The test system used in this review was an HP EliteDesk 800 G1. The computer is equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 16GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Plextor PX-256M5P 256GB SSD, PNY Quadro K600 1GB PCIe graphics card and Intel 1217-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 Enterprise. I should also point out that our test system is not equipped with an M.2 slot so we had to use an M.2 PCIe SSD adapter card.
To test the performance of Samsung's 950 PRO SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro 5.50, Anvil's Storage Utilities, Iometer and PCMark 8. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Plextor M6V, Crucial BX200, OCZ Trion 100, Kingston HyperX Savage, Crucial MX200, OCZ Vector 180, Kingston BX100, Samsung 850 EVO M.2, Samsung 850 EVO mSATA, AMD Radeon R7, Silicon Power Slim S80, Samsung SSD 850 EVO, OCZ ARC 100, SanDisk Ultra II, Kingston MX100, SanDisk Extreme Pro, Samsung SSD 850 PRO, Plextor PX-256M6S and Toshiba Q Series Pro.
As I mentioned earlier, the 950 PRO is based on Samsung's UBX controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 Samsung 950 PRO 512GB |
 Samsung 850 PRO 256GB |
According to Samsung, the 512GB 950 PRO is capable of reading at 2,500 MB/s and writing at 1,500 MB/s. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the drive had no problems reaching these speeds in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write tests.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the 950 PRO's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Samsung 950 PRO 512GB
The 950 PRO's performance was hit and miss when tested with HD Tach. While the drive was able to write at 1,562 MB/s, its read speed averaged out at only 1,348.8 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the 950 PRO's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 Samsung 950 PRO 512GB |
 Samsung 850 PRO 256GB |
When tested with ATTO, the 950 PRO's read speeds topped out at about 2,604 MB/s and its write speeds at 1,563 MB/s.
