Samsung 960 Pro 2TB NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD Review
IOMeter Sequential & Random 4KB Performance
IOMeter Sequential Performance
Legit Reviews is once again adding IOMeter v1.1.0 testing to ourSolid-State Drive reviews as we feel that the canned benchmarks no longer show enough of the performance picture nor do they expose many of the heat issues that we are starting to encounter on M.2 PCIe SSDs and sustained write issues on TLC NAND based drives. We start out testing each drive with IOMeter, but first we prepare the drive. This is done by using Parted Magic to complete a full Secure Erase each and every drive. Next we use IOMeter to prefill the drive by performing the industry standard 128KB, aligned, sequential write workload across the entire drive for a period of 30 minutes. Once the drive is conditioned we run our saved sequential test profile that runs our 128KB test for one minute without any idle time in between the tests. The queue depth is set to 32 as we feel with NVMe drives starting to come out that we need to increase our IO depth.
The 128KB Sequential Read/Write test is done primarily to make sure the drives we are testing meet or surpass the manufacturer specifications for sequential Read/Write performance. The Samsung SSD 960 PRO topped out at 3546 MB/s read and 2121 MB/s write and this is above the rated specs of 3500 MB/s and 2100MB/s. When we tested 80% reads and 20% writes the performance of the SSD 960 PRO was actually below that of the SSD 950 PRO 512GB drive, which was off to us.
IOMeter 4KB Random Performance
Our 4KB random performance test is conducted in the same manner as our sequential tests, but once the drive is conditioned we run our saved random test profile that runs our 4KB test for two minutes without any idle time in between the tests. The queue depth is set to 32 on four workers and the test is begun. To get the benefits from NVMe based drives you must use multiple CPU queues and this is why we are now using four workers for this IOMeter test.
Wqe also to 4K Random testing with IOMeter to make sure the drives we are testing meet or surpass the manufacturer specifications for sequential Read/Write performance. The Samsung SSD 960 PRO 2TB drive topped out at 429,300 IOPS on the 4KB Random Read test when it is rated for 4400,000 IOPS. The 4KB Random Write test hit 340,800 IOPS when the drive is rated for 360,000 IOPS. The 80/20 mixed workload test was much better than the Samsung SSD 950 Pro drive, but was lower than expected again. Maybe this is because we were running the Samsung NVMe driver v1.1?