Samsung SSD 960 Pro 1 TB M.2 NVMe Review Benchmark values and test results

Benchmark values and test results …

Let us continue with the benchmark results. SATA3 drives are tested with an ASRock 890GX Extreme3 motherboard and test results of mSATA and M.2 modules are performed using an ASRock Z97 Extreme6 motherboard. At present, Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition is used as the operating system.

NVMe SSD Installation …

After the installation in a free ultra M.2 the M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD was not recognized.

In order to be able using a M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD in the Ultra M.2 slot of the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 motherboard, you’ll need a BIOS update first.

Now reboot the PC …

… and now a new NVMe configuration menu is visible in the UEFI under Advanced.

There, the NVMe SSD is now properly detected and displayed.

NVMe SSD in practice …

Before we get to the benchmark results, we want to give you a few tips and hints for installing a M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD. Via e-mail and in our Hardware Forum there are frequently requests of slow SSD speed. A PCIe SSD – both a PCIe plug-in card or PCIe M.2 modules – requires a high bandwidth for fast performance. If the Samsung 960 Pro, die Samsung SM951, die Samsung SM961 oder die Intel SSD 750 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD is too slow, it is usually because the wrong slot is selected or the BIOS/UEFI has been set incorrectly.

We will help you in our PC Forum in the Hardware area – just create a new topic and write which motherboard and which PCIe M2 SSD is installed.

For the Samsung 960 there is a PCIe Gen3 x4 port needed, so a PCIe 3.0 slot with at least x4 lanes is necessary to provide a bandwidth of up to 3938 MB/s. Current ASRock motherboards offers the Ultra M.2 slot with up to 32Gb/s. If only PCIe 2.0 x4 slots are available, a maximum of 2000 MB/s is supported, so a slower PCIe SSD would be the result.

Here is a small chart of the PCIe speed rates:
PCIe 2.0 x1 500 MB/s
PCIe 2.0 x2 1000 MB/s
PCIe 2.0 x4 2000 MB/s
PCIe 2.0 x8 4000 MB/s
PCIe 2.0 x16 8000 MB/s

PCIe 3.0 x1 985 MB/s
PCIe 3.0 x2 1969 MB/s
PCIe 3.0 x4 3938 MB/s
PCIe 3.0 x8 7877 MB/s
PCIe 3.0 x16 15754 MB/s

The upcoming PCIe 4.0 standard is starting at 1969 MB/s (all informations are maximum values without protocol overhead).

You can check the correct connection with the aforementioned Samsung Magician Software.

Also very important is proper NVMe driver for the NVM Express controller. We’ve tested the Samsung 960 Pro 1 TB of course with the latest Samsung NVMe driver 2.0, which is available at Samsung.

After all these information, we come finally to the NVMe PCIe benchmarks.

The SSD drive speed was examined and compared with the following benchmark software:
AS SSD Benchmark 1.4.3704.27281 – Download
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46 – Download
CrystalDiskMark 3.00 – Download
HD Tach 3.040 – Download
SiSoftware Sandra 2011 – Download

AS SSD benchmark results

The SSD benchmark values offers a very good reference point of the maximal possible reading and writing performance, the speed with smaller files and the respective access time.

The AS SSD total score has enormously high 4675 points! That surpasses even the Intel SSD 750 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD and the Crucial MX200 SSD RAID with 2, 3 or 4 SSDs. In comparison, one Crucial MX300 750 GB SSD reached 892 points and one Crucial MX200 1 TB SSD reached 861 points.

Here is a screenshot of AS SSD benchmark values:

And here is a screenshot of AS SSD iops results:

Here is a screenshot of the AS SSD copy benchmark values:

The AS SSD benchmark comparison results are extended with each new HDD/SSD test. Here you can see some SSDs in comparison to the latest Samsung SSD 960 Pro 1TB, and the graphic will be updated periodically with new SSD drives. At the moment the top of total AS SSD scores is clearly lead from this Samsung SSD 960 Pro 1 TB, followed by the Intel SSD 750 1.2TB PCIe SSD and recently created Crucial MX200 RAID0 benchmarks.

Here is a comparison of the AS SSD benchmark values, which are gradually updated with new drives:

And here is an excerpt of the latest AS SSD benchmark results. For a better overview, they will be gradually replaced with latest drives:

ATTO disk benchmark results

The ATTO disk benchmark values gives a very good overview about the write and read rate on different file sizes. These values are maximum ratings, which are different to the previously continuous transfer rate benchmarks, since this benchmark may even reach a higher overall performance with slower SSDs.

With the Samsung SSD 960 Pro 1 TB is the read speed (green) at the smallest transfer size of approx. 0.5 KB higher than the write speed (red) and reaches the maximum read result of 2967959 KB at a transfer size of 512 KB. It’s really very fast.

Here is a screenshot of the ATTO Disk benchmark values:

The ATTO disk benchmark values are compared with a small transfer size of 32KB and a large transfer size of 8192KB. The bar chart already includes a comparison to some SSDs and HDDs, where the Samsung 960 Pro 1 TB M.2 SSD in ATTO can easily reach the top of all results.

Here is a comparison of the ATTO disk benchmark values, which are getting updated with soon coming drives:

And here is an excerpt of the latest ATTO disk benchmark values for a better overview will be gradually replaced with latest drives:

CrystalDiskMark results

With CrystalDiskMark one receives a balanced measurement of the performance with different transfer sizes.

Here the Samsung SSD 960 Pro 1 TB reached like before amazing good sequential read values of 2648 MB/s and write values of 2048 MB/s !

Here is a screenshot of the CrystalDiskMark values:

The following diagram shows the CrystalDiskMark results again in comparison to the other SSDs and hard drives, which will be expanded step by step. In the CrystalDiskMark comparison one can see significant differences between the to-date tested of the Solid State Drives and Hard Disk Drives.

Here is a comparison of the CrystalDiskMark values, which are getting updated with soon coming drives:

And here is an excerpt of the latest CrystalDiskMark values will be gradually replaced with latest drives for clarity:

HD Tach results

With HD Tach one can measure the gradient of the performance, but the SSD transfer is not comparable with a conventional HDD. New logical NAND cell access of the SSD controller results like some other equal designed SSDs in strong varying values with the latest HD Tach Version 3.0.4.0 version, which is written for hard disk drives.

HD Tach shows the Samsung 960 Pro SSD in AHCI mode at a continuous read rate with the lowest displayed access time display of approx. 0.0ms. And even the write operations shows relatively continuous transfer rates of approx. 1111,5 MB/s.

Here is a screenshot of the HD Tach benchmark values:

Here is a comparison of the HD Tach benchmark values, which are getting updated with soon coming drives:

And here is an excerpt of the latest HD tach benchmark values that will be gradually replaced with latest drives for clarity:

SiSoftware Sandra benchmark results

Of course, SiSoftware Sandra benchmark should not be missing in this test series. SiSoftware offers with their SiSoft Sandra program a very comprehensive tool, which contains a lot of tools to get very reliable test results of all hardware components.

The average access time of the Samsung SSD 960 Pro 1 TB is in SiSoftware Sandra with 19us extremely low and the drive index of 2.62 GB MB/s is extremely high.

Here is a screenshot of the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark read values:

In the write performance measurement, the average access time of the Samsung SSD 960 Pro 1 TB in SiSoftware Sandra is also at extremely low 4us and the drive index reached extremely high 2 GB/s.

Here is a screenshot of the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark write values:

Here is a comparison of the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark values, which are getting updated with soon coming drives:

And here is an excerpt of the latest SiSoftware Sandra benchmark values that will be gradually replaced with latest drives for clarity:

Samsung 960 Pro 1 TB Result and general impression …

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