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 PRO 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 Plextor M9Pe, Plextor M8Se, Patriot Hellfire, ADATA XPG SX8000, Samsung 960 PRO, Toshiba OCZ RD400, Samsung 950 PRO, Crucial MX500, Plextor M8V, Crucial BX300, ADATA Ultimate SU900, Plextor S3C, Toshiba OCZ VX500, ADATA Ultimate SU800, Plextor S2C, Crucial MX300, Plextor M7V, PNY CS1311, OCZ Trion 150, PNY CS2211, Plextor M6V, Crucial BX200, OCZ Trion 100, Kingston HyperX Savage, Crucial MX200, OCZ Vector 180 and Samsung SSD 850 EVO.
As I mentioned earlier, the 970 PRO uses Samsung's new 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 PRO 512GB |
 Plextor M9Pe 256GB |
According to Samsung, the 512GB 970 PRO 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 PRO 512GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 Plextor M9Pe 256GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The 970 PRO performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 3,603 MB/s and write at 2,339 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the 970 PRO's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
The 970 PRO's performance was hit and miss when tested with HD Tach. While the drive was able to write at 1,733.8 MB/s, its read speed averaged out at only 1897.9 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the 970 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 970 PRO 512GB |
 Plextor M9Pe 256GB |
When tested with ATTO, the 970 PRO's read speeds topped out at about 3,561 MB/s and its write speeds at 2,337 MB/s.
