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Samsung's 960 Pro and 960 Evo SSDs Marry Crazy-Fast Speeds With Roomy Capacity (pcworld.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Samsung is following up its NVMe successes from 2015 with some fresh blazing-fast M.2 SSDs for storage geeks. The company just announced the Samsung 960 Pro and 960 Evo during this year's Samsung SSD Global Summit. As with 2015's 950 Pro NVMe SSDs, the new 960 series marries stacked V-NAND density with the Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) specification. They also use a 4-lane PCIe 3.0 interface, just like the 950 Pro. The 960 Evo and Pro will roll out in October with prices starting at $130 and $330, respectively. The 960 Evo will be available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities, while the Pro offers 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB versions. The Evo utilizes cheaper and more tightly packed TLC (triple-level cell) NAND, while the Pro sports speedier MLC (multi-level cell) NAND. That 2TB maximum is double the top capacity Samsung offered with the 950 Pro in 2015, and in another age would've earned the moniker "jaw dropping" for packing that much storage into an M.2 SSD. But this is the age of the 1TB SDXC card, so maybe sheer capacity increases aren't as impressive as they used to be. Seagate also announced a 2TB M.2 storage option for enterprises in July.BetaNews has more details.

24 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Okay, but will it explode? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Samsung products tend to explode.

    1. Re:Okay, but will it explode? by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 1

      Saumsung products do give you more bang for your bucks.

      --

      Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification

  2. Missed headline opportunity by Overzeetop · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Capacity of Samsung's New 960 Pro and 960 Evo SSDs are bursting at the seams, With Blazing-Fast Speeds"

    (calm down...I own a Note 7)

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  3. all that by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    TFS: All that without saying how fast they are. lol

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:all that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      RTFA:

      "The 960 Pro offers a nice bump in sequential read/write speeds compared to the 950 Pro. The 960 Pro will have a read speed of 3.5GB/s and a sequential write speed of 2.1GB/s. The 950 Pro, by comparison, topped out its read speed at 2.5GB/s and a write speed of 1.5GB/s.

      Samsung's promising a sequential read speed of 3.2GB/s and a write speed of 1.9GB/s for the 960 Evo. The 960 Evo will also be the first SSD to come with Samsung Intelligent TurboWrite technology, which the company says helps accelerate sequential read/writes."

    2. Re:all that by guruevi · · Score: 2

      Those numbers are well over-inflated and are only true for filling the DDR RAM cache. Once you have 'filled' the drive and caches, the 950Pro has a write speed of ~200MB/s (4k streaming) - 1GB/s (128k streaming) and ~2000 random IOPS.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  4. Slashvertisement by courteaudotbiz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Slashvertisement. Period.

    1. Re:Slashvertisement by PRMan · · Score: 1

      If you are making the fastest, largest SSD on Earth, I want to hear about it.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    2. Re:Slashvertisement by barc0001 · · Score: 1

      Oh piss up a rope AC. I too like to hear about this as I have a bunch of 850 pros deployed in production and was just in the midst of planning their EOL replacements with 950 pros. The 960s sound like an even better replacement assuming I can get them in quantity.

  5. Blazingly Brazen! by BenBoy · · Score: 2

    Wow, that's a lot of marketing-speak for a technical analysis. Funny my ad-blocker missed this one ...

  6. Re:I Shoulda Opened a Gadget Blog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's true. I was using a Samsung Note 7 yesterday when, all of a sudden, my Samsung TV exploded. Thanks a lot Samsung!!!

  7. what systems support this? by kenj123 · · Score: 1

    Is there a bios version i need to look for to be able to boot this?

    >>4-lane PCIe 3.0 interface,
    how old of MB would support this?

    1. Re:what systems support this? by mister_playboy · · Score: 1

      You'll need very recent hardware at a minimum.

      Generally speaking, booting from it will probably require at least a 9-series (i.e. Z97) board and running it at full speed will probably require a 10-series (i.e. Z170) board.

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
  8. Intel needs more pci-e lanes or amd will kill them by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Intel needs more pci-e lanes or amd will kill them with zen.

    Intel top end Kaby Lake cpus only have 16+4(DMI) 3.0 lanes off of the cpu and the chip set has 20-24 3.0 + LAN + USB + SATA stacked off of the X4 DMI link.

    http://www.amd.com/en-us/innov...

    The initial “Zen” cores for “Summit Ridge”-powered desktops will utilize the AMD AM4 socket, a new unified socket infrastructure that is compatible with 7th Generation AMD A-Series desktop processors. With dedicated PCIe® lanes for cutting-edge USB, graphics, data and other I/O, the AMD AM4 platform will not steal lanes from other devices and components. This allows users to enjoy systems with improved responsiveness and the future looking technologies that the AM4 platform provides, resulting in a powerful, scalable and reliable computing solution for all their needs.

  9. Re:Intel needs more pci-e lanes or amd will kill t by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    Missing the point.

    The thing is that most Intel boards have X16 to the video card or x8 x8 to video or even X16 X16 switched from X16 for video and USB / sound / network / sata / M2 slots all have shear the same X4 DMI link.

  10. Re:Intel needs more pci-e lanes or amd will kill t by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

    A Intel current-gen CPU with 40 PCIe lanes is ridiculously expensive, you should take this into consideration.

    --
    Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
  11. Intel Marketing by Mishra100 · · Score: 1

    I just sat through a session talking about Intel's SSD line.

    There are a few technology differences that Intel is branding in their SSDs vs other vendors. But one of the main takeaways I took from their presentation is reliability.

    Intel has invested a lot of lab time into making sure their products are very stable. One of the most striking things they discussed is on a few competitor's SSDs they physically pulled the capacitors that perform some of their write buffers and the health check didn't even detect the issue. This would obviously cause corruption in certain scenarios and other issues.

    1. Re:Intel Marketing by NotAPK · · Score: 1

      "Intel has invested a lot of lab time into making sure their products are very stable."

      Correction:

      "Intel has invested a lot of time telling everyone that their products are very stable."

  12. Need to know chipset on motherboard by drnb · · Score: 1

    Look at the specs for your system and/or motherboard, in particular the chipset it is using. Look for anything mentioning "M.2". My Z170 chipset mentions "M.2 x4" and "both SATA & PCIE mode" so I should be ready.

  13. Re:Intel needs more pci-e lanes or amd will kill t by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    and the lower end chips on the same socket only have 24-28 lanes with still lot's of stuff on the X4 dmi link even in systems with 40+ lane cpus. At least some server boards feed the 2th cpu dmi link to it's own pci-e X4 slot.

  14. Can't believe those speeds!! by haruchai · · Score: 1

    "The 960 Pro offers a nice bump in sequential read/write speeds compared to the 950 Pro. The 960 Pro will have a read speed of 3.5GB/s and a sequential write speed of 2.1GB/s. The 950 Pro, by comparison, topped out its read speed at 2.5GB/s and a write speed of 1.5GB/s.

    Samsung's promising a sequential read speed of 3.2GB/s and a write speed of 1.9GB/s for the 960 Evo. The 960 Evo will also be the first SSD to come with Samsung Intelligent TurboWrite technology, which the company says helps accelerate sequential read/write"

    Those speeds won't happen all the time and at queue depths that typical users will never reach but even 20% sustained would be incredibly quick.

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  15. unbelivable by ujjup566 · · Score: 1

    wow liked this story with reliable prizes

  16. Wait, what? by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    RTFA? RTFA???

    This is... this is slashdot... WTF are you thinking?

    o Read TFS
    o Bitch about editors and / or submitters
    o PROFIT!

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  17. Re:Intel needs more pci-e lanes or amd will kill t by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    It's a bit trumped up (well, as in old card games we still play), as they run the same 16+4 set up as far as I know. But there is way more I/O built into the CPU itself. Some of it is four SATA or two SATA plus two PCIe lanes for an SSD. Some of it is USB, but additional USB or SATA or PCIe SSD on the chipset will "steal" bandwith still.