Samsung SM951-NVMe Versus AHCI Versus SATA 850 Pro

[Guest]

Samsung's SM951 SSD has both AHCI and NVMe support, and while PCIe-based storage is a hot topic, many enthusiasts wonder what it does. Today we find out.

Samsung SM951-NVMe Versus AHCI Versus SATA 850 Pro : Read more

 

[killabanks]

Glad to see that some aspects of computing are getting rapid improvements.

 

[Amdlova]

I will stick with 2.5" For Heat problems lol

 

[Amdlova]

hpv-2560 is rated 1.9A and the another one VPV-2560 is 2.7A Maybe you guys need test the power consumption.

 

[atheus]

I find the preamble about comparing these M.2 drives to regular SATA drives a little odd. When SSD's first came out, of course they were compared to HDD's because that was precisely the question of the moment — how much more performance can one expect from the more expensive SSD's. With this new generation of SSD's, it's only natural to want to see them compared to the old, cheaper stuff. How else are we going to evaluate whether it's worth it to upgrade?

If it only resulted in an extra 10% on a real-world test, then it wouldn't make any sense to spend double or more on a NVMe drive. With these solid numbers, though, the massive performance leap will be well worth the cost for those who can afford it.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Looks great! NVMe is defiantly the ideal solution for users that need high speed/responsive storage.

I wish you guys would of compared this NVMe SSD to the Intel NVMe SSD that just came out.

 

[CRamseyer]

The Intel SSD 750 and the Samsung SM951-NVMe will show up side by side soon in another review.

 

[barnyrubble]

What about the rest of the system in which they were tested?

 

[CRamseyer]

Test systems: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/how-we-test-storage,4058.html

All three drives were tested in the PCIe test system. They are the only systems setup for testing queue depths beyond 32.

 

[dwnelson]

I'm sad the real world chart is misleading. If you show seconds instead of MB/s you'd see it doesn't justify the cost. Sad.

 

[BoredErica]

The Intel SSD 750 and the Samsung SM951-NVMe will show up side by side soon in another review.

That is a natural comparison and I look forward to reading it.

 

[philipemaciel]

So going from a SATA SSD to a Pci-e SSD brings huge improvements in benchmarks, but only incremental gains in real life applications?

 

[CRamseyer]

So going from a SATA SSD to a Pci-e SSD brings huge improvements in benchmarks, but only incremental gains in real life applications?

In single applications it is just another incremental performance increase in 'time to complete' tasks. You do get a nice reduction in latency, 'time to start'. The latter improves your user experience.

For workstation users running professional applications performance increases all across the board. In a workstation environment the queue depth loads increase so those users can take advantage of the increased performance at higher queue depths.

 

[Bayfront Benny]

There are other backward compatibility issues with NVMe. To my knowledge you can not clone these drives with existing cloning software (I couldn't clone the Intel 750 with Acronis), which does mean that if you want to try before you buy you have to do a complete install. Install has to be from UEFI USB I believe a per Rod's blog at RamCity. I don't think you can use DVD. Correct me if I'm wrong though. This install is OK - I've done it but definitely not something you want to do often if you really want to install all your programs and system the way you like.

 

[CRamseyer]

I didn't have an issue cloning to the SM951-NVMe with the latest version of Acronis. I haven't tried to clone to an Intel SSD 750.

 

[mapesdhs]

(with respect to Photoshop Service Time...)

"...a full 10 seconds faster..."

That sounds like a lot because we can all imagine the notion of waiting for 10 seconds for anything, but it would have been clearer and more sensible to say the NVMe was just under 3% faster, and that's really not very much at all. Indeed, in relative terms those charts show minimal speedups, to a degree that IMO means any spare cash would be much better spent on some other part of the system for those apps, or in some cases the app in question can benefit from an SSD but not in a manner that is tested here.

For example, After Effects runs best with an SSD used to hold the main and media caches, so it's an obvious thing to test for any gain with a PCIe SSD, and again NMVe over an AHCI PCI solution. You could try a render or other task, since any improvement in interactive response or render time is what matters, but it could be difficult to determine the former.

The Service Time charts don't look at all useful to me. The gains with the NVMe in each case could be a lot more, but one cannot tell as the test isn't specific to where having an SSD can make a difference for each app, AE especially.

Ian.

 

[Eggz]

If this is just the first generation of consumer NVMe, then that's pretty exciting! Especially considering that it's using older flash. I can't wait to see what's out when it's time for me to either upgrade or build another system.

 

[Bill_VA1]

Great article. I'm assuming that the SM951-NVMe would still be faster than 2 Samsung SATA3 Pros in a RAID0?

 

[Eggz]

Great article. I'm assuming that the SM951-NVMe would still be faster than 2 Samsung SATA3 Pros in a RAID0?

Yeah, where it matters (i.e. random workload), it definitely would. Doing RAID 0 doesn't make the drives retrieve small data bits any faster, just sequential operations. That is, unless you start putting together a lot of drives in RAID 0, which starts to scale the 4K random operations because data bits are striped. I don't think just two of them would make much of a difference, though. Even if it did, two 950 Pros wouldn't catch up to the 950 NVMe.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-dc-s3700-raid-0-benchmarks,3480-4.html

 

[MittRomney4President]

Will it support hardware based encryption???

 

[Phuntasm]

Seems like high bandwidth, but the real world effects are minimal. None of those benchmarks aside for artificial ones showed any end-user perceivable gains. Marginal increase at best. Given the price difference it seems this money is better spent elsewhere

 

[duken30]

Just imagine if Samsung Magician did work for the caching!!! WTF SAMSUNG?!

 

[duken30]

Just imagine if Samsung Magician did work for the caching!!! WTF SAMSUNG?!

 

[bryces]

I've got a sort of related question I'm hoping someone can answer. In our servers I've stuck with SATA SSD's because they can be mirrored via a RAID card with battery backup unit to protect the cache in event of power failure (the likes of samsung 850dc pro which can also protect SSD cache also).
Is there anything similar that these PCIe interface SSD's can use to get the protection of mirroring and power failure/cache protection?
Cheers, Bryce.

 

[mikeangs2004]

Crystaldiskmark is showing really low write numbers (~40mb/s) for sm951 512gb nvme Lenovo version, what could be the cause?
It was in Windows 10 Pro 64bit with Asrock Z97 Extreme 6 ultra m.2 nvme mode with latest bios.