Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2 vs Samsung 860 EVO

[Borna Horvat]

And I'm telling you you can unplug the drive the moment it says it's finished copying.

 

[trparky]

And I'm telling you you can unplug the drive the moment it says it's finished copying.

Then you're playing with fire.

 

[Borna Horvat]

Nope, the tech is called deferred-write

 

[trparky]

See this article over at The SSD Review for an understanding about how Rapid Mode works.

 

[Borna Horvat]

Well if that article substantiates your theory, then it is wrong. I've had the pleasure of testing primocache and rapid mode on my own pc. I know how it works.

 

[trparky]

OK Mr. Smarty Pants, how do you get around the very real idea that you can only write so much data to NAND Flash Memory per second? If you saturate that data channel then you can't write anymore until, you know, the data has been written. It's like the speed of light, you cannot go faster than the speed of light. At least not in this universe.

 

[Borna Horvat]

It doesn't matter what type of drive it is. It can be a regular hdd, doesn't have to be nand flash. You can run a benchmark to see how fast it does, and it's not unlimited, but roughly 10 times the speed without cache being used. I get about 5k writes seq on rapid mode samsung 2.5" and about 7k writes seq on regular hdd with primocache. And at this very moment, veloram is being gifted for free with a lifetime license, over at sharewareonsale.com, which I'm hoping to get when they fix the serial key issue.

 

[trparky]

Have you ever started a file copy and then at some point during that file copy operation it suddenly slowed down? That's the point where you saturated the write cache and you have to wait for the hardware itself to catch up to what you're doing. I don't care about synthetic benchmarks, I care about real world usage like when you're doing a file copy in Windows Explorer. There's a reason why when you're writing a file to a USB Flash Drive (which is essentially the same as an SSD but on a different interface) and then you go to Safely Eject the USB Flash Drive Windows will tell you that something is using the drive, it's because data is still being spooled to the drive in question out of the write cache.

 

[Borna Horvat]

Well, I can't cache usb drives, but I have hot plug, and I have tried removing the drive when file explorer was finished with copying. The data was there. Google deferred-write primocache. They could have simply made hdd's with cache builtin, and you would get the same performance, but an expensive drive. SSHD's are somewhere in between, they don't use RAM on HDD for speedup, they use SSD.

 

[trparky]

PrimoCache is able to complete write requests quickly by writing incoming data to fast cache devices first and writing back to target disks later, greatly improving the system writing performance.

They even say it right there, "fast cache devices". And what do you think those "fast cache devices" are? System RAM!!! And they even say it right there in that quote that the data is written to "fast cache devices" first and then is written to the target disk later. It's that "later" part that scares me.

 

[Borna Horvat]

If you copy a 50GB file for example, first it reads 1GB (depending on whatever RAM ammount you decided to allocate), then it writes to drive from ram and waits for drive to finish first portion of copying, deletes 1GB of what's already done, and reads another 1GB ahead. You don't hold entire 50GB in RAM, nor will it cache the entire file. HDD's tend to be fast at sequential write, especially if data to be copied is already in ram, and not waiting for another drive, so the gain there is highest. Depending on how much ram you decided to allocate, and how smart the algorithm is, you can get a nice cache hit rate for such large files.

 

[trparky]

first it reads 1GB (depending on whatever RAM amount you decided to allocate), then it writes to drive from ram and waits for drive to finish first portion of copying

This much I very much understand. But here's the scary part... what if you yanked out the drive during the part where you say that it does this "then it writes to drive from ram and waits for drive to finish first portion of copying" Oops. Your data is gone.

 

[Borna Horvat]

Yes, the data stored in cache is gone

 

[trparky]

Yes, the data stored in cache is gone

And that's where I get really scared really quickly. Anything that messes with data write operations beyond what Windows already does natively at the kernel-level scares the living shit out of me.

 

[Borna Horvat]

Backup is always a good idea. A UPS if power shortages are often, is too. You use this for speed, not security of data.

 

[R0H1T]

No offense, but that seems ridiculous to me. Performance is roughly 10 times higher with rapid mode on, and about 1.6 times higher then any nvme drive. I recently got one and installed it into friends rig, and he couldn't be happier with it. Fastest thing on the market. If you reside in area with frequent power shortages, any kind of consumer ssd isn't advisable, or at least an UPS is.

You do understand it's only RAM caching, literally hundreds of software have done it before, some still do & work better than Samsung's branded RAPID mode. And as with all forms of RAM caching, a power loss could result in catastrophic loss of data. It's not rocket science, just well established data & history.

 

[Mussels]

Looks like hes been banned for a duplicate account, no use arguing with someone who isnt here.

Clearly he doesnt get how caching works, nor our forum rules.

 

[Wavetrex]

As a owner of both those drives, I can say that there is no practical difference in everyday use.

The system was very fast with the 860 anyway before I changed it to the NVMe one. (And no, I didn't use RAPID, for the dangers explained above by some people, even if I DO have an UPS). I'm not new to RAM caching and got burned a few times before...

Why I changed it ?
2 less cables to deal with, and actually I needed the SATA port for another storage HDD.

Obviously NVMe drives are the future, but currently the consumer workloads simply aren't big enough to justify one if the price difference is significant ( And today IT IS, because SATA drives have dropped in price dramatically, much more than M.2 NVMe drives )

~~~
There is one exception that I noticed in my use case:
Adobe Lightroom.

This particular program has quite heavy I/O when searching for a photo in it's database of over 40000 of my photos, and here the NVMe shines !!! It's quite a lot faster, the entire UI feels more responsive and preview photos "de-blur" 3 times as fast as I browse through them.

As a gaming PC however, I wouldn't care. Any SSD is the same, low end, mid-range, ultra High-end Samsung PRO drive. No difference.

 

[cucker tarlson]

nvme is slightly faster than sata ssd,but for a hefty price premium.up to anyone to choose.I'd choose a bigger sata ssd over nvme every time but people are welcome to sit with a stopwatch and report a few seconds faster installation times as crucial and a must for everyone.
and 960/970 evo are overpriced drives,there are many as fast but cheaper.look for xpg 8200pro or hp ex920.

 

[Mighty-Lu-Bu]

Is it worth it? Could we see drastic perfomance change in using M.2 in comparison to regular SSD ?

I just don't think we are there with NVME yet. I spent a lot of money on my NVME which I use as a boot drive, but it wasn't a significant improvement over my Evo SSD. Regular SSDs are still plenty fast and as long as NVME drives are expensive I am going to keep recommending standard SSDs.

 

[Mussels]

When it costs like $20 more for a drive thats 6x faster and a lot more physically convenient, i'll always recommend NVME
In current circumstances NVME may have only small benefits over SATA, but over time as programs are adapted to be able to use faster speeds, it'll get better with age.

Also, i can throw my 1TB NVME drives in a USB 3.1 enclosure and have a USB stick that does 3GB/s lol

 

[Mighty-Lu-Bu]

When it costs like $20 more for a drive thats 6x faster and a lot more physically convenient, i'll always recommend NVME
In current circumstances NVME may have only small benefits over SATA, but over time as programs are adapted to be able to use faster speeds, it'll get better with age.

Also, i can throw my 1TB NVME drives in a USB 3.1 enclosure and have a USB stick that does 3GB/s lol

$20 more? How do you figure that? A Samsung 970 Evo NVME 1TB drive is $247.99 on Amazon. A Samsung 860 Evo is $147.990 that is a hundred dollar difference.

The Samsung 970 Evo NVME 2TB variant (according to the Tom's Hardware review) has the best performance... the drive is $547.99 on Amazon, that's more than most GPUs, CPUs, motherboards, cases, RAM, and gaming monitors. However, the 860 Evo is just $297.99. Even if you are transferring a ridiculous amount of data, you would still be fine with a regular SSD. Also, I primarily game on my PC and browse the Internet... and my NVME hasn't boosted anything here. Great so I can transfer some files a bit quicker...? If that and form factor are the big appeal then it isn't really that appealing- I'm just being honest. I can see the argument for mini ITX systems... but I have a full system in a midtower with massive GPU and I am not dying for space.

 

[Mussels]

locally near me, the price difference is almost nothing for 512GB drives, with some NVME being cheaper. My intel 6000P 1TB was only $350 Au, new.

 

[Vario]

When it costs like $20 more for a drive thats 6x faster and a lot more physically convenient, i'll always recommend NVME
In current circumstances NVME may have only small benefits over SATA, but over time as programs are adapted to be able to use faster speeds, it'll get better with age.

Also, i can throw my 1TB NVME drives in a USB 3.1 enclosure and have a USB stick that does 3GB/s lol

Just did the shopping and comparison on this myself for my own system and I could do $140 for a 860 evo or MX500 2.5" SSD or.... I could do $140 for a generic Phison E12 1TB SSD that is substantially faster or $125 for a Intel 660P 1TB for an SSD that is often much faster than the 2.5" and at worst case the same speed, there are a number of other budget options out there in the same price range of $140-50 for 1TB. For another $30 more there are proven drives like the Adata XPG 8200 Pro, 970 Evo on sale, etc. There isn't much reason not to do NVME at this point if you have the PCI-E channels and a board that has the M.2 Slot available for use.