The Samsung 960 EVO (1TB) Review
by Billy Tallis on November 15, 2016 10:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here.
As with the previous ATSB tests, the 960 EVO can't quite keep pace with Samsung's MLC-based 950 Pro and 960 Pro SSDs, but it is slightly faster than the OCZ RD400. On this test the 960 EVO suffers relatively more from a full drive, where it falls behind the RD400.
Average service times are slightly slower for the 960 EVO than Samsung's other PCIe SSDs, and the competing PCIe SSDs are a step further behind.
The 960 EVO is tied for first place with minimal high-latency outliers, but all of the PCIe SSDs are much better than the SATA drives.
Once again the 960 EVO's power efficiency is about the same as Samsung's other drives, showing that its higher instantaneous power draw than SATA drives is compensated by it completing the test quicker.
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SaolDan - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Neat!jwhannell - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Do wantnathanddrews - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
can hazedward1987 - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link
I've never seen such a demand for nvme ssd like samsung 960 evo. They are sold only on preorders basis. Looks like the only available capacity is 250GB https://www.span.com/search/960_space_evo/-SamsungEKFxWtB - Wednesday, November 16, 2016 - link
Yea!yankeeDDL - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
The 960 EVO is today, what the 850 EVO was a couple of years ago. Buying anything else makes little sense.The 850 EVO is still today an excellent SSD with a fantastic price/performance ratio.
I am happy to see such impressive improvements: I only hope we don't need to wait 2 years to see some worthy competitor ...
Ninhalem - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
Only if you have 480 USD to spend on a 1 TB SSD. If you don't (and many people don't need those read/write speeds), then something like the Mushkin Reactor 1 TB can be had for half the cost.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
While I agree, it's a bit of apples to oranges. The reactor is a sata III SSD, not a NVMe class SSD. Compared to other NVMe drives, the 960 evo is a great performance per dollar value.ImSpartacus - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I think the confusion arises from the op not specifying that he was only talking about nvme m.2 drives.ddriver - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
It doesn't really matter when the speed doesn't result in any tangible practical improvements.