K and 128K), write (Seq 4MB, 4K, 4K QD4, 4K QD16) and mixed IO.
We used the software with the Samsung 950 PRo SSD and tested the drive with 0-fill and 100 % (incompressible data). Not many differences were reported in those benchmarks.
5. PCMark 7, PCMark 8
Below you see the results of Futuremark's PCMark 7 Professional edition. The software includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads, in an effort to approximate real-world usage.
We ran the PCMark07 secondary storage test with the 950 Pro configured as a second drive in the test rig. The 950 PRO 512GB drive scored a great 6157 points at the storage benchmark. The PCMark07 score increased from 5604 to 6157, or an improvement of 8.4 percent.
We continue with the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark, which uses traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and a selection of popular games. Unlike synthetic storage tests, the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark highlights real-world performance differences between storage devices.
The 950 PRo SSD scored 5107 points, over the 4985 points of the 850 PRO .
6. Summary
Without any doubt, the Samsung 950 Pro M.2 512GB NVME SSD is the fastest consumer SSD we have tested so far, delivering extremely high sequential transfer rates and IOPS. We measured sequential read results that were four times those of the 850 Pro, and read IOPS that are a massive leap forward.
The problem is that the 950 Pro M.2 512GB SSD is more expensive than other drives, since it utilizes V-NAND flash and a PCIe 3.0 interface.
In addition, the 950 Pro does not come with a PCIe adapter so getting this SSD is limited to those with newer systems, or those willing to make the build. Alternatively, for the same money, you could opt for a cheaper drive with a larger capacity.
Our thoughts is that unless you need best-in-class performance or have some demanding, IO-intensive workloads, a drive that costs less will deliver the almopst the same system performance as the 950 Pro.
Samsung’s debut consumer PCIe M.2 drive with NVMe is impressive, although Samsung is entering a market which includes only a few that currently have in their desktops the latest, high-end computers. But for a top of the line drive, the 950 Pro is priced reasonably for enthusiasts.