Next, IOMeter IOPS. For all of the IOMeter tests we ran the following set up;
- Full Random
- 20Gb test file
- 30 minute per test
- 10 second warm up
The test takes a few hours, and always an overnight run, so the drive is going to be thoroughly tested and stressed giving a good indication of high workload scenario like gaming or using Photoshop.
IOMeter results are equally as stunning, with nearly a Gb/s for 32Kb Read performance. Considering these are Random Read results, we think the Samsung SM951 512GB M.2 is showing some muscle.
The speeds are really taking off now, and matching the CrystalMarkx64 results on the previous page. The SM951 seems like it would trash any situation, even if just on paper.
Write performance slows down significantly, but only relatively speaking, 780Mb/s is still extremely quick performance. Skipping the SATA pipeline seems to be the best way to go.
PCMark08 Professional gaming results now, and the performance is good, but this is where it really stops being a wonder drive and starts being a bit ordinary.
We used the Storage benchmark as always, this is a test refined for storage heavy testing.
The Samsung SM951 is only shaving a couple of seconds at most, and usually a couple of tenths off the benchmark results of the Crucial BX100 500Gb SSD.
Though only our expectation, we really thought this would have been significantly better, having 2,150MB/s Seq Read to play with, the benchmark didn’t seem to need or want it.
On the flip side, a two second decrease in the Battlefield 4 load time doesn’t seem much, and you will notice, but it adds up over the course of a couple of years to give you a round or so back!
Samsung SM951 512GB M.2 Storage Review
Package - 7
Performance - 9
Price - 7.5
Consumer Experience - 7.5
7.8
The Samsung SM951 512GB M.2 has a lot going for it; speed, small physical size and a good storage size. It has one thing that is not going for it, relative speed and perception. We really didn't notice that we had this in the build until we benchmarked it.