SM961 vs 950 Pro

[iKonstX]

Hi,

would like to know which one of these card is the better one (only performance!) and if there's any better than these two

[Sakkura]

The 950 Pro is related to the older SM951. The SM961 is faster. And it is generally the fastest SSD on the market.

[iKonstX]

If its better, why is it cheaper?

Also:
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/H170%20Pro4/

Does it fit this mainboard?

[Sakkura]

The SM961 is OEM, so pricing and availability can be more variable. Still a bit surprising if it's cheaper than the 950 Pro. They both fit that motherboard.

[iKonstX]

Would you recommend buying the sm961? Or rather the 950 pro?

[Revan654]

2 hours ago, iKonstX said:

Would you recommend buying the sm961? Or rather the 950 pro?

 

It's fine, I know few running and haven't run into any issues except for not being able to use Samsung Software (Which is a waste of space to start with).

 

 

[SeanAngelo]

3 hours ago, iKonstX said:

Would you recommend buying the sm961? Or rather the 950 pro?

i would. its cheaper and better so why not?

[Tech Inquisition]

The SM961 1TB is on my list for Spartan 2.0

[iKonstX]

I checked a few reviews and in something like 4k (I dont know what that is) it's way worse than the intel 750 or 950 pro. Whats the reason for that and does it make any difference?

[Sakkura]

4K is what's also called random IO (random read and random write). The performance with small, random transfers is lower than with large, sequential transfers. But it also depends on the queue depth; higher queue depth improves performance. However, normal consumer usage will rarely reach high queue depths, especially with a fast SSD (basically the requests get serviced so quickly they don't have time to pile up in a queue).

 

The thing with the SM961 at release was that its random (4K) performance was excellent at low queue depths, but didn't improve as much at higher queue depths as the Intel 750 or the 950 Pro. That was likely due to an immature firmware, which has probably been improved since then. In any case, it's not much of a problem for consumer usage.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-sm961-ssd,4608-5.html

 

Quote

Pros

• Highest NVMe performance for a consumer SSD in Four-Corner Tests

 

Cons

• Additional optimizations needed to increase light workload performance

 

 

[iKonstX]

Wait you can't boot from the 961 right?

[Sakkura]

7 minutes ago, iKonstX said:

Wait you can't boot from the 961 right?

You can use it as a boot drive. People in this thread are doing that, and this review ran the SM961 as the boot drive.

 

There is some stuff about using a different driver for optimal performance, that's the kind of slightly more complicated/annoying setup you can run into with an OEM drive.

[iKonstX]

Does using it as a boot drive stunt the performance in any way?

[iKonstX]

My friend said I can't use it as a bootable disk because my mainboard doesn't have option-rom, is that true?

[Sakkura]

The option ROM should be on the SSD. It definitely is on the 950 Pro.

[iKonstX]

I was planning to get a sm961, but can I use it as a boot drive?

[PenPoint]

15 minutes ago, iKonstX said:

I was planning to get a sm961, but can I use it as a boot drive?

You need to know there is a technology called 'NVMe'.

However if you are going to use SM961, 950 Pro or any other NVMe SSDs with ASRock H170 Pro4,

you don't have to worry because the motherboard supports M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs as boot drives.

[iKonstX]

Okay thanks :p and I think it's cheaper coz no warranty etc.