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  • Chaitanya - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    I would like to know price of 1Tb 960 Evo, that looks like a good drive for most gaming desktops. Also I hope this drive wont put out as much heat as the 950 Pro(even though it wasn't a real problem for normal desktop loads).
  • extide - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Well, based on the fact that the 950 PRO peaked at 7W and the 960 EVO peaks at 8.6W ... it will/could put out MORE heat.
  • Billy Tallis - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Note that the only power draw information I have so far on the 960s is from the labels showing how much DC current they draw from the 3.3V supply. By that measure, the 950 PRO's worst case is 8.9W.
  • ddriver - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    It doesn't look too bad however I find those two things disappointing:

    1 - the move to TLC and the drop of warranty from 5 to 3 years
    2 - it still overheads, albeit a little later, it is a pity they went for fancy packaging tech just for that when 2 mm of actual heatsink would have done a much better job, I suspect their goal was to be able to put it as a replacement into notebooks and tablets, but they could just have a "mobile device" model that overheats and a consumer model that doesn't for people who will stick it into ATX motherboards without z space constraints.
  • Palorim12 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Its new, essentially untested, tech. So based on previous drives, being the first of its kind, it will have a smaller warranty.
  • drSeehas - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    What is new or untested?
    The Polaris controller? No!
    V-NAND? No!
    Turbowrite? No!
    M.2? No!
  • Palorim12 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Samsung's SATA III MLC series:
    830 - 3 year Warranty
    840 Pro - 5 Year Warranty
    850 Pro - 10 Year Warranty

    SATA III TLC series:
    840 - 3 Year Warranty
    840 EVO (With new Turbo write algorithm) - 3 year warranty
    850 EVO - 5 Year Warranty.
  • dsumanik - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link

    I dunno but those are some seriously badass specs, if they could get the 960 pro 1tb down to 499 they would have complete domination for at least 6-12 months
  • edward1987 - Wednesday, January 25, 2017 - link

    MZ-V6P1T0BW is actually under 500 money. https://www.span.com/product/Samsung-SSD-960-PRO-M... But I guess when you do gaming seriously it doesnt matter
  • ddriver - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    It is standard procedure to do rigorous testing for any product even before mass production, much less actual release.
  • Dug - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Except Note 7 :)
  • ddriver - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Well, I wouldn't be too hasty to buy the official narrative on the story. I mean, top US gov officials did label the 15 billion $ fine for apple's tax evasion an "attack against US national interests". And it is not like some US agencies don't have a long history of intercepting hardware and tampering with it for the sake of "US national interests", the timing is also perfect to prop up apple sales which would otherwise be eclipsed by the note 7. There is plenty of motive for sabotage, and with S Korea being a de facto puppet state of the US, it would be very easy too.
  • n13L5 - Sunday, October 2, 2016 - link

    I agree.
    What they test most vigorously is the proper functioning of intended breakpoints and general planned obsolescence. :)
  • xthetenth - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Why are you disappointed that the budget model is a budget model when there's a new top end model if you don't want a budget model?
  • ddriver - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    The 850 evo was also budget model (well not really, both the 850 evo and the 960 evo are midrange) but it had 5 years warranty and better endurance, and performance-wise it was very close to the 850 pro. What's disappointing is the widening of the gap and the relative lost of value in the midrange compared to the previous generation.

    Besides, as I said, it is not that bad, certainly not as bad as that piece of garbage - the intel 600p...
  • n13L5 - Sunday, October 2, 2016 - link

    Maybe somebody figures out how to get Samsung's fancy label off and replace it with a proper bit of aluminum instead - at the loss of warranty :/
  • Anton K. - Saturday, November 5, 2016 - link

    Ahem, copper is much better heat conductor than aluminium is. PC heatsinks are mostly aluminium because copper is much more expensive, not because it's better.
  • patrickjp93 - Sunday, October 2, 2016 - link

    You're telling me you think you'll be transferring or reading 300+GB from this drive into memory and either discarding it or backing it up in one shot so fast it'll throttle?! No back software I know of compresses data and sends it off THAT fast.
  • Bruce427 - Thursday, October 6, 2016 - link

    ** I find those two things disappointing: 1 - the move to TLC and the drop of warranty from 5 to 3 years. **

    This was not a new "move." The Samsung EVO series has ALWAYS used TLC flash and had a 3 year warranty.
  • ShieTar - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Not much point in spending on an NVMe drive for a gaming desktop. A single application sending mostly sequential reads can be handled just as well by SATA drives.
  • ddriver - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Gamers are too busy wasting their time playing games to afford to waste milliseconds of time in waiting to waste their time :D
  • fanofanand - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    I had to read that 3 times to absorb all of the brilliance.
  • ddriver - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    You actually did very well ;) For most it will remain obscure.
  • lazarpandar - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Don't flatter yourself I'm an idiot and I got it the first time
  • ddriver - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Nope, you didn't, but yes, you are ;)
  • xthetenth - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    The only unclear part of that sentence is how you manage to fit your hideously swollen head through doorways.
  • ddriver - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Seems like a certain dummy got offended LOL
  • Danvelopment - Saturday, September 24, 2016 - link

    This is the best part of this thread.
  • Sailor23M - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Well put
  • Badelhas - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    That´s the most clever thing I ever read in my life! No wait...it´s just stupid.
  • Kvaern1 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Unless of course the games you play need to load 10+k small files, which is the case for Paradox's Clausewitz engine games.
  • HollyDOL - Wednesday, October 5, 2016 - link

    Plenty other cases. Just look at how many processes are running in just freshly booted up OS. They all had to load from the drive...
  • PrimozR - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Component integration, two cables and one box less to worry about inside the case.
  • AnotherGuy - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    This is crazy a 500GB 850 evo is $155 while the new 960 evo of same size is $250... bs!
  • unrulycow - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    The 850 EVO is a SATA drive that is much slower
  • AnotherGuy - Friday, September 23, 2016 - link

    The M.2 version of 850 Evo 500 GB is $166, this one is $250... U guys above look stupid when u dont check the facts and just write stupidity
  • doggface - Saturday, September 24, 2016 - link

    Oh dude. Self burn. You may want to recheck your facts So you don't look stupid.

    The 850 uses SATA whether in m.2 or 2.5" form factor.

    Let me guess, 850 evo has max read speed of ~500MB/s?
    The 950 evo has max read speed of 3200MB/s.

    Hence the price difference.
  • Danvelopment - Saturday, September 24, 2016 - link

    m.2 is to PCI-E that PCI-E is to m.2, independent and overlapped technologies.

    The 850 and 960 Evo occupy different sectors of the m.2-PCI-E venn diagram. Right now all of the 9s are PCI-E and all of the 8s are SATA.
  • xthetenth - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    An aging model in a slower form factor is less expensive? I'll be! I'm so shocked I'm going to feel bad about buying an 840 evo instead of an 850 evo because apparently it wasn't actually considerably cheaper. My bank account is reeling from the revelation.
  • fanofanand - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    According to the article it's $479. Looks like they updated the article with that info.
  • Ethos Evoss - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    What is the point of this ?? this speeding up and higher and higher is SAME as with smartphones..
    am asking what's the point ?
    There is no MAJOR diff. btw first NVMe SSDs what released nothing is gonna load major faster.. no game ..
  • fanofanand - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    There are uses for computing outside of games.
  • Danvelopment - Saturday, September 24, 2016 - link

    The bottleneck has moved, that's all.

    It isn't really needed for the mainstream right now, but there's definitely a use in enterprise and in the not too distant future the mainstream will call this slow.

    "No one will need more than 637 kB of memory for a personal computer"
  • kpxgq - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    Im currently running the SM961 1TB and those are going for about $500 on ebay (pulled from OEM laptops). My guess is the 960 EVO will be $350-400 for a 1TB
  • kpxgq - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    I meant PM961
  • edward1987 - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link

    1Tb 960 Evo £348
    SSD 960 PRO £456
    It seems like Read speed (Max) 3200 evo drive and 3500 pro drive difference costs £100
    http://www.span.com/compare/MZ-V6E1T0BW-vs-MZ-V6P1...
  • Nitas - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    960 Pro, Kaby Lake, 1080 Ti. That will be my next system ;)
  • evilpaul666 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Though these look really nice as a person with a 400GB Intel 750 (or for someone with a 512GB 950 Pro) I don't see a lot of point to these unless you're getting a higher capacity one as an upgrade and the prices come down. The most noticeable thing the Intel 750 had done for me compared to the 240GB Intel SSD it replaced is pre-allocate Steam files much more quickly.

    The 960 Pro isn't doing much for the price compared to the 950 Pro. And it looks to me like the performance trails off to only a little better than 950 Pro levels. If the 1TB model is only ~$150 more it might be a little enticing for people who don't already have PCIe x4 storage.

    I'm waiting for an unlocked Kaby Lake i7 to upgrade (from my 4.5Ghz i5 Haswell) and curious to see what Optane offers? When's that launching, anyway?
  • extide - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    The Intel 750 STILL dominates at steady state random write performance, I mean it's more than twice as fast as a SM951 (that's the latest benchmark data I have available) See: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro...

    You can tell the 750 has it's serrver roots. If you are running a crapton of VM's .. the 750 is STILL probably the better choice. BUT for pretty much any client workload, yeah, the Samsung PCIe SSD's are better.
  • extide - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    For a better look, see here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD15/1209
  • Samus - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Jesus, 2TB and single sided. Just a year ago the 850 Evo was the only drive available that was 512GB and single sided. So 4x increase in density in a year.
  • jjj - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    They even have 1TB BGA.
  • jjj - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    SSD makers need to be forced to list sustained seq perf at QD1 because it's starting to get very messy.
  • bcronce - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Newegg lists this data. Samsung 950 Pro M2

    4KB Random Read
    Up to 300,000 IOPS (4KB, QD32)
    Up to 12,000 IOPS (4KB, QD1)

    4KB Random Write
    Up to 110,000 IOPS (4KB, QD32)
    Up to 43,000 IOPS (4KB, QD1)
  • State of Affairs - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Will the 960 Pro offer AES encryption support upon launch (i.e., TCG Opal and IEEE 1667 compliant)?

    The 950 Pro was marketed as supporting AES encryption that would be enabled with a firmware update. Samsung never released the update, and later gave some half-baked explanation as to why (i.e., "The plan to provide a firmware update to enable TCG/OPAL and IEEE1667 has been put on hold due to the currently very restricted availability of commercial security software.")

    At this price level, Samsung's flagship 960 Pro should offer self-encrypting drive (SED) capabilities. Given the single-sided M.2 2280 format, laptop owners will be very interested, especially given the level of performance and power efficiency. Security, however, is also very important.
  • Billy Tallis - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Samsung's not currently interested in delivering full TCG Opal, etc. for the consumer PCIe drives. The controller is capable of it, but they're now treating it as a feature for the OEM products. That might change in the future, but the next release of the Samsung Magician utility and Samsung's NVMe driver won't be implementing it.
  • Solidstate89 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Are they planning on removing those features from their SATA offerings as well?
  • Palorim12 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    The 950 Pro came with AES 256bit encryption enabled. The FW update was supposed to be for OPAL and E-Drive. Their decision makes sense though. Its a consumer level product and there's no consumer level software allowing for OPAL encryption.
  • Redstorm - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    ENCRIPTION SUPPORT
    AES 256-bit for User Data EncryptionTCG Opal Family Spec and eDrive(IEEE1667) to be supported by FW update
  • zeeBomb - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    I'm somewhat new to this M.2 stuff. So these SSDs are as small as memory sticks? How works you install them in the PC?
  • RaichuPls - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    The M.2 slot is kinda a successor to the mSATA port, it's just a little notch on the motherboard you slot it into. Usually runs at PCIe 3.0 x4, but some motherboards support running it under SATA protocol as well.
  • zeeBomb - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Do I need to install some thing separate to make it work under SATA?
  • Ergosum - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    If you don't have an M.2 interface on your mainboard, the most common approach is to use a PCI slot and an adapter card. You will get almost no performance benefit from running one of these drives under SATA (except perhaps cable management).

    The only people really using M.2 drives under a SATA protocol are OEM laptop manufacturers.
  • Anomaly1985 - Friday, October 28, 2016 - link

    By x4 do you mean 4 lanes on the pcie drive?
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    It's as small as a stick of chewing gum, which is quite a bit smaller than a single DIMM.

    Power and data connectors are integrated into the contact points. You slide the M.2 drive into the connector slot, screw the top end down to prevent it from coming loose, and that's it. It's powered and recognized by the PC.

    Some M.2 SSDs are AHCI (think traditional SATA drives) based and some are NVMe (newer standard) based. The biggest difference is that if your motherboard supports NVMe drives, then these drives are available as bootable volumes in the UEFI/BIOS boot options list.

    The problem is that normally BIOS/UEFI tries to only look for drives in USB ports, SATA ports, IDE ports, etc. Never a PCI-e lane. But NVMe enabled PCI-e based drives in NVMe supporting motherboards can both benefit from bigger PCI-e bandwidth (better top-end speeds) and be visible as a bootable volume.
  • Meteor2 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Nice explanation, thanks.
  • Xajel - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Finally, a more affordable PCIe SSD's !!

    Wondering how much those 500 & 1TB Evo's will cost
  • Rictorhell - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Still waiting to see a "current" or at least an updated product from Samsung in the msata form factor, something they promised or hinted at early LAST year. Those drives don't necessarily support or require cutting edge speeds due to the limitations of the data interface, but they would still sell, I think, due to the need for a capacity increase for people still using that type of drive at this point.
  • Meteor2 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Yesterday's tech.
  • Solidstate89 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    I imagine Samsung will introduce a new mSATA based SSD right around the time they introduce one for IDE.

    It's a dead spec, get used to it.
  • Ergosum - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    mIDE! I love it! No more ribbon cables!
  • HollyDOL - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Hmm, 1TB 960Pro would have such a nice comfy cushioned spot on my motherboard...
  • damianrobertjones - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Small speed increments ensuring the max flow of $$$$$. Come on people... When are we going to stand the small grind forward? When do we stop loving the marketing people?
  • alistair.brogan - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Yeah the price is really disappointing. Still waiting for the $350 1TB or no buy for me. Just get a 2TB 850 evo instead.
  • smilingcrow - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    We must be looking at different data sets as there are big increases for the 960 Pro over the 950 Pro not that it would be noticeable for many consumer workloads.
  • willis936 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    I was going to say I can't remember the last time I saw a performance gap this wide between SSD generations without a change in interconnect.
  • lilmoe - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Totally. Though it isn't out of reach, and prices did go down a bit compared to the 950 Pro, I still refuse to pay this much (again). You'll have to step up to 1 or 2 TB to see significant speed benefits.
  • Sarvesh - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    I wonder how much real world gains are to be had with a M.2 SSD like this... I have an Intel 530 drive which seems to have slowed down a bit over the years (even with ~50 GB free space). My use case is bit of a mixed bag but mostly Visual Studio, Lightroom, dozens of tabs on Chrome and occasional gaming. I'm most interested in faster bootups and application launching and loading performance. So will i see any noticeable gains if i upgrade to this?
  • HollyDOL - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Moving from some unknown SATA SSD to 950Pro at work (Visual Studio, large solutions) definitely shown improvement (I'd say it's about 30% faster on start/solution load). Other work scenarios I can't see any difference, except our app is no more bottlenecked by epically crap corporate logger. Chrome seems to act same as with the old one and games I have no chance trying.
  • Kvaern1 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    You will see noticeable gains if you need to access a lot of small files or read/write large amounts of data.

    For everyday OS operation the difference is less than neglible.

    That's my personal experience going from a 840 EVO to a 950 PRO.
  • watzupken - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    We see all these big numbers on sequential speed, but to be honest, how much performance improvement are we looking at in day to day usage? Unless one transfers huge files daily, I really doubt it makes any different. Underlying response time has pretty much remained stagnant, and only the cosmetic specs have been spruced up year on year. It's almost like those days where cameras are chasing after a higher resolution, while the underlying sensor is still the same.
  • drajitshnew - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    More resolution with the same sensor. I'm afraid you will have to give me examples.
  • Meteor2 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    I'm not hugely familiar with the NVMe SSD market... who are Samsung's competitors?
  • morrisiriga - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    I would say Micron and Western Digital (Sandisk) are the main competitors
  • Billy Tallis - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Not in the client market. Neither of those companies has a PCIe SSD for the retail market, though Micron has an OEM client PCIe drive.

    Toshiba has the OCZ RD400, Intel has the 600p (and arguably the 750), Plextor has the M8Pe, and several companies are working on Phison-based PCIe drives but struggling to get firmware with competitive performance.
  • patrickjp93 - Sunday, October 2, 2016 - link

    Adata too.
  • patrickjp93 - Sunday, October 2, 2016 - link

    And Plextor
  • jwcalla - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Have they figured out the firmware issues yet or can we expect more surprises?
  • Billy Tallis - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    What firmware issues are you referring to? Something about the SM961/PM961 or something pertaining to drives with entirely different controllers?
  • R3MF - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    i trust we'll get an NVME driver for Windows 7 fresh installs, as happened with the 950Pro?
  • Palorim12 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Probably not as they consider 7 obsolete.
  • Zak - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Nice! But the prices... yikes!

    I mounted heatsinks on my M.2 950Pro. Of course, I have no good way to verify if that made any difference. I wish vendors would rethink the location of the M.2slot. Right under a hot video card can't be good.
  • Impulses - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    Sure you do... SMART? Simple IR thermometer?
  • janwyta - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    In SM961/PM961 news flash Anton reported that both drive use V-NAND, but in the first table here they are listed as MLC/TLC, which implies planar NAND. Please review it.
  • markbanang - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Whether flash is planar or V-NAND is independent of whether it is SLC, MLC or TLC. Planar or V-NAND describes how NAND cells are arranged, SLC, MLC and TLC describe how bits are encoded into each cell.
  • Drumsticks - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    I'd like to see this go up against Intel's new 600p SSD. It's also an NVMe drive, but with lower performance and a much lower price. The sustained write and read are actually pretty close for the 512GB model vs the 960 Evo, and Samsung claims 2.5x higher IOPS in random scenarios, but no idea if they're claiming the same situation.

    On the other hand, I've seen the 600p as low as $173 for a 512GB version, which is pretty crazy for NVMe. That's a pretty significant difference, and it is probably enough to enable a normal person to step up to NVMe while $250 is a bit much. I'd like to see Anandtech get both in for review if possible!
  • nirwander - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    In some cases (esp writes) 600p is slower than most SATA drives.
  • shabby - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Yup, the 600p's write to cache speed is 600mb/sec, once the cache is full it dips to 20-100mb/sec.
  • Meteor2 - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    Seconded!
  • eek2121 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    When Zen and Kaby Lake drop I'm going to be doing a new PC build. Definitely eyeing the 2 TB 960 pro.
  • Magichands8 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    This whole product is nothing but a pony show for their new tech. It's just a shame they're trying it in products that aren't worth buying. The prices per GB are ridiculous and while the performance isn't too bad the form factor is a no-go from the beginning. It's been years since any SSDs have been released that are worth buying unless your current system is failing and you desperately need something immediately.
  • eek2121 - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Speak for yourself, some of us actually have workloads that will take advantage of the speed. The price per gb isn't bad given that they are a market leader and the only company with such a product on the market.
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Moving forward, "Internal Throughput" will be the deciding factor in how fast an SSD feels

    Reading and writing large data sets simultaneously will become VERY important with interactive VR Games at insanely high resolutions as well as media production

    ATI overcomes the internal throughput problem by placing "TWO" SSDs on a single graphics card
    One SSD for reading and one for writing simultaneously

    A Samsung 850 Pro (256GB) feels considerably faster than a Samsung 840 Pro (256GB) when running Windows XP from a SATA2 Port even though BOTH drives have about the same specs on a faster SATA3 port

    The reason is that the 850 Pro can copy and paste a 2GB file FROM the 850 Pro TO the same drive at twice the speed of an 840 Pro

    Even using the ancient IDE protocol on a SATA2 port, the 850 will copy/paste a 2GB file in 18 seconds (or 113.7MB/sec)

    The same protocol using an 840 Pro results in a 38 second copy/paste time for the same file (or 56.8MB/sec Best recorded time)

    For an indicator of how far we have come....
    A 1st Gen OCZ Vertex 1 (30GB Drive) will copy/paste the same file at 3.7MB/sec

    INTERNAL throughput is a completely different animal than the specs you will find for any SSD on the Internet

    caching will give you much better copy/paste number on the second try so be sure to reboot between tests

    ANAND TESTERS>
    Start providing internal throughput numbers because any 2 drives with the same (external) specs won't tell you anything about how fast the drive feels with a complex workload
  • Billy Tallis - Friday, September 23, 2016 - link

    If you read any of our SSD reviews you'll find that we do measure how SSDs perform on workloads that have a mix of reads and writes. Our current test suite includes mixed read/write tests of both sequential and random I/O and of varying proportions of reads vs writes. It's not clear to me that you're asking for anything we don't already provide, but your term "internal throughput" seems to be an incorrect way to describe it: operations like file copies are carried out by issuing read and write commands that transfer data to and from system RAM. The ATA and NVMe command sets don't include a "copy" operation.
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Friday, September 23, 2016 - link

    I HAVE read your reviews and you DID NOT test what I am describing

    Your reviews do NOT indicate how fast a large file can be copied and pasted to the same drive

    Your reviews indicate the thoughput TO and FROM the drive

    My data is accurate

    If Your data does not indicate that the 850 Pro is twice as fast as the 840 Pro under the conditions I set in my original post, then your doing it wrong and your data is not accurate

    How fast can you copy and paste a 20 GB file from an 850 Pro to the same drive?
    What was the protocol?
    What OS?
    What type of SATA Port?

    I do not see any of this in your reviews

    Please show me actual numbers for the test I describe

    If your numbers are the same, your OS is at fault!

    Please Retest!
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Moving forward, "Internal Throughput" will be the deciding factor in how fast an SSD feels

    Reading and writing large data sets simultaneously will become VERY important with interactive VR Games at insanely high resolutions as well as media production

    ATI overcomes the internal throughput problem by placing "TWO" SSDs on a single graphics card
    One SSD for reading and one for writing simultaneously

    A Samsung 850 Pro (256GB) feels considerably faster than a Samsung 840 Pro (256GB) when running Windows XP from a SATA2 Port even though BOTH drives have about the same specs on a faster SATA3 port

    The reason is that the 850 Pro can copy and paste a 2GB file FROM the 850 Pro TO the same drive at twice the speed of an 840 Pro

    Even using the ancient IDE protocol on a SATA2 port, the 850 will copy/paste a 2GB file in 18 seconds (or 113.7MB/sec)

    The same protocol using an 840 Pro results in a 38 second copy/paste time for the same file (or 56.8MB/sec Best recorded time)

    For an indicator of how far we have come....
    A 1st Gen OCZ Vertex 1 (30GB Drive) will copy/paste the same file at 3.7MB/sec

    INTERNAL throughput is a completely different animal than the specs you will find for any SSD on the Internet

    caching will give you much better copy/paste number on the second try so be sure to reboot between tests

    ANAND TESTERS>
    Start providing internal throughput numbers because any 2 drives with the same (external) specs won't tell you anything about how fast the drive feels with a complex workload
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    sorry double post

    In case you were wondering about the ancient OS / IDE protocol or SATA2 references, I torture all my SSD's and thumb drives in worst case scenarios

    Any of my drives that survive several Complete wipes using KILLDISK, Heavy defragging sessions, an OS that does not support TRIM, misaligned partitions etc/etc/etc, then I will trust my data with that drive

    Any drive that dies within the 30-day return policy, well, I never buy THAT brand ever again

    If your data is important to YOU, you already should know what I mean
  • mkaibear - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    If your data is truly important to you you don't care what drives you end up using because it's duplicated across so many that it doesn't matter.

    Torture testing drives to make yourself feel better doesn't make your data more secure.

    Unless you have a particular use case which requires only a single drive to ever be used (of which there are few) then you're just wasting time and effort there.
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    I did not invent Application and Game Streaming to simply secure my Data

    I am the Real Bullwinkle (not the fake Identity thief with a Disqus account)

    I am not testing to simply make myself feel better

    I am advancing the technology

    Reading extremely High bitrate Videos While editing AND saving to disk simultaneously require the state of the art to advance far beyond your simple needs reading fast "OR" writing fast but not doing both simultaneously

    4-8K 3D requirements will far exceed the limitations of current tech

    If Microsoft, Adobe, Valve, and all the other big companies are taking my advice in 3D as well as Application and Game Streaming, then I must be doing SOMETHING right

    RIGHT?
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    and Lets not forget NVidia or ATI

    They LOVE my work in Application and GameStreaming
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Sunday, September 25, 2016 - link

    Update
    Apparently ATI never really solved the throughput problem with their new graphics card using 2 m.2 SSDs

    They are RAID 0, so simultaneous Read/write will be MUCH slower than using a separate SSD for Reads and another for Writes

    I spoke too soon
  • mkaibear - Monday, September 26, 2016 - link

    Yeah, sure dude. Whatever. Meanwhile in the real world those of us who actually use our computers for real work will keep our data on mirrored volumes and not worry about the brand of drive our data is on.

    Keep making yourself feel better and torture testing drives for no benefit. I'm sure the shareholders enjoy your profligacy.

    Oh, and if you want to be taken seriously I suggest learning some basic grammar and spelling skills.

    Ta-ta!
  • RaistlinZ - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    Would it be easy to clone my current 500GB 850 EVO to one of these drives? That 1TB 960 EVO looks very tempting.
  • mlkmade - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    I made a thread on these the forums back in August asking about the potential release of these and no one had any info. So I bought a 950 pro. Lol @ me.. Good thing Amazon will let me return still. Is there a hard release date yet?
  • jarablue - Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - link

    All I know is I am most definitely buying the 512gb 960 pro. Just have to wait for October to hurry up and get here.
  • Shmee - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    Looks very cool!
  • Badelhas - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    Whats the point in this? Does the normal user see any real world difference when going from a Vertex 3, for instance?
  • kpxgq - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    The normal person doesnt see a difference going from an i3 Haswell to an i7 Skylake or 4GB ram to 16GB...etc. Sometimes you just want better and faster.
  • norda72 - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    I want maximal speed from my Samsung EVO 850 1 TB in my Mac Pro 2012. Is that possible? I say no due to only pci-e 2.0 on the mother board. Some say otherwise.
  • Billy Tallis - Friday, September 23, 2016 - link

    Your comment is difficult to understand. Mac Pros don't have M.2 slots, and the 850 EVO uses SATA signalling not PCIe, so the speed of your system's PCIe lanes only matters if you're connecting it through an add-on SATA or SAS HBA card. A single PCIe 2.0 lane is slightly slower than 6Gbps SATA, but most HBAs use more than one PCIe lane.
  • mattkiss - Thursday, September 22, 2016 - link

    Love to see an aic option so I could plug one into the cpu's pcie lanes.
  • fitzgerald1337 - Friday, September 23, 2016 - link

    Would either the SM961 or 960 Pro distinguish itself from the other when it comes to CAD/rendering/graphic design work?
  • kadox - Friday, September 23, 2016 - link

    Question, NVMe SSDs are bi-directional so you can use 1 SSD to read and write to it at teh same time, but how does it compare in performance to 2 sata 3 SSDs, one to read from and one to encode/write to ? Can anandtech do a test with one 960 Pro in video Encoding compared to two 850 pro Sata 3 SSDs ?
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Friday, September 23, 2016 - link

    Two more questions....

    NVMe SSDs can read and write simultaneously, but....

    How does the maximum throughput to and from the SSD to another drive or RAM compare with the Internal throughput to and from the one single SSD

    I would guess that the throughput to and from another drive would be much higher than that of a single drive which is why ATI is using 2 SSD's on their new prototype graphics card instead of one

    Please test the 960 Pro under both conditions
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Friday, September 23, 2016 - link

    or is that one question?

    This must be the second then....
  • evilspoons - Friday, September 23, 2016 - link

    The pages for the products have gone live on Samsung's web site.

    960 PRO average power consumption is listed as 5.1, 5.3, and 5.8 watts for 512, 1024, and 2048 GB, respectively.

    960 EVO average power consumption is listed as 5.3, 5.4, and 5.7 watts for 250, 500, and 1000 GB respectively.
  • patrickjp93 - Sunday, October 2, 2016 - link

    Makes sense. Writing to TLC requires more power than writing to MLC.
  • paperfist - Tuesday, October 4, 2016 - link

    Anyone know when you can buy one?
  • TARDIS75 - Wednesday, October 5, 2016 - link

    Will this fit in a MacBook Pro 10,2 Retina 13" Early 2013? without overheating the system?
  • Scoobyd00 - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link

    Any update on a release date for these?
  • ewitte - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link

    I'm at even a worse state for tiered storage lol. A fast NVMe drive for the OS, storage SSD then 6TB NAS drive for bulk storage (had more but was collecting too many drives and not using them.). I'm going to swap my 256GB 950 pro for the 512GB model 960 pro.
  • iluv2fly - Saturday, October 15, 2016 - link

    Any news about when they will be available to buy ?
  • nonformality - Monday, December 12, 2016 - link

    Could this SSD be used in an early-2015 MacBook Pro? It looks like it could theoretically work…

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