The test system used in this review is equipped with an Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-UD3 motherboard, 32GB (16GB x 2) of Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 memory, Samsung 960 PRO 512GB SSD and a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G graphics card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 Enterprise.
To test the performance of Samsung's 970 EVO Plus SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark, HD Tach RW, ATTO Disk Benchmark, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro, Anvil's Storage Utilities, Iometer and PCMark 8. For comparison, I've also included test results from the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro, Crucial P1, ADATA XPG SX8200, Western Digital WD Black NVMe, Samsung 970 EVO, Samsung 970 PRO, Plextor M9Pe, Plextor M8Se, Patriot Hellfire, ADATA XPG SX8000, Samsung 960 PRO, Toshiba OCZ RD400, Samsung 950 PRO, Samsung 860 QVO, Samsung 860 PRO, Crucial MX500, Plextor M8V, Samsung T5, Crucial BX300, ADATA Ultimate SU900, Plextor S3C, Toshiba OCZ VX500, ADATA Ultimate SU800, Plextor S2C and Crucial MX300.
As I mentioned earlier, the 970 EVO Plus uses Samsung's Phoenix controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2:
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 970 EVO Plus 250GB |
 ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB |
According to Samsung, the 250GB version of the 970 EVO Plus is capable of reading at 3,500 MB/s and writing at 2,300 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.
 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The 970 EVO Plus performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 3,572 MB/s and write at 2,387 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the 970 EVO Plus's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the 970 EVO Plus had average read and write speeds of 1,761.1 MB/s and 503.5 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 741.4 MB/s. The screenshot also shows the transition from TurboWrite to what Samsung calls "After TurboWrite" speeds. The 970 EVO Plus starts writing at about 1,600 MB/s and then drops to about 400 MB/s when the consecutive write operation exceeds the size of the SLC buffer.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the 970 EVO Plus'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 970 EVO Plus 250GB |
 ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB |
When tested with ATTO, the 970 EVO Plus's read speeds topped out at about 3,480 MB/s and its write speeds at 2,380 MB/s.
