Samsung 960 PRO and 960 EVO Details and Specifications

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
The crew at PC Perspective did a great job covering Samsung's Global SSD Summit in Seoul last night. The gang has all the details on Samsung's 960 PRO and 960 EVO. I've snagged a few slides just to pique your interest, you'll want to hit the link for the full presentation, performance specs and the full press release.
 
Those evo prices are great.
Now they just have to make the pros slowly go down in price as well.
 
Great fucking prices. Totally in for a 500GB EVO in my NCase build. Perfect timing too.
 
Fantastic pricing on the EVO line for a very, very fast NVMe drive over PCI-e 3.0x4. Plus, the heat spreading properties of the label! That's a really innovative solution to thermal throttling, very well done.
 
Wow, that is some fantastic pricing.

When I finally get around to getting a system with an M.2 slot, I'll definitely have my eyes on these.

Makes me think of the great deal I got on my 128Gb OCZ Agility for ~$340 in early 2010.

We've come a long way in o my a few years.
 
Was reading on another site the warranty length got chopped big time: now 5/3 years on the Pro/EVO models vs. the 10/5 years on the 850 Pro/EVO (for comparison). What's up with that?
 
Wish the 2TB was coming to the EVO. I don't see much benefit from a Pro SSD in a laptop.
 
Was reading on another site the warranty length got chopped big time: now 5/3 years on the Pro/EVO models vs. the 10/5 years on the 850 Pro/EVO (for comparison). What's up with that?

Probably a strategic decision. Those super long warranties were there to help make people comfortable with the tech. People are now more comfortable.

That and they probably realized that most people don't keep these things in their systems for that long anyway. Even 5 years is a LONG time in the computer world. 10? That is ridiculously long.

I can't even count how many drives I've gone through in my main rig in the last 5-10 years.

So I guess for me, I'm not concerned. I don't think the tech has changed somehow suddenly making it more vulnerable to failure. I have a lot of Samsung SSD's and I've never had a problem with any of them, and a drive rarely stays in my main righ for more than 2-3 years until it gets moved to backup / low criticality duty and I replace it with the latest and greatest.
 
Wish the 2TB was coming to the EVO. I don't see much benefit from a Pro SSD in a laptop.


I still live by the small fast SSD + large slow spinner for mass storage concept.

I don't store files on SSD's so I can't imaghine needing anything larger than my current 400GB Intel 750. The only reason it is that big is because I dual boot between Windows 10 and Linux, and in linux have multiple VM images I run, which use disk space. The largest amount of disk space for me is probably installed games in Windows.

If it weren't for dual booting and VM images, I could probably get away with 128GB or maybe 256.
 
Was reading on another site the warranty length got chopped big time: now 5/3 years on the Pro/EVO models vs. the 10/5 years on the 850 Pro/EVO (for comparison). What's up with that?
It's unlikely to die in 3 or 5 years and even if it does, are you going to use that 500GB SSD then? I'm guessing that by then we'll mostly be using drives that are not less than 2TB and I can imagine 4TB or larger in 5 years.
But even if I'm wrong and you like using a 500GB SSD for your boot drive, that drive will cost less than 100 bucks and it'll be faster than this one.

I'm sure many will take your side, but to me it's much adieu about nothing.
 
I still live by the small fast SSD + large slow spinner for mass storage concept.

I don't store files on SSD's so I can't imaghine needing anything larger than my current 400GB Intel 750. The only reason it is that big is because I dual boot between Windows 10 and Linux, and in linux have multiple VM images I run, which use disk space. The largest amount of disk space for me is probably installed games in Windows.

If it weren't for dual booting and VM images, I could probably get away with 128GB or maybe 256.
Problem is my laptop only takes a single drive, so if I replace the 500 GB drive, I want a huge drive. I'm fine for now. I don't need the extra space yet, and maybe they'll make a bigger EVO by the time I need one...that or the Pro drops dramatically in price.
 
Is it a worthy upgrade from 950 Pro? Asking because I saw someone mentioned the 960 pro has less cache so the overall speed is actually a bit slower than 950 pro.
 
Is it a worthy upgrade from 950 Pro? Asking because I saw someone mentioned the 960 pro has less cache so the overall speed is actually a bit slower than 950 pro.
Unless you're buying a larger capacity, why bother? For that matter, unless you're in a scenario that hammers the drive, I doubt the pro has any meaningful advantage over the EVO. That was certainly what every single review i read of the 850 SATA drives...thus I went with the EVO, though for 840, as I recall, the concensus was the Pro was better (plus I got it from a BF sale).
 
Was reading on another site the warranty length got chopped big time: now 5/3 years on the Pro/EVO models vs. the 10/5 years on the 950 Pro/EVO (for comparison). What's up with that?
If I recall correctly the SSD Pro's had a 10 year warranty while the M.2 Pro's had a 5 year warranty. So the warranty you see on the 960 PRO looks to still be in line with the warranty they had on the 950 Pro M.2. The exception is with the EVO. The 850 Evo M.2 had a 5 year warranty versus the 3 year warranty they are now listing with the 960 EVO.
 
It's unlikely to die in 3 or 5 years and even if it does, are you going to use that 500GB SSD then? I'm guessing that by then we'll mostly be using drives that are not less than 2TB and I can imagine 4TB or larger in 5 years.
But even if I'm wrong and you like using a 500GB SSD for your boot drive, that drive will cost less than 100 bucks and it'll be faster than this one.

I'm sure many will take your side, but to me it's much adieu about nothing.
Oh I don't really have a side, just funny that when the 850 line came out and they said 10-years on the Pro and 5-years on the EVO, people were jumping up and down with joy and rubbing it in the faces of the other makers with much smaller warranties.
 
Well I am buying the 960 pro because I am a geek whore who can't stop buying high performing desktop pc shit.

But ya live once right? Look for a 600p Intel drive for sale soon. Come on October, hurry up and get here!
 
'Dat 1TB Evo NVM-E. THIS is the future! No more 550MB/s SATA bottleneck!
 
960 Pro 2TB m.2... yes, I'll take a few of those please =)

StorageReview-Samsung-960-Drives(1).JPG
 
So what happens if you put one of these in a socket underneath 2 cards in sli?
 
  • Like
Reactions: lazz
like this
I still live by the small fast SSD + large slow spinner for mass storage concept.

I don't store files on SSD's so I can't imaghine needing anything larger than my current 400GB Intel 750. The only reason it is that big is because I dual boot between Windows 10 and Linux, and in linux have multiple VM images I run, which use disk space. The largest amount of disk space for me is probably installed games in Windows.

If it weren't for dual booting and VM images, I could probably get away with 128GB or maybe 256.

My steam library is much larger than 400GB. Sure I could delete them but no need with the space and they are always ready to play. If you are still running games off a spinner, I feel for you.
 
Bah... 80mm length m.2... The one weakness of the MSI Z170I ITX board I have is that it only has a screw mount for 60mm ones.
Wonder if I could get away with using one of those sticky foam pads to hold it down.
 
Finally an affordable (yet not crippled) m.2 nvme drive

In for a 256gb EVO at launch
 
I still live by the small fast SSD + large slow spinner for mass storage concept.

I don't store files on SSD's so I can't imaghine needing anything larger than my current 400GB Intel 750. The only reason it is that big is because I dual boot between Windows 10 and Linux, and in linux have multiple VM images I run, which use disk space. The largest amount of disk space for me is probably installed games in Windows.

If it weren't for dual booting and VM images, I could probably get away with 128GB or maybe 256.
Why not just run linux in a VM in windows vs loading linux to run VMs? I run lots of stuff on my desktop in VirtualBox and VMware Server. Plus I have a full dedicated ESXi box on my network for stuff that needs to run 24/7.
 
Why not just run linux in a VM in windows vs loading linux to run VMs? I run lots of stuff on my desktop in VirtualBox and VMware Server. Plus I have a full dedicated ESXi box on my network for stuff that needs to run 24/7.


Honeslty I don't even load the VM's very often anymore. Used to primarily run Windows in a Virtualbox VM I could run the Windows Only VMWare Client to access my ESXi box, but ever since I switched to Proxmox I no longer need that.

I occasionally start it up to run some test or check something in Windows I cant from Linux, but it is pretty damned rare these days.

Running a Linux VM on a Windows host seems kind of backwards to me. Usually you want the more reliable OS as the host :p
 
Running a Linux VM on a Windows host seems kind of backwards to me. Usually you want the more reliable OS as the host :p

Dunno... win7 only bluescreened on me twice in 2 years and it was because I was trying to force driver updates for an older piece of hardware...

10 has been rock sold so far, no issues to report for a whole year.
 
Are you guys seeing any measurable performance while gaming going from a SATA SSD to an M.2 NVME? Obviously they can transfer data much faster I'm just wondering if you can really tell the difference or is it all of 2 seconds?
 
Are you guys seeing any measurable performance while gaming going from a SATA SSD to an M.2 NVME? Obviously they can transfer data much faster I'm just wondering if you can really tell the difference or is it all of 2 seconds?

I don't have an m.2 drive, but I have a PCIe Intel 750 drive.

For me I've noticed next to no difference in system responsiveness or game load times between any SSD's. There was a HUGE difference in going from a hard drive to my first SSD (early 2010 120GB OCZ Agility, the first one). Everything after that, including going from my 256GB SATA Samsung 850 Pro to my Intel 750 has been marginal.

I think most of the game load time is not disk read times these days. probably has more to do with preparing textures in video RAM, pre-processing various things, etc. SSD speed just hasn't made a noticeable difference.

The only time I see some of that extra speed is during sequential file copies, and even then I'm not maxing out the speced speeds. I think you'd need some high queue depth database type stuff for that.
 
I don't have an m.2 drive, but I have a PCIe Intel 750 drive.

For me I've noticed next to no difference in system responsiveness or game load times between any SSD's. There was a HUGE difference in going from a hard drive to my first SSD (early 2010 120GB OCZ Agility, the first one). Everything after that, including going from my 256GB SATA Samsung 850 Pro to my Intel 750 has been marginal.

I think most of the game load time is not disk read times these days. probably has more to do with preparing textures in video RAM, pre-processing various things, etc. SSD speed just hasn't made a noticeable difference.

The only time I see some of that extra speed is during sequential file copies, and even then I'm not maxing out the speced speeds. I think you'd need some high queue depth database type stuff for that.

Thanks that's what I thought. If you copy or move Blu-ray quantities of data regularly I'd think the performance would be quite noticable but for your average user or gamer not so much.
 
Of course this would come out just 2 months after I finally upgraded to the 950 Pro. Oh well...not like I can use the speed with my ancient mobo anyways....already maxing out PCIe 2.0 bandwidth with the 950 Pro.
 
Most game loading time is restricted by a single threaded read, not exceeding 32MB/sec. This is because most games are not multi-threaded for loading and they need to prevent disk thrashing for folks with spinning disks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: c3k
like this
Great timing on the 960 news. I was just considering a 950... Now I'll wait. I hope the prices don't jump. Sigh.
 
I was honestly thinking about getting a 1TB Intel 600p, but might swing for the 1TB EVO depending on the price. The new EVO is significantly quicker.
 
I've just been grabbing 1.2TB iodrive IIs off of ebay for $400ea for my servers.

I'll still buy a 1TB 960 for my laptop asap.
 
I've just been grabbing 1.2TB iodrive IIs off of ebay for $400ea for my servers.

I'll still buy a 1TB 960 for my laptop asap.

I have a two Oracle F40 (400GB - $90 Each) and a single F80 (800GB - $165) that I purchased and have been using since. I like the devices, but they run warm and are sandwiched against other PCIe devices. It'd be nice to have the space back, power savings, and form factor of these new drives.
 
Back
Top