The Samsung PM981 SSD Review (512GB, 1TB): Next Generation Controller And 3D NAND
by Billy Tallis on November 30, 2017 9:02 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
Both capacities of the Samsung PM981 offer great average data rates on the Light test. Their performance when full or empty is improved over the Samsung 960 EVO and comes close to the 960 PRO.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores of the PM981s aren't much of an improvement over Samsung's last generation, but this is still a new record for flash-based SSDs, even though the PM981 is using TLC NAND.
The average write latency of the PM981s is great whether the test is run on a full or empty drive, but the average read latency is slightly worse than the 960 PRO when the test is run on a full drive.
The 99th percentile read latency of the PM981s is record-setting when the Light test is run on an empty drive, but only the 1TB sets a record when the test is run on a full drive. The 99th percentile write latency is excellent on both drives in either test scenario.
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peevee - Thursday, November 30, 2017 - link
The most important parameter is the sustained random read, when the user have to actually wait (buffered writes let you continue working right away and it is almost impossible to overflow write caches during normal desktop usage).And even SSDs continue to suck in this parameter. 60MB/s? Booo...
Although testing on 4k random is too strict, NTFS runs are usually 16 clusters (64k).
wyewye - Thursday, November 30, 2017 - link
This is why I stopped coming to Anandtech daily: you keep excluding top offers from Intel in your SSD benchmarks.Samsung shills!
ddriver - Thursday, November 30, 2017 - link
LOL, second funniest thing I heard this weekddrіver - Thursday, November 30, 2017 - link
The first one was actually a joke with a priest and a rabbi... Can't really remember the punchline now.lilmoe - Thursday, November 30, 2017 - link
Thank you, competing OEMs. Thanks to you, Samsung isn't even trying anymore. Just when I thought they'd introduce 64 layer SLC, they decide to go full TLC, because why try harder? Screw you too, Samsung.ddrіver - Thursday, November 30, 2017 - link
Exactly my point. It's not so hard for them to go to 64 or 128 or even 256 layer SLC, with even an 8TB SSD. That should be in the range of $500-$600 to be competitive. Instead they choose to deliver a drive that simply doesn't massively improve on every single data point relative to the old generation. It might be good for 95% of consumers but they don't even think of us, professionals.Just downloading a game nowadays takes 50-100GB of SSD writes. At this rate who know how long I'm going to be able to use this kind of SSD. Greedy people selling to sheeple. Wake up!
zodiacfml - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link
Samsung, like Intel, has no competition taking their sweet time with each iteration.AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, December 2, 2017 - link
In many cases Samsung costs more and has less endurance; the competition is better.melgross - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link
It’s good to see that manufacturers are so far in advance of where they already are:“Other M.2 PCIe SSD vendors have used that tactic and many have also released drives with more substantial heatspreaders or heatsinks in the future.”
trumanhw - Sunday, December 31, 2017 - link
1TB 960 Pro looks like it's the shiznit. By far my choice... cost per dollar, and as they said, impunity to the negatives seen in other sizes and models. Where it's not the first, it's so close in the other positions as to require measurement to verify. As always, thank you anand -- you guys rock.