Samsung 960 evo coming soon?

[shabby]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-960-evo-pm961,4737.html

Looks like intel will have some competition in the inexpensive nvme ssd segment.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The PM961's performance levels out at queue depth 16, but you have a better chance of eating dinner with a supermodel tonight than reaching that level during a normal consumer workload. The PM961 falls a few marks behind the Samsung MLC V-NAND SSDs at QDs 2 and 4, but it is still higher than the other SSDs that form into a lower tier.

LOL!

The Polaris controller didn't play well with our Asrock Z170 motherboard in RAID when we tested the Samsung SM961 1TB. The Z170 board would only operate for a few seconds to a minute before entering a fault state and restarting. Some users have reported more stability with other motherboards. OCZ was the first company to reveal that some NVMe SSDs have issues with the Intel PCH RAID. The company released the statement and even put it on the retail box; "don't use this product in RAID mode with Intel's onboard RAID." We will revisit the issue when Samsung releases the retail products with the Polaris controller.

Interesting, so all's not totally well in NVMe land.

TLC uses more power than MLC because of the eight power states that it uses to identify the three bits stored in each cell.

This is something I didn't know - that there is a power-consumption difference between TLC and MLC. (Although, it stands to reason that, because of more complex ECC mechanisms for TLC, that the controller might be drawing more power.)

Samsung's 48-layer TLC V-NAND is able to deliver up to 1600 MB/s with 128KB blocks in SLC mode and only two NAND packages. In native TLC mode, the performance drops to around 650 MB/s. In contrast, the Intel 600p 512GB achieves 550 MB/s with simulated SLC and fluctuates wildly after the cache is full. The Intel 600p does not use a direct-to-die write technique (which circumvents the SLC layer when it is full) so all of the data written to the drive must pass through the SLC buffer and then fold into the TLC. Intel's caching scheme makes it difficult to determine its native TLC performance. The 600p's wild teeter-totter during the 128KB sequential write workload fluctuates between 450 MB/s and 20 MB/s. No, I didn't miss a zero there--20 MB/s is accurate.

Interesting comment about the Intel 600p drive, hitting 20MB/sec sequential write speeds. Guess I can cross that drive off of my list.

Phison is pushing the next wave of products that will fall into the same value category. Two PS5007-E7 products are shipping, and more will follow. Phison has yet to prove that a retail E7 product can hang with the big dogs, like the Samsung 950 Pro, SM961 and Intel SSD 750. Surprisingly, we do have a prototype E7 with 1TB of MLC flash running entirely in SLC mode (it is the fastest SSD I have in my lab).

That's kind of interesting too. An MLC M.2 PCI-E NVMe SSD, operating entirely in SLC mode? Sounds glorious! I wish SSD mfg's would give us consumers options like that, by providing optional performance- or storage-enhancement firmware flashes.

 

[Dave2150]

Hope we have more details soon. I'd like to pull the trigger on a 500GB 950pro soon, though wanted to wait for the Polaris 960 evo/pro. Hope the EVO also has a black PCB in it's retail samples!

 

[JimBoBarnes]

Umm...I am offended by the supermodel comment. I eat them all the time

 

[Shmee]

There is an announcement on the front page of AT as well.

 

[IAEInferno]

But do they come with explosive features?

 

[shabby]

But do they come with explosive features?

There's no battery so no.

 

[Land]

Is there any speculation when in October they might actually be released (or more specifically, readily available)? I really need to get my new build done to replace my current rig that was damaged in a home flood, but would hate to go with one of the current models only to have the 860 series come out a week later.

 

[Muadib]

Both Amazon & Newegg are taking pre orders. I ordered the 1TB, and should have it on the 9th.
The 512mb has a date of the 13th on Amazon.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Both Amazon & Newegg are taking pre orders. I ordered the 1TB, and should have it on the 9th.
The 512mb has a date of the 13th on Amazon.

That's for the 960 Pro.

The only place taking preorder for the 960 Evo is the Samsung online store. It lists a ship by date of 12/19.