New Samsung NVMe driver released

here it is...

Well well, my Z170 Extreme7+ PC restarted after the Samsung NVMe driver update like the proverbial bat out of heck, even with the Windows 10 ultra-slow boot mode (as I call it), where it checks for updates and who knows what else.

Unless that is something reserved for lucky MS Insiders...

Time to run a benchmark.


Edited by parsec - 05 Jan 2016 at 11:34pm

I know what you mean about a driver taking some time to settle in, it's as if the SSD is subtlety changed by the driver over time. Some of that might be a better TRIM implementation with the driver, particularly in RAID mode and RAID 0 TRIM being available. That's not just for RAID arrays, but any single SSD.

You'd be surprised how apparently difficult TRIM can be with drivers and a chipset. I was testing the... ASMedia SATA II½ ports recently with a Sammy 840 Pro. Windows 10 "optimize" TRIM will not finish using the MS storahci driver, it hangs at ~75%. Installing an ASMedia "Win 10" driver from Station Drivers causes my 840 Pro to not be recognized by Win 10. Restarts don't help. Just unbelievable and disappointing.

This is my 256GB 950 as an OS drive, slightly lower results than a new, empty 950, but that is no surprise:



Notice the weird translucent bar with 1063.79MB/s (twice) in it. Ever see that when you hover the mouse pointer over the three Read and Write speed results, when AS SSD is running but the test is over? It shows the minimum and maximum speeds recorded for each test, which is done multiple times for each file size. I managed to get Windows Snipping Tool to pick up that momentary display.

That was shown when the pointer was over the 4K-64 Thrd Read results. Normally the Min and Max can be different by varying amounts, so the result displayed may be an average, or is the maximum value recorded. Notice here how the Min and Max are identical at 1063.79 MB/s, but I get 1027.44 MB/s. I was robbed of speed and points!   That is just strange IMO, who knows what is being calculated by AS SSD.

Just for comparison, this is my 256GB Samsung AHCI SM951 in the same PC:



The SM951 is not a bad SSD at all. Besides the 4K results, which SSD seems preferable? The SM951 does not have 3D V-NAND.

Haha so true.

So I ran AS SSD on my 840 Pro connected to the ASMedia SATA controller, using the MSoft storahci driver. This is the result:



Isn't that cute. I've never seen this error message from AS SSD. Cleaned up the test file left behind, and tried again a few times, same result. I then tried running AS SSD copied to the 840 Pro itself, although I've never had to do that in the past. Same result every time, same error.

Also tried a restart, no difference. The 840 Pro can be accessed by Windows fine, files are opened and read fine.

I tried running Anvil and Crystal Disk Mark, both also failed. They both did not issue an error message, and just did nothing but were clearly running and doing something (nothing.) I had to kill those two processes to end them, while AS SSD failed more gracefully.

One other odd thing, while the 840 Pro was recognized in the UEFI Storage Configuration screen and in Windows, it was not seen by the System Browser tool in A-Tuning. Meanwhile three PCIe SSDs were recognized by System Browser, two NVMe SSDs and one AHCI SSD. All were connected to the M.2 ports.

I wonder if I should try another ASMedia driver from Station Drivers.