Samsung SM863 & PM863 SSD Review (960GB)

4KB RANDOM READ/WRITE

In order to properly test random 4KB performance we first secure erase to get it in a clean state. Next, the drive is filled by sequentially writing to the RAW NAND capacity twice. We then precondition the drive with 4KB random writes at QD32 until the drive is in a steady state. Finally, we cycle through QD1-32 for 5 minutes each for writes and then reads. All this is scripted to run with no breaks in between. The last hour of preconditioning, the average IOPS, and average latency for each QD is graphed below.

Looking at the preconditioning results we can see very good IOPS and latency patterns at 4KB. The PM863’s IOPS average around 20K and latency ranges only 0.3ms during the last hour. The SM863 shows much better performance with an average of just over 28K IOPS and latency fluctuating only 0.03ms! That is a 10x improvement over the PM863’s deviation!

Here we see the SM863having a slight lead over the PM863. These two new drives both show better performance than the 845DC EVO and Crucial M510DC.

Here we see the Crucial M510DC shows it’s strength in write performance over the PM863, but the SM863 still out performs it by about 5K IOPS. Both drives show great low latency results as well.