Buy 960 nvme now or wait?

V

vidoprof

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 3, 2007
Messages
468
I am in no real rush to buy a NVME drive right now. I will have to buy one in the next 3 months at some point (my business gets busy beginning of April and I will want one by then).

I know no one can predict the future, but maybe you guys have some insights...

My question. Do you see any real price breaks coming, since ram prices are so high right now? Is there any tech on the horizon that might bring down the price of these, or possibly something better for the same price?

I am looking at the 1Tb 960 NVME from newegg here (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147597)

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Ryan G
 
vidoprof said:
I am in no real rush to buy a NVME drive right now. I will have to buy one in the next 3 months at some point (my business gets busy beginning of April and I will want one by then).

I know no one can predict the future, but maybe you guys have some insights...

My question. Do you see any real price breaks coming, since ram prices are so high right now? Is there any tech on the horizon that might bring down the price of these, or possibly something better for the same price?

I am looking at the 1Tb 960 NVME from newegg here (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147597)

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Ryan G
Click to expand...


I am in a similar boat.

Hover Hound says that is $624 with prime on amazon, vs Newegg $632.

If you don't NEED that edition, the Samsung 960 non pro edition is $469

Same price on Amazon w/Prime according to Hover Hound.
 
KarsusTG said:
I am in a similar boat.

Hover Hound says that is $624 with prime on amazon, vs Newegg $632.

If you don't NEED that edition, the Samsung 960 non pro edition is $469

Same price on Amazon w/Prime according to Hover Hound.
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Thanks man.. I meant to link the EVO edition for sure. Again I don't need to buy but I am probably going to in the next 3 months. IF prices aren't going to change much I might as well buy it now, vs waiting for 3 months. If they are going to trend down then I can / will wait..

Ryan G
 
vidoprof said:
Thanks man.. I meant to link the EVO edition for sure. Again I don't need to buy but I am probably going to in the next 3 months. IF prices aren't going to change much I might as well buy it now, vs waiting for 3 months. If they are going to trend down then I can / will wait..

Ryan G
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I don't think anyone knows for sure if the prices will drop. Everyone I talked to seems to think they will drop in 2018, but I have to pick one up in the next month or so which means I am probably boned.
 
KarsusTG said:
I don't think anyone knows for sure if the prices will drop. Everyone I talked to seems to think they will drop in 2018, but I have to pick one up in the next month or so which means I am probably boned.
Click to expand...

Yea I really don't NEED one for a few months.. but IF the prices don't come down for like 6 months why wait? Plus how much are they REALLY going to come down? Who knows when the 970 is coming, cause MAYBE that might bring the price down a little...

I know, sadly, no one knows.. but just thought maybe someone had some kind of answer.

I might just bite the bullet and get it sooner, but I might be building a new rig and if so I can wait then until Beginning of April. Maybe new stuff will be out by then.


Thanks
Ryan G
 
I would not buy Samsung 960 nvme, in my benchmarks for random write I get only 1000 iops, where with Intel 900p Optane I get 500 000 iops. That is a 500x difference!!!
 
olavgg said:
I would not buy Samsung 960 nvme, in my benchmarks for random write I get only 1000 iops, where with Intel 900p Optane I get 500 000 iops. That is a 500x difference!!!
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Comparing a product that comes in limited storage options, costs almost 3x more per GB, uses a completely different form factor, etc.

I guess if you're the type of person who likes to brag about synthetics, then, yeah... you have a point. The OP has to consider what's "reasonable" to his/her needs.
 
Still the old Intel 320 give me up 8000 iops for the same benchmarks.
I would just get a SSD that gives most GB of storage per $.

If you need performance, then Samsung 960 NVME does far from cut it. The truth is, most consumer level SSD's perform almost equally bad.
 
olavgg said:
Still the old Intel 320 give me up 8000 iops for the same benchmarks.
I would just get a SSD that gives most GB of storage per $.

If you need performance, then Samsung 960 NVME does far from cut it. The truth is, most consumer level SSD's perform almost equally bad.
Click to expand...

To be honest it really looks like you're digging deep trying to justify your Optane. When you start making posts about how bad all SSDs that aren't yours perform, you've jumped the shark.
 
I appreciate your optane comments.. but that's just not in the budget... PLUS.. ALL NVME drives perform SIGNIFICANTLY better than almost ALL SSDs. So I will chance it.. but thanks.

Now bad to our program.

Any ideas if RAM prices are dropping anytime soon? :)

Thanks
Ryan G
 
Evo 960 NUMBERS.png 850 Evo numbers.png
I just picked up a 960 for a boot drive . Wow, just wow. I just trimmed it and the number got even better
 
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That's a good reminder - I just checked and mine haven't been optimised for 21 days! (Supposed to be scheduled weekly... who knows what happened there)
 
Bench about the same. a little more writes but slightly less IOPS. Idk all the nvme's are pretty nice, if you need a good boot drive why not?
 
brentsg said:
To be honest it really looks like you're digging deep trying to justify your Optane. When you start making posts about how bad all SSDs that aren't yours perform, you've jumped the shark.
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Actually it is very easy to prove this.

You can use fio, dd or pg_test_fsync

For example
Code: 
$ sudo fio --filename=/dev/nvme0n1 --direct=1 --sync=1 --rw=write --bs=4k --numjobs=10 --iodepth=1 --runtime=10 --time_based --group_reporting --name=journal-test
Code: 
$ sudo pg_test_fsync -f /mnt/nvme_drive
Code: 
# write random file
$ sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=randfile bs=1M count=1024 && sync
# write the random file to your drive
sudo dd if=randfile of=/dev/sda bs=4k count=100000 oflag=direct,dsync

You can also try benchmarking SQLite that very many desktop applications use.
There are also other benchmarks optimized for reading/write workloads over hours. The Intel 320 may fall short here, but Intel S3700 will still outperform a Samsung 960 PRO.

Most users need a SSD with low latency and great burst performance.
The Samsung 960 PRO is good for burst, but fails horribly for latency. In some cases when a lot of read is involved, more RAM will help, for writes no.

With Optane you get awesome latency which really makes a difference and you can still have excellent performance without needing upgrading your RAM.
 
olavgg said:
Actually it is very easy to prove this.

You can use fio, dd or pg_test_fsync

For example
Code: 
$ sudo fio --filename=/dev/nvme0n1 --direct=1 --sync=1 --rw=write --bs=4k --numjobs=10 --iodepth=1 --runtime=10 --time_based --group_reporting --name=journal-test
Code: 
$ sudo pg_test_fsync -f /mnt/nvme_drive
Code: 
# write random file
$ sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=randfile bs=1M count=1024 && sync
# write the random file to your drive
sudo dd if=randfile of=/dev/sda bs=4k count=100000 oflag=direct,dsync

You can also try benchmarking SQLite that very many desktop applications use.
There are also other benchmarks optimized for reading/write workloads over hours. The Intel 320 may fall short here, but Intel S3700 will still outperform a Samsung 960 PRO.

Most users need a SSD with low latency and great burst performance.
The Samsung 960 PRO is good for burst, but fails horribly for latency. In some cases when a lot of read is involved, more RAM will help, for writes no.

With Optane you get awesome latency which really makes a difference and you can still have excellent performance without needing upgrading your RAM.
Click to expand...

And RAM is steep these days.

I have 2x 480GB 900P’s and while I can’t prove massive time savings while working to “justify” the 2x price, to me there’s a noticeable “quality of life” difference while I work, and that’s all the justification I need. I also expect performance to substantially increase as Microsoft and Intel improve drivers and system software (read PCPer’s testing of the meltdown/spectre patch with a pre-release windows build, Optane performance actually increased substantially vs an expected hit)
 
Tyns said:
And RAM is steep these days.

I have 2x 480GB 900P’s and while I can’t prove massive time savings while working to “justify” the 2x price, to me there’s a noticeable “quality of life” difference while I work, and that’s all the justification I need. I also expect performance to substantially increase as Microsoft and Intel improve drivers and system software (read PCPer’s testing of the meltdown/spectre patch with a pre-release windows build, Optane performance actually increased substantially vs an expected hit)
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, do you have your 900P's raided?
 
H2R2P2 said:
Out of curiosity, do you have your 900P's raided?
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No, that would wreck the latency advantages of the drives, and 2GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for me (plus hourly backups etc. for data protection)
 
Tyns said:
No, that would wreck the latency advantages of the drives, and 2GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for me (plus hourly backups etc. for data protection)
Click to expand...

Makes sense. I too have a 900P but have a few RAID'd 960 Pro's as well. I use the 900P for OS and Apps while using the 960 Pro's for storage. I also use a RAM based cache drive for the 960's to help with latency times. Doing this on a Zenith Exthere Threadripper, so I have the lanes to actually pull all this off... :)
 
olavgg said:
Still the old Intel 320 give me up 8000 iops for the same benchmarks.
I would just get a SSD that gives most GB of storage per $.

If you need performance, then Samsung 960 NVME does far from cut it. The truth is, most consumer level SSD's perform almost equally bad.
Click to expand...
And what benchmark would that be? Seems you're being intentionally cryptic. I certainly haven't heard anyone complaining about their samsung nvme drives performance until now.
 
Frankly I'd buy it now. Even it comes down in price it's probably not going to be a spectacular drop (and who knows some disaster, flood whatever, could drive the price up). But better to get it now, put it in, test it, break it in. If something goes wrong with it you'll have time to deal with it before your busy season. Just my two cents.
 
That is odd.
Kwaz said:
Weird. For the life of me I can't get my 960 EVO to work with Magician
Click to expand...
Did you use th e proper format when you installed the drive? (Choose GPT)
 
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Am am looking now an an NVME drive and the new Intel 760p SSDs look pretty nice. Fast on the reads, not as fast on writes, so as a boot drive and app launcher should be a good drive. Right now, largest is 500GB, but a 1TB is coming soon.

Here it is on new egg.
 
Now all I need is a case that lends itself to wire management. I love this old case but its showing its age. I am an old untalented guy. I need a case with a design that has wire management in mind. Well at least the 960 can breath

20180130_203307.jpg
 
Tyns said:
Why, you more than doubled your latency, do you really need the extra 600MB/s seq write?
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Also doubled the chances of a drive error/failure taking out the system. Silly e-peen bragging.

If you really need a SSD that large (unlikely), look to the enterprise drives from Intel, etc.
 
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