Samsung XP941 or wait?

[Galatian]

Hey everybody,

I just purchased a Core i7-4790K and my ASRock Z97 Extreme9 should arrive today. I choose that particular mainboard because it supports a faster M.2 slot. I was wondering: is it worth getting the Samsung XP941 PCIe M.2 now or will there be other M.2 drives coming out soon, possibly even with NVMe support?

From all the Computex coverage here at Anandtech it seems like new drives are still far away?

I'm currently still running a Samsung 830 so I'm not in an urgent need to upgrade (other then the shiny new toy factor).

 

[Fernando 1]

I just purchased a Core i7-4790K and my ASRock Z97 Extreme9 should arrive today. I choose that particular mainboard because it supports a faster M.2 slot.

According to my knowledge only the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 has the "Ultra-M.2" slot, which can use 4 PCI lanes instead of just 2 of them.
Was it just a typo or did you order the wrong mainboard?

 

[Galatian]

According to my knowledge only the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 has the "Ultra-M.2" slot, which can use 4 PCI lanes instead of just 2 of them.

Was it just a typo or did you order the wrong mainboard?

No the Extreme9 has the Ultra-M.2 slot as well and even a PLEX chip for SLI/Crossfire. That's why I choose it. It adds upon the Extreme6.

 

[Fernando 1]

Ok, that is new for me. I have read some reviews about this new Ultra-M.2 feature and all authors stated, that just the Extreme6 board does support it.

 

[Galatian]

Ok, that is new for me. I have read some reviews about this new Ultra-M.2 feature and all authors stated, that just the Extreme6 board does support it.

I think that's because the Extreme9 is new! It hasn't been out for a long time and certainly was not out when all the reviews were made ;-)

 

[Fernando 1]

Now to your question:
The Samsung XP941 is very expensive and currently not easy to get for "normal" customers.
AFAIK we will see more and cheaper M.2 PCIe SSDs in the near future, because many Z97 mainboards do support this new way to boost the performance.
On the other hand actually nobody knows, if the SSD manufacturers will offer new SSDs, which do support the "Ultra-M.2" feature. Everything depends on the demand of the users and the popularity of this extra feature.

 

[Galatian]

Well the way I understand it, the M.2 specification actually supports 20 GBits/s and most motherboard manufactures opted to only include a 10 GBits/s connection. I would wager that SSD manufacture would use the M.2 specification rather then what motherboard manufactures implement in the end.

The Samsung SDD can be bought for 300€ here in Germany for the 256 GB version, which is of course expensive, but still cutting edge so to say

 

[ctk1981]

I'm waiting for ramcity.au to get the 128gb back in stock as they had the best price for quite sometime. My only concern with the xp941 is trim only works in win8 so far.

 

[RamCity]

I'm waiting for ramcity.au to get the 128gb back in stock as they had the best price for quite sometime. My only concern with the xp941 is trim only works in win8 so far.

Just wanted to update the stock situation with the XP941. Sorry I'm not able to respond to your PM Corey as minimum 25 posts is needed to PM an admin.

Because the minimum purchase requirements from Samsung are very high (300 units at a time), we've decided not to buy in more of the 128GB XP941 as demand for it was quite low.

We'll have more of the 512GB units in about 8 days time, and more of the 256GB models about a week later.

Rod (Vendor rep for RamCity.com.au)

 

[DesiPower]

Wait till someone else offers the drive, I don't trust Samsung

 

[RamCity]

Wait till someone else offers the drive, I don't trust Samsung

Why don't you trust Samsung?

 

[DesiPower]

Why don't you trust Samsung?

I have 5 SSDs, 2 Samsung (840, 840 Evo) 2 Crucial (M4 and M550) and 1 sandisk Untral plus. Now in my personal experience, the Samsung have been the slowest ones, to boot the machine and well as loading programs after booting. 840 was slower then M4 and Sandisk; and evo was slower then M550. However, Samsung's magician and another benchmark software showed them to be faster ones. Atleast two other of my friends had similar experience.

Again, its my personal view, no scientific evidence to back it up...

 

[ctk1981]

Thanks for the update Rod.

And that has to be the most absurd reason I've heard to not trust a company. I find it hard to believe that anyone can tell a difference in speed between a M550 and a 840 Evo. I own a M500 and 840 Pro and cannot tell.

As far as why the samsung drives benchmark faster, if you have rapid enabled they will bench significantly higher due to the fact its using a ramcache for the drive. You can buy software such as primocache and it will do the same thing for ANY manufacturer of drive, be it SSD or HDD.

 

[DesiPower]

idk, after fresh installation of OS, there was a good 8 to 10 seconds difference in boot time, also when I would launch something as simple as FireFox or TMT, it seemed like the Samsungs would take some time, the crucial was instant... again, I would not rule out the possibility of it being a mental thing given my bias, but I personally always felt more satisfied with Crucial and even the recently acquired Sandisk.

 

[aviator79]

I have 5 SSDs, 2 Samsung (840, 840 Evo) 2 Crucial (M4 and M550) and 1 sandisk Untral plus. Now in my personal experience, the Samsung have been the slowest ones, to boot the machine and well as loading programs after booting. 840 was slower then M4 and Sandisk; and evo was slower then M550. However, Samsung's magician and another benchmark software showed them to be faster ones. Atleast two other of my friends had similar experience.

Again, its my personal view, no scientific evidence to back it up...

Well maybe you should let the experts do the testing.
I agree, the 840 was not a very good SSD. Slow, not super stable. But let it be, it was cheap.
But the 840 EVO compared to SanDisk Ultra Plus and Crucial M4...are you serious?
EVO beats them in every review. So yeah, benchmarks are "theoretical" test. And you said "your personal view" but I can not agree with it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

idk, after fresh installation of OS, there was a good 8 to 10 seconds difference in boot time, also when I would launch something as simple as FireFox or TMT, it seemed like the Samsungs would take some time, the crucial was instant... again, I would not rule out the possibility of it being a mental thing given my bias, but I personally always felt more satisfied with Crucial and even the recently acquired Sandisk.

For graphs of inconsistent EVO performance, see this thread:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2379009

 

[DracoDan]

Keep in mind the 128GB drive doesn't get that great of a write speed compared to the 256GB and 512GB drives. You should check out the info I put together for this:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2391527

Samsung XP941

Capacity: 128GB/256GB/512GB
Physical size: 2280
Interface: x4 PCIe
Sequential read: 1000MB/s (128GB), 1080MB/s (256GB), 1170MB/s (512GB)
Sequential write: 450MB/s (128GB), 800MB/s (256GB), 950MB/s (512GB)
Random read: 110K IOPS (128GB), 120K IOPS (256GB), 122K IOPS (512GB)
Random write: 40K IOPS (128GB), 60K IOPS (256GB), 72K IOPS (512GB)
Availability: OEM only

 

[essential]

Why are these so hard to come by? Ramcity and eBay are the only 2 places someone can get one. There are listings on Amazon and Newegg but nothing in stock. Shouldn't these be everywhere by now? Even with the 300 minimum order Rod mentioned, that shouldn't phase the major PC vendors.