Any NVMe drive that doesn't beat the Intel 600p in every category shouldn't be made. I really wish all mfgs would keep NVMe drives to at least PCI x4 & 8 channels with a minimum performance level that is much higher than SATA. The bar for the next tech level of storage products should be at a higher level than the previous.
Forget the low-end marked for NVMe. SATA can easily take care of any needs there.
Given that only Samsung barely saturates PCIex2, and only on artificial tests, at this point even x4 is useless, let alone x8. They'll need many more channels.
Actually, I'd prefer x1 for ultra-low-power, if it is fully saturated in more or less real-life tests (like AT's "Light"), vs x4 which only saturates 1/10th of x1 capacity.
I was thinking more along the lines of every mfg creating NVMe drives have to attain to a minimum performance level. It becomes easier to understand what is higher-performing from the end-user's perspective. So if NVMe's minimum performance level is 2x SATA, then anytime you see NVMe you know it's better than SATA. Too bad whatever storage consortium finalized specs for NVMe didn't require min perf levels for storage.
It's annoy to me when these mfgs put out "new" drives that don't exceed the older tech.
In the ATSB Heavy Data Rate chart, for the 1TB 970 EVO, I think you have the full and empty numbers transposed. I.e. you show 525 empty and 635 full. I assume that should be 635 empty and 525 full?
They're not transposed. I'm not sure what happened with those test runs, but I'm re-running them. I do know that Samsung drives lie about when they've finished a secure erase, so it's possible the "empty" drive test run was still working on an erase operation in the background even though I try to ensure all drives have plenty of idle time to finish cleaning up after they claim to be done erasing.
Surprised it works like that when using secure erase, zapping page area and all NAND chips should not take long to do, also what can i use to use secure erase on all drives (seagate own tool seems to lack it, it has full erase but it's not secure erase and it killed my seagate firecuda doing it)
Everyone here knows that in the shops the average Joe will see on the product tag "Sequential Read 1500 MB/s" which is plain lie and conveniently keeps mum about this. Which test gives 1500, show me? At best 2-3 times less.
Great review but this drive does seem rather unimpressive for sure. It acts like it doe snot have a dram cache at all since most if it's scores are well below the mark. I like Kingston for their memory products which work well in the systems I build for my clients. These NVMe drives that are considered lower end give a false picture of great speed and performance because NVMe drives are known for their great performance level. Then you get these drives trying to break into this sector and do not perform any where close to what you would expect from a NVMe drive. Heck my samsung 860 Pro 512GB Sata SSD can get better numbers in a lot of the tests done in the review than these cheap low end NVMe drives and it is only based off of the Sata port and limited to a max 600MB's from the port itself that is kinda sad if you think about it really.
Let's return to the old review of the "crappy" product after half a year has elapsed.
A relative gets a quite nice (for his budget) 6-core intel laptop from Black Friday sales, but it only comes with an HDD.
I want to get him an SSD that fits the M.2 slot that the machine has. Laptop datasheet leads me to believe that this very specific model number doesn't support SATA over M.2 (many other sub-models list both Sata M.2 and pcie NVMe, but this one particularly mentions only NVMe pcie)
My limited gift budget allows me to choose 480GB Kingston or 256GB EVO970 from Amazon as I don't have time or possibility to shop around in local stores.
So for about 90 euros I can choose either faster 256GB or slower 480GB m.2 drive. Choice is clear. In this case bigger is better, even though it is a bit slower. Under most practical day to day use the Kingston is a much better choice as it is quite easy to fill a 250GB SSD, but difficult to max out the iops of A1000 in a way that bothers the user badly.
EV970 500GB would require about 50% increase in gift budget. Not impossible, but I see very little value from the extra speed, while even the entry level pci-e M.2 SSD is an insane leap for the laptop.
Corsair P1 500 would also have been an option, but at that particular moment it was more pricey.
So yeah, even the "worst" of their class SSD's have value to offer.
I see very little value in faster nvme drives for most people. We've come a long way from the times of Intel X25-M. Even the crappy SSD's are quite good these days.
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romrunning - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
Any NVMe drive that doesn't beat the Intel 600p in every category shouldn't be made. I really wish all mfgs would keep NVMe drives to at least PCI x4 & 8 channels with a minimum performance level that is much higher than SATA. The bar for the next tech level of storage products should be at a higher level than the previous.Forget the low-end marked for NVMe. SATA can easily take care of any needs there.
peevee - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
Given that only Samsung barely saturates PCIex2, and only on artificial tests, at this point even x4 is useless, let alone x8. They'll need many more channels.Actually, I'd prefer x1 for ultra-low-power, if it is fully saturated in more or less real-life tests (like AT's "Light"), vs x4 which only saturates 1/10th of x1 capacity.
romrunning - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
I was thinking more along the lines of every mfg creating NVMe drives have to attain to a minimum performance level. It becomes easier to understand what is higher-performing from the end-user's perspective. So if NVMe's minimum performance level is 2x SATA, then anytime you see NVMe you know it's better than SATA. Too bad whatever storage consortium finalized specs for NVMe didn't require min perf levels for storage.It's annoy to me when these mfgs put out "new" drives that don't exceed the older tech.
FunBunny2 - Monday, July 2, 2018 - link
" I really wish all mfgs would keep NVMe drives to at least PCI x4 & 8 channels with a minimum performance level that is much higher than SATA. "some wag put it, "you sell the sizzle, not the steak".
Gunbuster - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
Okay Kingston, reviews are done, feel free to swap in cheaper/slower NAND chips. ;)Ratman6161 - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
In the ATSB Heavy Data Rate chart, for the 1TB 970 EVO, I think you have the full and empty numbers transposed. I.e. you show 525 empty and 635 full. I assume that should be 635 empty and 525 full?Billy Tallis - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
They're not transposed. I'm not sure what happened with those test runs, but I'm re-running them. I do know that Samsung drives lie about when they've finished a secure erase, so it's possible the "empty" drive test run was still working on an erase operation in the background even though I try to ensure all drives have plenty of idle time to finish cleaning up after they claim to be done erasing.leexgx - Wednesday, July 4, 2018 - link
Surprised it works like that when using secure erase, zapping page area and all NAND chips should not take long to do, also what can i use to use secure erase on all drives (seagate own tool seems to lack it, it has full erase but it's not secure erase and it killed my seagate firecuda doing it)SanX - Tuesday, July 3, 2018 - link
Everyone here knows that in the shops the average Joe will see on the product tag "Sequential Read 1500 MB/s" which is plain lie and conveniently keeps mum about this. Which test gives 1500, show me? At best 2-3 times less.This site degraded long ago to serve salespeople.
rocky12345 - Wednesday, July 4, 2018 - link
Great review but this drive does seem rather unimpressive for sure. It acts like it doe snot have a dram cache at all since most if it's scores are well below the mark. I like Kingston for their memory products which work well in the systems I build for my clients. These NVMe drives that are considered lower end give a false picture of great speed and performance because NVMe drives are known for their great performance level. Then you get these drives trying to break into this sector and do not perform any where close to what you would expect from a NVMe drive. Heck my samsung 860 Pro 512GB Sata SSD can get better numbers in a lot of the tests done in the review than these cheap low end NVMe drives and it is only based off of the Sata port and limited to a max 600MB's from the port itself that is kinda sad if you think about it really.leexgx - Wednesday, July 4, 2018 - link
I am fine with no smaller ssds as anything below 240gb is not really enough and cost only 20 more then a 120gb model any wayzepi - Monday, January 7, 2019 - link
Let's return to the old review of the "crappy" product after half a year has elapsed.A relative gets a quite nice (for his budget) 6-core intel laptop from Black Friday sales, but it only comes with an HDD.
I want to get him an SSD that fits the M.2 slot that the machine has. Laptop datasheet leads me to believe that this very specific model number doesn't support SATA over M.2 (many other sub-models list both Sata M.2 and pcie NVMe, but this one particularly mentions only NVMe pcie)
My limited gift budget allows me to choose 480GB Kingston or 256GB EVO970 from Amazon as I don't have time or possibility to shop around in local stores.
So for about 90 euros I can choose either faster 256GB or slower 480GB m.2 drive. Choice is clear. In this case bigger is better, even though it is a bit slower. Under most practical day to day use the Kingston is a much better choice as it is quite easy to fill a 250GB SSD, but difficult to max out the iops of A1000 in a way that bothers the user badly.
EV970 500GB would require about 50% increase in gift budget. Not impossible, but I see very little value from the extra speed, while even the entry level pci-e M.2 SSD is an insane leap for the laptop.
Corsair P1 500 would also have been an option, but at that particular moment it was more pricey.
So yeah, even the "worst" of their class SSD's have value to offer.
I see very little value in faster nvme drives for most people. We've come a long way from the times of Intel X25-M. Even the crappy SSD's are quite good these days.