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REAL WORLD FILE TRANSFER
We also wanted to see how performance was in a real-world use when transferring large files to the SSD. For this test, we are going to simply stress write performance by transferring over a 30GB folder of movies off of a 512GB Samsung 950 Pro to the test SSDs and time how long it takes. Once complete we can calculate the average speed.
During this test the Samsung 960 EVO absolutely killed it…and got killed by it. The 1TB model’s performance matched the 2TB 960 Pro’s performance and is tied for the #1 position. The 250GB on the other hand was beat out by Samsung’s SATA based 850 Pro. The 13GB TurboWrite buffer couldn’t keep up with the 30GB of writes thrown at it and the average sank down to 479MB/s, placing it dead last.
POWER CONSUMPTION
For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. To record the wattage, we are now utilizing a Quarch Technology Programmable Power Module. It allows us to accurately measure power consumption over time and is flexible enough to allow us to test any SSD that comes our way.
Our power analysis may change as time goes on, but for now we are looking at just a few metrics with the main goal of measuring our results against the manufacturer’s ratings. Because most consumer systems are at idle for about 80% of the time, idle power consumption is an important measure to look at when understanding the efficiency of a drive.
On the bright side, the 960 EVO’s idle power consumption with active-state power management (ASPM) disabled is the lowest we have tested yet.
POWER EFFICIENCY
Finally, we wanted to post up a graph of the power efficiency of the SSDs in comparison. We are looking at MB/s per Watt in this graph. The higher the result, the better.
During this test, we saw a max of 4.9W out of the 250GB model and 6.1W out of the 1TB model. Average wattage was 3.3W and 4.2W for each capacity respectively. As you can see from the graph above, the 1TB 960 EVO ranks second overall, just behind the 960 Pro. Additionally, the 250GB model was able to beat out the Intel 750 and HyperX Predator in this metric thanks to its lower power consumption overall.
This is a great review. Very detailed and well written, congrats! 🙂 Very “AnandTech” like, and that’s a compliment since I also love their geeky reviews.
One question, if you don’t mind, since you surely have a lot of experience with SSDs:
I own a Asus P8Z68-V Pro motherboard and a Intel 2500k CPU, overclocked to 4.4ghz. Yes, it’s 5 year old but to be honest I didn’t yet really feel the need to upgrade since the last 5 CPU generations were small performance upgrades, and this one still seems to be working great. I blame AMD for that of course, it’s the lack of competition that makes Intel not even try to revolutionize the market.
Here’s the link for my motherboard specs: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8Z68V_PRO/specifications/
I’ve been using a 120gb Vertex 3 Sata drive and it works great but the lack of space is annoying. Doom 2016 game, for instance, is 50gb alone so I had to put it on the HDD drive and the loading time takes forever.
I know that my PCIe is only 1.0 x4 but I could buy a PCIe 3.0 x4 to M.2 adapter for cheap and it would be retro compatible, even if working at lower speeds. Is there a PCIe 2.0 x16 (graphic card length)with to M.2 adapter?
Would I notice any real world difference if I upgrade from my Vertex 3 to a Samsung 960 Evo M.2 SSD with my current setup (with the adapter of course), or should I just buy a 500gb sata Samsung 850 Evo SSD?
And I if go the 850 Evo way, will I notice any performance difference at all?
Thanks 🙂
Cheers
Andre Mendes
No you wouldn’t, unless you transfer/work with very large files.
Thanks for the answer but this was 3 months ago. I just bought a 850 Evo 512gb Sata SSD and it works great. Cheers
Hello,
this is benchmark of a 960 evo m.2 256gb – why is so different (slow) about yours?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6LqA7tts9LeOEpWbk1oeWRidm8/view?usp=sharing
Thank you!
C.
I cannot answer why that result is so much slower than ours. Sorry.
Why are all my results so much faster than yours? 6GB/sec on multiple benchmarks and I only have the 250GB 960 EVO NVMe m.2
DIdn’t tested myself, but I heard that v3 and v5 gives different results, so make sure you use same version from review sites.
This is like SSHD (HDD + 8GB of SSD Cache).
960 EVO is like SSSLC (SSD + 13GB of SLC Cache)
Write 20GB file on SSHD, it drops to 100 MB/s after 8GB.
Write 20GB file on 960 EVO, it drops to 300 MB/s after 13GB, like any cheap SATA SSD.
Just a drive to fool people in thinking they bought the greatest SSD of all time. You actually bought 13GB of fast storage + 237 GB of Kingston V300.
Good job Samsung! You really know how to sell cheap products for hundreds of $$$.
Is it true for the read speed as well? I don’t think I’ll write more than 13 GB at once apart from when I am installing the OS. Can it read all 250 GB at 3300 MBps?
Read and write top performance will ever be reached very seldom and in very specific instances. I have yet to ever see any drive reach maximum performance during true transfer testing of files, although other tests have demonstrated this.