5 Quick Questions about Samsung NVMe m.2 ssds and about secondary storage

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UKTone

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https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-960-PRO-Internal-MZ-V6P512BW/dp/B01LXS4TYB/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1489668793&sr=1-2&keywords=samsung+nvme+m.2+ssd+960
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-960-EVO-Internal-MZ-V6E500BW/dp/B01LYFKJR7/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1489668793&sr=1-1&keywords=samsung%2Bnvme%2Bm.2%2Bssd%2B960&th=1
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-950-PRO-Internal-MZ-V5P512BW/dp/B01639694M/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1489669181&sr=1-3&keywords=samsung+nvme+m.2+ssd+950+evo

For the same space, why does the 950 pro still cost more than the 960 versions? The read speeds are faster, but the site doesn't show the "Random Read/Write IOPS Performance : Up to 300K and 110K Respectively*" part that it shows for the evo 950, but do not show it for the 960 versions, and it goes up and down depending on the drive's space, for both evo and pro 950 and 960. And also for the read/write performance for the 950. The 960's it's the same except for when it's a pro or an evo, storage space doesn't matter.

So what are all the factors for the price differences for what seems to me to be the weaker product is still more costly?

Next, I have a regular ssd for my primary storage, I have an external hdd i could pretty swiftly transfer all my files to and reinstall windows 7 if i need to. But my question is, should I switch my os to run off the 960 evo nvme m.2 ssd (I already have it, i haven't installed it yet), or keep it on the ssd?

If I ran games off the ssd vs the m.2 ssd, whether primary or secondary, would there be a difference?

Lastly, for 720p-1440p video editing, rendering, etc. would any of this matter?

Thank you.
 
Solution
geofelt
I could be wrong on this.

1. The 950 PRO uses a more expensive older nand technology which allows for faster writes and better endurance.
Endurance for a larger ssd like 500gb is no issue regardless.

2. The 960 series uses newer cheaper nand. The PRO versions have longer endurance.

It probably does not matter much.

Do not be much swayed by vendor synthetic SSD benchmarks.
They are done with apps that push the SSD to it's maximum using queue lengths of 30 or so.
Most desktop users will do one or two things at a time, so they will see queue lengths of one or two.
What really counts is the response times, particularly for small random I/O. That is what the os does mostly.
For that, the response times of current SSD's are...
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geofelt

geofelt

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I could be wrong on this.

1. The 950 PRO uses a more expensive older nand technology which allows for faster writes and better endurance.
Endurance for a larger ssd like 500gb is no issue regardless.

2. The 960 series uses newer cheaper nand. The PRO versions have longer endurance.

It probably does not matter much.

Do not be much swayed by vendor synthetic SSD benchmarks.
They are done with apps that push the SSD to it's maximum using queue lengths of 30 or so.
Most desktop users will do one or two things at a time, so they will see queue lengths of one or two.
What really counts is the response times, particularly for small random I/O. That is what the os does mostly.
For that, the response times of current SSD's are remarkably similar. And quick. Larger SSD's are preferable. They have more nand chips that can be accessed in parallel. Sort of an internal raid-0 if you will.
Also, a SSD will slow down as it approaches full. That is because it will have a harder time finding free nand blocks to do an update without a read/write operation.

By all means use the m.2 960 evo.
Install it.
Install the Samsung nvme driver which you can download from their web site.
Use the Samsung ssd migration aid to move your "C" drive from your ssd to the m.2 drive
That is what I did moving from a 850 pro to a 950 pro m.2 and there were no issues.
Do not expect performance magic.
About the only place I noticed was that virus scans were noticeably faster.
On sustained sequential operations taking more thn 60 seconds or so, heat will build up and the m.2 may slow down.

In theory, the 4x transfer speed advantage of a m.2 in a pcie x4 slot should help game level loads.

For editing, I would imagine that write capability is most important. For that have lots of free space available on the ssd.

 
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