So when you installed windows 10 did you unplug all other devices like sata 3 n 6 drives? Did you use a usb stick to load win 10 or a cdrom? I'm amazed how it found that device as bootable. Do you see the 950 in your storage device section of your bios and what is it named under bootable devices? Sorry for all the questions I just want to be sure this works.
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Samsung 950 PRO [Official Thread]
- Thread starter sblantipodi
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So when you installed windows 10 did you unplug all other devices like sata 3 n 6 drives? Did you use a usb stick to load win 10 or a cdrom? I'm amazed how it found that device as bootable. Do you see the 950 in your storage device section of your bios and what is it named under bootable devices? Sorry for all the questions I just want to be sure this works.
I did unplug all my other SATA drives (old Samsung 840 EVO that was my previous storage drive) and an optical drive. Installed via USB using the Windows Media Creation tool. It shows up in the boot device list of my BIOS but I think it was listed as IDE for some reason. I'll reboot later and take a pic for you (just PM me if I forget to do it by tonight). I just remember seeing it in the BIOS the first time I turned the system on after plugging in the 950 Pro. I was just happy that it showed up so I went straight to installing Win 10. The drive was listed in the Win 10 installer so I just let Windows do its thing.
Sequential reads were over 1600 MB/s in CDM (pretty sure it's limited by PCI-e 2.0). Sequential writes over 900 MB/s. I had some throttling in some of the CDM benchmarks until I put some copper heatsinks on. Read some reviews that said the 950 Pro's SMART temperature may not be what the controller actually uses to base its throttling on, but I got a ~10C reduction on the SMART temperature per AIDA64. Also used an IR thermometer and saw roughly the same change based on surface temperatures.
SomeGuy133
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is that going through PCH? Pch is limited to 1600 on hw and some other gens. Sorry been busy so not sure what specs of system being talked about but thought i would mention that
Not sure what PCH is? We're talking about using the 950 Pro as a boot drive on legacy BIOS systems...in my case, an Asus Rampage III Gene.
SomeGuy133
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is it going through regular PCIe or PCIe connected to the PCH?
what gen CPU/MB are we talking about?
The drive is installed with a PCI-e adapter card that's plugged into a PCI-e 2.0 x4 slot. Still don't know what PCH is....I can tell you the SSD is not traveling down the Pacific Coast Highway, nor is it entering itself in any Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes.
Platform Controller Hub - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Typically has 4 slower PCIe lanes associated with it, so if your other PCIe lanes are 3.0 and you're using the 2.0 then it's definitely going through the PCH, if it's the only 4 lane PCIe slot on the board, it's probably through the PCH
SomeGuy133
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yea you are going through the PCH which is limited to ~1600MBps for HW...not sure what Z__ chipset you are using. The PCH also has more latency. So if you bench your SATA and M.2 you will see reduced performance on both as they are fighting for the 1600MBps.
read this to see how the PCH has a bandwidth limit. This is using several SSDs in RAID 0 but the 950PRO is basically the same thing lol the future
Results: RAID 0 Performance - Six SSD DC S3500 Drives And Intel's RST: Performance In RAID, Tested
yea you are going through the PCH which is limited to ~1600MBps for HW...not sure what Z__ chipset you are using. The PCH also has more latency. So if you bench your SATA and M.2 you will see reduced performance on both as they are fighting for the 1600MBps.
read this to see how the PCH has a bandwidth limit. This is using several SSDs in RAID 0 but the 950PRO is basically the same thing lol the future
Results: RAID 0 Performance - Six SSD DC S3500 Drives And Intel's RST: Performance In RAID, Tested
I don't think X58 uses PCH. It's ICH, unless that's a different thing. Never heard of PCH before, although I'm on a 6 year old system and I haven't built anything more recent.
Anyhow, I always figured the ~1600 MB/s limit was due to PCI-e 2.0 bandwidth limitations. That's why I went with the 256GB instead of the 512GB, since I wouldn't really benefit too much from the extra speed on the larger drive.
SomeGuy133
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its possible but it could also be the ICH limits too. I cant find the ICH specs from a quick google so whatever.
Anyone know how to actually turn off ramdisk? I've ended the program and it still benches with speeds as if ramdisk is still running. I was trying to test the waterblock cooling on this thing over my air temps with the heat sinks but yea still getting the insane high numbers because of ramdisk. :-(
SomeGuy133
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uninstall the p[program?
I don't want to remove it I just want to turn it off to see what the water block does for cooling the ssd under full benchmark to see the improvement. Currently the temp doesn't change from 31C because it's running on ram disk the whole test.
Look in task manager startup or task scheduler library to see if there's anything related that can be disabled. Regarding water blocks for SSDs....Did you imply that you're using one on a 950 Pro?
SomeGuy133
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or just uninstall and reinstall....
Well after an extensive joke of a night (Thank you Samsung Migration software) I'm finally up after you guessed it another fresh Win 10 OS install (Again thank you Samsung Migration Software). Got my new 950 Pro 256GB installed in my daily/media server.
Not exactly happy with temps 58C max while running Crystal Mark. I think the higher temps hurt the benchmark. The 512GB ran cooler in my game rig with a pci-e expansion card and the heatsinks I'm currently using. I decided to go with a motherboard install in this build though. I don't want the extra card installed since the board has a m.2 slot on the front. I just don't have enough airflow I guess to keep it any cooler. I want a quite computer though so I'm not going to remove the voltage reducers from my fans to increase the fan speed.
Should rapid mode be available in Samsung magician? It says not available for 840 Pro and up drives? My link speed according to Magician is 8X and it says that is the max. Link width though is x4 and bandwidth is 32Gbps. Which are the max. Idle temp now after typing this is 45C so the heatsinks are keeping the drive pretty cool considering but I would like the idle to be much lower.
Can't install a Kryo m.2 in this computer as I'm running a closed loop H100i GTX so no expansion for another device and that would force me to install an expansion card which I don't want to do in this build as I mentioned.
Not exactly happy with temps 58C max while running Crystal Mark. I think the higher temps hurt the benchmark. The 512GB ran cooler in my game rig with a pci-e expansion card and the heatsinks I'm currently using. I decided to go with a motherboard install in this build though. I don't want the extra card installed since the board has a m.2 slot on the front. I just don't have enough airflow I guess to keep it any cooler. I want a quite computer though so I'm not going to remove the voltage reducers from my fans to increase the fan speed.
Should rapid mode be available in Samsung magician? It says not available for 840 Pro and up drives? My link speed according to Magician is 8X and it says that is the max. Link width though is x4 and bandwidth is 32Gbps. Which are the max. Idle temp now after typing this is 45C so the heatsinks are keeping the drive pretty cool considering but I would like the idle to be much lower.
Can't install a Kryo m.2 in this computer as I'm running a closed loop H100i GTX so no expansion for another device and that would force me to install an expansion card which I don't want to do in this build as I mentioned.
SomeGuy133
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58C is perfect under load. assuming it is actually reading the temp regularly and accurately. How often does that refresh the temp?
Not sure when you read the post I kept adding more lol. May wanna look over it again.
It refreshes as fast as I can hit F5 or 1 minute. Which I hit F5 for a more accurate reading because a ton can happen in 1 minute.
To just wait for the GC-Extreme to solidify some so I can turn my case rightside up :-(
SomeGuy133
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The lower the temperature the better, but the jury is still out as to what exactly is triggering throttling. I've seen throttling on a 512GB at 46C, so there's probably some other factor involved.
SomeGuy133
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hey guys i need to reinstall win7 on my 950 pro. Wasn't there a guide?
nofearek9
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from search online lot of forums i've saw that legacy bios have the following NVME SSDs :
Samsung 950 Pro
Plextor M8PEY
Plextor M6e
Kingston HyperX Predator
BUT I have not tested them that actual work ,just saw other members confirm that they manage to boot with legacy bios.before buying i would contact the manufacturer just to be sure.
Samsung 950 Pro
Plextor M8PEY
Plextor M6e
Kingston HyperX Predator
BUT I have not tested them that actual work ,just saw other members confirm that they manage to boot with legacy bios.before buying i would contact the manufacturer just to be sure.
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So I'm still stumped as to why my 256gb is not performing properly. I've even cleared space down to only 47% vs only having about 32gb remaining yet still getting about the same results since I tested back in Jan. I'll have an EX920 1TB here by Thursday so I'll be saying adios to the 950 Pro and it's degraded performance. I'm just wondering what is going on with it to be running like it is. LOL. Temps don't break 44C running CDM.
I'll upload my initial test once I got it working right a few years ago where it was pulling the advertised numbers.
Then the test from a few posts up done in Jan 19
and the test I just did which pretty much mirrors the Jan tests when it was nearly full.
I'll upload my initial test once I got it working right a few years ago where it was pulling the advertised numbers.
Then the test from a few posts up done in Jan 19
and the test I just did which pretty much mirrors the Jan tests when it was nearly full.
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All updated per Magician anyway and good status
Although looking on Samsung it isn't the newest Magician even though checking for an update says I have the newest so installing the newest now and verifying the fw/driver numbers also since the program lies. LOL
FW is correct. The new Magician doesn't report nvme driver version which is odd so I went digging under devices and it looks like the driver that windows sees for it is the windows one:
Driver provider: Microsoft
Driver Date: 6/21/06
Driver Version: 10.0.17763.1
Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows.
Going to try and replace the driver with the Sammy and see what happens. The old Magician and new one both show the Sammy driver. Little puzzled why windows shows the driver is the windows one.
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Well it appears the Samsung driver is just an install program which I ran and restarted. Magician still shows sammy is the driver yet device manager shows Microsoft. Looking around I found an article I'm still going through but it mentions this:
"“the performance difference was due to the Microsoft NVMe driver creating FUA (Force Unit Access) I/O write commands. These FUA commands bypass the DRAM cache on the SSD and directly write to the flash, increasing the response time and also lowering bandwidth. For the same access traces, this situation does not happen with the Microsoft AHCI driver.”"
Which sounds like what is going on for me.
Well I don't get it. The post I was reading kinda lead to a dead end and doesn't mention anything or how to force windows itself to see the sammy driver.
Under Device Manager/Disk Drives/950 PRO is where it shows the Microsoft Driver I mentioned above but if I go to Storage Controllers the Samsung NVME driver is listed.
Under Device Manager/Disk Drives/950 PRO is where it shows the Microsoft Driver I mentioned above but if I go to Storage Controllers the Samsung NVME driver is listed.
Well got it sorted for my daily with the 256gig it seems the damn thing was using a very old sammy driver 1.something when the new one is 3.1. Why Magician says everything is up to snuff and it wasn't......
Now I've double checked my game rigs 512gb 950 and it was also using the old 1. something driver so updated that and rebooted.
I think it's having issues with one of the numbers but it's hard to tell because the CDM's are different versions from my initial test to the current version.
is the old versions Seq the new versions 4KIB Q8T8? If so those numbers aren't even close from my original run 3 years ago. We are talking about 1,000pts difference between then and now. LOL
Now I've double checked my game rigs 512gb 950 and it was also using the old 1. something driver so updated that and rebooted.
I think it's having issues with one of the numbers but it's hard to tell because the CDM's are different versions from my initial test to the current version.
is the old versions Seq the new versions 4KIB Q8T8? If so those numbers aren't even close from my original run 3 years ago. We are talking about 1,000pts difference between then and now. LOL
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Well hell I dunno what's going on with it. Went to run CDM again this morning to snag a new screen shot of the bench for when I sell the drive since my EX920 1TB will be here today and the Following are lower then Tuesday:
Seq Q32 Read is 1410 vs 2070
Seq 1110 vs 1986
Everything else is virtually the same +- a few points. I don't know if the computer being up since making the post above back on Tuesday has anything to do with performance or not. The only thing that writes to this drive is what ever windows does along with browser cache etc. All my media etc is on my spinning drives.
Apparently the drive being up for 2 days was the culprit as it seems a fresh reboot yields an on para bench to Tuesday.
Seq Q32 Read is 1410 vs 2070
Seq 1110 vs 1986
Everything else is virtually the same +- a few points. I don't know if the computer being up since making the post above back on Tuesday has anything to do with performance or not. The only thing that writes to this drive is what ever windows does along with browser cache etc. All my media etc is on my spinning drives.
Apparently the drive being up for 2 days was the culprit as it seems a fresh reboot yields an on para bench to Tuesday.
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Why do you want to slow down your drive just to be able to fake higher score in benchmarks?
You do realize that was from nearly 3 years ago right?