Support NeoGAF

[strata8]

The Samsung 950 Pro SSD—the follow up to the legendary Samsung 850 Pro SSD—has been unveiled by the company at its annual SSD summit in Seoul, Korea. The 950 Pro will be available at retail in October, with MSRPs of $199.99 (probably ~£150) for the 256GB version, and $349.99 (~£280) for the 512GB version. UK pricing is yet to be confirmed.

Based on Samsung's V-NAND technology and available in 512GB and 256GB capacities, the 950 Pro shuns the common 2.5-inch form factor and SATA interface for cutting-edge M.2 2280 and PCIe 3.0 x4. It also makes use of the Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface, better known as NVMe.

In the case of the 512GB Samsung 950 Pro, the combination of NVMe, speedy V-NAND chips, and a triple core, eight-channel UBX controller has resulted in some eye-popping performance. Sequential read speeds top out at 2500MB/s, while sequential writes hit 1500MB/s. By comparison, Samsung's OEM-only SM951 AHCI drive—which is based on the same UBX controller, albeit paired with planar NAND—tops out at 2150MB/s sequential reads and 1500MB/s sequential writes.

Random read performance on the 512GB 950 Pro is up to 300K IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second), with write speeds of up to 110K IOPS. Power tops out 5.7W on average, 7.0W in burst mode, and 1.7W at idle. The drive also features 512MB of DRAM memory, and support for 256-bit AES encryption. A future firmware update also promises to add TCG Opal support for Microsoft's eDrive standard.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...nvme-with-v-nand-for-eye-popping-performance/

The current SATA 850 Pro tops out at about 500 MB/s read by the way.

edit: And in other news...

http://anandtech.com/show/9652/sams...llout-4tb-850-pro-1tb-850-evo-m2-more-in-2016

4TB 850 Pro coming in early 2016.

 

[teiresias]

So glad I put off doing my Mini-ITX build and getting the mSATA-based 850 Evo M.2.

I've been thinking about ditching my OS 2.5" drive even in my desktop and going M.2 there as well.

 

[kami_sama]

They weren't kidding when they said ssds would go cheap as hell in the future.

 

[ukas]

Love my 850 Pro.

 

[Sir Abacus]

The rMBPs have been using the x4 SSDs for a while now and they're just gobsmackingly fast. Only half as fast as the 950 Pro though (1.2GB/sec read, 600MB/sec write).

I cannot wait for this form factor to become standard for boot drives on desktop builds.

 

[oatmeal]

Sweet fancy Moses.

Can't wait to build a raid with these.

 

[Chris R]

My next build should just have a single stick of NVMe stuck to the motherboard. Can't wait.

 

[see5harp]

Damnit. I'm so satisfied with my current build using a 500 GB 850 pro but those read speeds seem incredible.

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

You can boot from it, too, right?

My friend has the Intel PVe or whatever it's called, and at something like 1.5GB/s, it's craaaazy fast - so is the 4x PCIe one in my rMBP.

This doubles that. Insane.

 

[nubbe]

my dick can only be so hard

 

[ersocaster]

My ASUS came with this. It's amazing. I cannot believe it is the size of a stick of RAM.

 

[Angelus Errare]

Definitely might need to get one.

You can boot from it, too, right?

Yes, what led you to think you wouldn't be able to?

 

[Dictator93]

Does boot from PCI-E exist these days? I forget...

 

[Wiseblood]

Great timing, I just bought a motherboard with an M.2 slot.

 

[Haloid1177]

Just bought a 1 TB 850 for my new build. Was hoping these would have a TB variety but I guess that'll be next year.

 

[CadetMahoney]

gotta go fast

 

[Krauser Kat]

how much slower is this than DDR3 ram? Using this as a page file for my Premier and After effects would be glorious.

 

[Mirk]

I can not wait to build a new pc next year. Hype

 

[Insane Metal]

Awesome.

I recently bought an 850 EVO and it was probably the best PC related purchase I ever made.

 

[Sir Abacus]

how much slower is this than DDR3 ram? Using this as a page file for my Premier and After effects would be glorious.

Order of magnitude slower still.

 

[Azulsky]

Samsung is running out of time before Optane comes knocking.

 

[LQX]

How the hell are these things are not yet cheaper? A 1TB should be around $200 at the most.

 

[Melon Husk]

They weren't kidding when they said ssds would go cheap as hell in the future.

Sarcasm? These are about 50-100% more expensive than other, older drives.

 

[see5harp]

How the hell are these things are not yet cheaper? A 1TB should be around $200 at the most.

I think the prices are extremely reasonable at this point. I've had a 500 gig for the last 6 months and don't have to manage disk space ever.

 

[Sir Abacus]

Does boot from PCI-E exist these days? I forget...

Windows 8.1 and above can boot natively from PCI-E using pure UEFI. Windows 7 can do it on some motherboards that can load the CSM environment while booting from a UEFI disk and it requires an F6 disk for installation.

 

[Radec]

How the hell are these things are not yet cheaper? A 1TB should be around $200 at the most.

This isn't the budget SSDs.

 

[Angelus Errare]

Would be nice if rMBP work with them. The one company who makes rMBP compatible drives charges a bit. I think they charge $550 for 512GB?

 

[Cow Mengde]

I love my SSD. I have a Samsung 850 EVO and it's so damn fast. How fast? The fucking thing doesn't even want to wait for the Windows 7 logo animation to finish playing and just skips it half way. It's like, ain't nobody got time for that shit.

 

[Sir Abacus]

Would be nice if rMBP work with them. The one company who makes rMBP compatible drives charges a bit. I think they charge $550 for 512GB?

Current rMBPs are NVMe x4 using Samsung NAND chips in an M.2 form factor. It also looks like Samsung supports AHCI as a fallback given they say it'll work with the built in Windows 7 driver. In theory the 950 Pro should work in the latest rMBP and at the higher speeds given the limitation is now the controller.

 

[GifGafIsTheBestGaf]

i still need to install the 2x512GB M.2 850 EVO sticks on my laptop, blessed Samsung i hope by next year the 1TB SSD is 100 bucks cheaper

 

[Shining Sunshine]

Damn I just bought an 850 pro.

Need to quad raid array these suckers lol

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

proper consumer NVME, finally. consumer 4tb finally.

Super psyched for this, been waiting years.

 

[aeolist]

Samsung is running out of time before Optane comes knocking.

optane is an in-between tech for the forseeable future. it's faster than NAND but won't be nearly as dense or cheap, it's basically a really good cache.

it may hit a reasonable $/GB in a few years but by then NAND might be even better or we may have something else.

 

[aeolist]

I love my SSD. I have a Samsung 850 EVO and it's so damn fast. How fast? The fucking thing doesn't even want to wait for the Windows 7 logo animation to finish playing and just skips it half way. It's like, ain't nobody got time for that shit.

turn off GUI boot, it might be holding you back some

 

[Sir Abacus]

Damn I just bought an 850 pro.

Need to quad raid array these suckers lol

No point. The M.2 drives are still connected to the PCH which only has a 4GB/sec path to main memory on DMI 3.0 (Skylake/Z170) and 2GB/sec path to main memory on DMI 2.0 (everything before Skylake and Z170). The drive is already close to the limit of 3.0 x4 and it going to be waiting for 4.0 x4 before being able to RAID but I'm sure by then the controllers will be even faster.

Maybe Intel will start dedicating more PCI-E lanes on the CPU to storage and wire the storage back onto the local bus a'la 1993 again.

 

[Kieli]

How the hell are these things are not yet cheaper? A 1TB should be around $200 at the most.

Honest question. Is there a reason for them to be cheap?

E.g. RAM modules are dirt cheap so you can throw a bunch on one PCB?

 

[diehard]

Honest question. Is there a reason for them to be cheap?

E.g. RAM modules are dirt cheap so you can throw a bunch on one PCB?

DRAM and NAND are not the same thing.. but i don't know where he came up with the "they should be $200" idea.

 

[Angelus Errare]

Current rMBPs are NVMe x4 using Samsung NAND chips in an M.2 form factor. It also looks like Samsung supports AHCI as a fallback given they say it'll work with the built in Windows 7 driver. In theory the 950 Pro should work in the latest rMBP and at the higher speeds given the limitation is now the controller.

Word.

 

[Sir Abacus]

There are two big problems with demanding huge declines in price of NAND right now. The first is that the mobile market is sucking an ever larger share of the larger chips. For instance a 32GB phone can be made with a single 256Gb chip instead of a more typical 8x32Gb you would have seen in a 32GB SSD. This is less space on the board and less power with a minor decrease in performance. This is the same chip you're going to be wanting to put on your 1TB drive (32 x 256Gb) so now you're in competition with mobile phone makers for buying the available production.

The second is that V-NAND doesn't take advantage of process shrinks. It's fabricated at 40nm using multiple wafer stacks. Generational drops in transistor pricing usually involve putting more transistors in the same area which dramatically increases storage per wafer. Without a process shrink (which aren't as good in NAND as they are in a CPU) you end up having to use more wafers for larger amounts of space which increases and places a floor on production costs. These wafers are a significant amount of the marginal cost of a NAND chip so requiring a lot more of them won't see price decreases like you would a process shrink.