Samsung 970 EVO M.2 500GB NVMe SSD review

Memory (DDR4/DDR5) and Storage (SSD/NVMe) 367 Page 21 of 21 Published by

teaser

Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

Slowly but steadily NVMe technology is getting towards a storage performance stage where these units (much like SATA3) also are running into system bottlenecks. With the new 64-layer NAND Samsung can increase volume size with less space used, but also is able to bump up read performance a notch. For writes the differential is more substantial though in this range, trivial?  Would you ever notice a difference between a 1.5GB/s write or one at 2.5 GB/sec? We honestly doubt that that's seeking with a very narrow margin. Even a proper writing SATA3 SSD will offer you 98% of the performance you need and can notice. That means the 970 series is more of an evolution by refining the technology. The new 64-layer NAND helps in cutting down costs, the Phoenix controller gives that little extra edge in perf and the nickel plating on top of the controller helps it bypass thermal throttling better. That last one remains is great, and actually, is the reason that you see all 2018 motherboards with a heatsink for M2 units. In relative performance numbers whether you choose an EVO or PRO honestly you'll not notice. This obviously is the big conundrum with the fastest NVMe based storage units your money can get you. I'll state this again though, with a regular proper SATA3 SSD you're already there for 98% of your (consumer) workloads as your new bottleneck is your OS and the way it manages file IO. Objectively speaking measuring between a properly fast SATA3 and this 970 EVO things ould remain relative under normal workloads. And therein the answer is to be found, the guys who will benefit the most from products like the 970 series are the one with massive workloads.


40304_img_0577


Your average PC aficionado or PC gamer hardly will notice any difference. But if you perform heaps of video transcoding and need fast writes, or just love to grab files over Usenet parring and unparring, within these confined lines and workloads the NVMe product will shine. For motherboards, quite honestly I wish the industry would move to SATA4 rapidly with a serious increase in broad specced bandwidth to be able to keep up with M.2 and NVMe. Regardless of these comments, as you have been able to see, the Samsung 970 series is a product that offers astonishing performance in both reads and writes relative to what you pay for it. 2 GB/s writes per seconds (sustained) is still four times as fast as any SATA3, while topping 3 GB/s reads here and there and thus more than quadrupling that number compared to a SATA3 SSD. Would you ever notice any real-world difference in-between a 950, 960 series product or a 970 Pro or Evo? We doubt that very much. The difference over a SATA3 SSD, however, is certainly noticeable, but again something relative to experience as a regular SSD already does workloads in split-second timings. Much like we concluded in the 960 reviews, for the 970 Evo it's, all the same, there is more to it than just a notch more performance though, this EVO model is offered at proper endurance numbers, depending on the model (volume size) 300 TB written is guaranteed for the tested 512GB model and combined with a the new 5 year warranty that should bring a smile to your face. If the controller or the NAND doesn't die, it would last you a decade or even two depending on your workload.


Performance

Any modern age SSD is enjoyable, very much so. If you put a drive like this into your compatible PC, you'll have no idea what is about to hit you. We very much enjoy the grand sustained performance of this SSD series; if you copy a vast amount of compressed data, then the SSD will perform seriously fast in performance. Make no mistake, replacing an HDD with an SSD in your PC eliminates the random access lag of the HDD head, it is no longer mechanical. That combined with the performance SATA3 / M.2 offers these days is simply a massive difference and probably the best upgrade you can make for your computer anno 2018.


40215_untitled-1


The new storage units, however, are very fast and strong, on all levels really, IOPS performance is good. This SSD writes and reads serious amounts of tiny files in a very fast fashion. We stated it before though, IOPS is not something you as a consumer should worry about too much unless you are doing a lot of database related work or create similar workloads on your PC, but this SSD certainly ranks high within this aspect. Trace testing - we feel that one of the best tests in our entire benchmark suite is PCMark Vantage 64-bit. This is a trace test and can emulate what you guys do on your PC but then multiplied by a factor of 100, this test puts more focus on read performance opposed to writing though. The outcome of the results with the SSD is exceptionally good. Sustained read / write performance, again excellent as advertised. Read performance in particular leads and is top ranking. Overall the series is impressive. Zoom in at both IOPS and trace performance and you'll notice that the SSD can manage serious workloads without breaking so much as a drop of sweat. So whether you write lots of small files, copy big MKV movies or do it all together. 


Pricing & Warranty

Samsung should be able to keep the EVO prices in a more competitive range, but obviously a unit this fast is more expensive opposed to a regular SATA3 SSD. For the 500GB volume, sizes expect prices in the 45 cents (Euro/USD) per GB range at 222 Euro, but that might vary a bit based on region and industry demand. But also the higher volume sizes should be a notch cheaper, of course.


Model UK EURO USD EUR per GB
970 EVO 250GB   101 115 140  EUR   0.46
970 EVO 500GB 194 222 270  EUR   0.44
970 EVO 1TB 376 429 524  EUR   0.43
970 EVO 2TB 710 810 989  EUR   0.41
970 PRO 512GB 275 314 383  EUR   0.61
970 PRO 1TB 527 601 735  EUR   0.59

Remember, any SSD is enjoyable, very much so compared to the traditional HDD. If you put a drive like this into your compatible PC, you'll have no idea what is about to hit you. We very much enjoy the grand sustained performance of this SSD series; if you copy a vast amount of compressed data, then the SSD will perform seriously fast in performance. Make no mistake, replacing an HDD with an SSD in your PC eliminates the random access lag of the HDD head, it is no longer mechanical. That combined with the performance SATA3 / M.2 / mSATA offers these days is simply a massive difference and probably the best upgrade you can make for your computer anno 2018 if you're still on that HDD. Remember though that this type of NVMe SSD, needs a compatible motherboard (x4 PCIe Lanes Gen 3.0). Samsung tops off this SSD with a 5-year warranty period or your TBW value (whichever one comes first). Depending on volume size 600 Terabytes written (TBW) for the 1 TB capacity, half that for the 500 GB version and again half of that (150TB) for the 250 GB model. 

  
 

Guru3d-recommended

  

Concluding

The latest 64-layer Vertically stacked NAND works its miracles for many brands and that is not any different for Samsungs new 970 series, both the EVO and Pro models will offer heaps of performance with the EVO models receiving more warranty. Both the EVO and Pro models will get better TBW values (endurance). I've mentioned it a couple of times in my reviews already, and will keep doing so; the MLC versus TLC discussion as far as I am concerned can be put to rest, SSDs with TLC NAND has proven to be extremely long-lasting and reliable thanks to the latest technologies. Samsung will give you a 5-year warranty on the 970 product series (that or the TBW value whichever one comes first), and that in technology land is a nice warranty to have, hey, 5 years always is preferred. Remember, even with the slowest SATA3 SSD, you can find, the access times will make a tremendous difference as you do not have a mechanical magnetic head seeking data on platters. HDDs, however, are still relevant, for big storage and perhaps games. But for your OS a proper fast SATA3 SSD in the 400~500 MB/sec range already is really good. Some, however, want that platinum experience, going from a fast SATA3 SSD towards NVMe M2 again is a much faster step, but less noticeable compared to that regular SATA3 SSD, as you already have the fast access times and split-second application loading. You'll benefit from NVMe SSD storage units if you have the workloads for it, writing continuously, video editing and so on. For just gaming and OS functionality, however, the differences are in a very thin margin to be able to measure, as your PC file-IO is becoming the bottleneck. So how fast do SSDs really need to be? Storage technology not evolving would mean us still be in the stone-age technology wise. The coming years will be all about lower prices and increased capacity and endurance. That said and done, the 970 EVO is impressive, it is as plain and simple as that. You will easily quadruple your read performance over a regular SATA3 SSD, albeit if your workload it 1 second, would you really notice the difference between it being a quarter of a second? For writes that value is easily quadruple the performance of today's SATA3 solutions. Remember, there are requirements for proper M.2 usage though. You do need to use the right combination of OS/UEFI motherboard and CPU, we do recommend X99/X299 and Z87/Z97/Z170/Z270/Z370 and for AMD X370/X470/X399 or newer gear here. Check with your motherboard manufacturers if the board can support M.2 with four PCI-Express lanes (Gen 3.0) and NVMe. Whatever you are planning to do with this storage unit, you are good to go from gaming, overall net pc usage (albeit overkill) to video transcoding and editing and content creation, this is by far among the fastest SSD series available for I/O intensive workloads, consumer grade that is. If you are hunting down an M2 unit with a nice black PCB and very proper performance metrics, hey this might be it for you. The 970 EVO series come recommended, of course - but relatively speaking - it is a lot of money for NVMe NAND storage in the year 2018.

Recommended  Downloads

Share this content
Twitter Facebook Reddit WhatsApp Email Print