NEW Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVMe (think SM951 with VNAND & Black PCB) yum!

bro306 · 5 Nov 2015 at 00:56

neiljwd said:
Magician also reported that for me, however CrystalDisk gives me this:
Fresh Win10 install.

Magician is defo not 100% right, showed my friends 840 at read speeds of four thousand 4 hundred MB's...

Thats because rapid is enabled!!!

TheDynamo · 5 Nov 2015 at 10:05

For those that were wondering - tested a game that i had on a seperate drive and then moved over onto this drive and the loading times are loads quicker. Went from 20 seconds to around 5 seconds.... some less.

Omar · 5 Nov 2015 at 10:52

What was the other drive though? A mechanical hard drive or an SSD?

TheDynamo · 5 Nov 2015 at 14:25

Other drive was a Toshiba 3TB 7200RPM SATA 6GBs 64MB Cache

Omar · 5 Nov 2015 at 14:33

Ah yes, most SSDs will blow away a mechanical drive fairly easily.

** No competitor prices **

Omar · 6 Nov 2015 at 00:03

Very strange, my post was edited because it mentioned pricing elsewhere but other posts in this thread remain?

VincentHanna · 6 Nov 2015 at 12:16

I just said a competitor undercharged me.

I'm guessing you were more specific?

delpy8 · 6 Nov 2015 at 12:23

I see Samsung have released a 950 pro driver called ,Samsung NVMe Driver Installer,

http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...UZgdfs3KIiZk6FNWzuFy_iWOTW2Pck2B1sBoCJ-fw_wcB

I assumed it would be plug and play?

Omar · 6 Nov 2015 at 12:25

VincentHanna said:
I just said a competitor undercharged me.

I'm guessing you were more specific?

The above posts include prices which I did also, I didn't name any competitor.

delpy8 said:
I see Samsung have released a 950 pro driver called ,Samsung NVMe Driver Installer,

http://www.samsung.com/global/busin...UZgdfs3KIiZk6FNWzuFy_iWOTW2Pck2B1sBoCJ-fw_wcB

I assumed it would be plug and play?

The drive itself will work without the driver, the driver improves performance in Windows though.

delpy8 · 6 Nov 2015 at 12:31

Omar said:
The above posts include prices which I did also, I didn't name any competitor.

The drive itself will work without the driver, the driver improves performance in Windows though.

Cheers Omar any comparisons with driver installed and not?

Omar · 6 Nov 2015 at 12:34

delpy8 said:
Cheers Omar any comparisons with driver installed and not?

I haven't seen any specific results, someone who has the drive on this thread might be able to help, otherwise I might be able to post some before/after results over the weekend if my drive arrives today.

This was mentioned on the AnandTech review of the Samsung 951 drive:

I have a strong feeling that NVMe is capable of much more, but the technology needs time to mature. From what I have talked to SSD OEMs, the generic NVMe driver that Microsoft includes in Windows 8.1 has some severe shortcomings, which is why nearly everyone has their own custom driver at least for now. I think Samsung and the SM951-NVMe desperately need that to unleash the full potential of the drive and I sure hope that the retail version of the drive will feature one.

This might indicate that it's more of an issue with Windows 8.1, perhaps the built-in Windows 10 driver might be better. My current machine runs Windows 10 so will only be able to see what the difference is on that OS with and without the Samsung driver.

mikeo · 6 Nov 2015 at 13:32

Though the Windows 10 Nvme driver is much more mature and works just fine, with the SM951 at least.

Be interested myself to see how Samsung's own driver compares to the native Windows 10 driver. Obviously aware that the new Samsung driver is only for the new 950 drives.

delpy8 · 6 Nov 2015 at 13:39

mikeo said:
Though the Windows 10 Nvme driver is much more mature and works just fine, with the SM951 at least.

Be interested myself to see how Samsung's own driver compares to the native Windows 10 driver. Obviously aware that the new Samsung driver is only for the new 950 drives.

Ive installed the 950 pro driver just to see how if it would work with my two sm951 but made no difference to performance

delpy8 · 6 Nov 2015 at 19:32

Omar said:
I haven't seen any specific results, someone who has the drive on this thread might be able to help, otherwise I might be able to post some before/after results over the weekend if my drive arrives today.

This was mentioned on the AnandTech review of the Samsung 951 drive:

This might indicate that it's more of an issue with Windows 8.1, perhaps the built-in Windows 10 driver might be better. My current machine runs Windows 10 so will only be able to see what the difference is on that OS with and without the Samsung driver.

Thanks Omar itching to get a 950 pro but cant justify the cost when I have two SM951

Omar · 6 Nov 2015 at 21:57

delpy8 said:
Thanks Omar itching to get a 950 pro but cant justify the cost when I have two SM951

Getting a 950 Pro if you already have an NVMe SM951 would be madness. It's still a fantastic drive and the speed difference is minimal, some benchmarks in favour of the SM951, some for the 950 Pro.

Getting an SM951 over a 950 Pro now that it's out would be madness. It has a much longer warranty, proper software support from Samsung and is not a massive premium over the SM951 if you shop around a bit. Prices will almost certainly come down a bit in a few weeks when the stock situation around the 512GB version is sorted out.

Rofflay · 6 Nov 2015 at 22:00

I would wait until mid 2016 if i had two SM951... Next year is the year of 3D X-Point flash for pretty much everything.... Intel Optane is promising but Samsung and Crucial will all be in on the X-Point game.

950 pro and 3D Nand is numbered, It will be lucky to be on sale in 12 months fingers crossed!

Omar · 6 Nov 2015 at 22:08

Some benchmarks in Windows 10 (click images for full size):

My existing 480GB Crucial M500 SSD:

512GB Samsung 950 Pro with the built-in Windows 10 NVMe driver:

512GB Samsung 950 Pro with the Samsung NVMe driver:

As you can see there doesn't seem to be much in it, the results change a bit between runs too, but not enough to concern me.

delpy8 · 6 Nov 2015 at 22:17

Omar said:
Some benchmarks in Windows 10 (click images for full size):

My existing 480GB Crucial M500 SSD:

512GB Samsung 950 Pro with the built-in Windows 10 NVMe driver:

512GB Samsung 950 Pro with the Samsung NVMe driver:

As you can see there doesn't seem to be much in it, the results change a bit between runs too, but not enough to concern me.

Great stuff Omar thanks, Will probably get a 512gb eventually and raid 0 the two 256gb in a Z170 setup

Omar · 6 Nov 2015 at 23:46

I used the Samsung Data Migration application to clone my Crucial M500 to the 950 Pro, removed the Crucial drive from the machine and uninstalled the Intel Rapid Storage application as I think it's only for SATA drives.

There was a Windows 10 update rollup to install then I rebooted and ran the benchmark a couple more times, looks like one of the sequential write results seems to have gone up by quite a bit:

In case anyone is wondering this was not run on the machine in my sig.

The machine I ran it on is my gaming HTPC:

Intel Core i5-6600K
Gigabyte Z170X-UD3
16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2400MHz DDR4
6GB EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC+ ACX 2.0+

shamus21 · 7 Nov 2015 at 07:00

Rofflay said:
I would wait until mid 2016 if i had two SM951... Next year is the year of 3D X-Point flash for pretty much everything.... Intel Optane is promising but Samsung and Crucial will all be in on the X-Point game.

950 pro and 3D Nand is numbered, It will be lucky to be on sale in 12 months fingers crossed!

Yes and hopefully Max out those 4 x pci-e lanes.