Question Samsung 970 Evo Plus vs Sabrent Rocket 1TB?

[Shyatic]

I'm in the hunt for a new build, and all the specs indicate the Sabrent is faster than the Samsung... my primary use case is gaming, so appreciate any thoughts?

 

[NewMaxx]

Which Rocket? 4.0, 3.0, or Q? Although I feel that in any meaningful way the 970 EVO Plus is faster outside of bursty sequentials, not that you would notice any difference between those four drives in everyday (or gaming) use. Check my signature.

 

[Soulkeeper]

One thing I noticed is that the sabrent don't allow for updating the firmware outside of windows. IE: linux and mac users.
There is no bootable iso on their website.
Infact none of the current pcie 4.0 drives seem to have this support in place(unless someone else has seen it?).
Anything made by samsung, crucial, or intel always have support.
Also HP and WD black nvme drives seem to lack this essential os agnostic firmware updating. They do target gamers and are fast + reasonably priced as well.

Also i'm not convinced that the controller on the current pcie 4.0 drives is superior to samsung in any way, other than having pcie 4.0.

 

[NewMaxx]

Also i'm not convinced that the controller on the pcie 4.0 drives is superior to samsung in any way, other than having pcie 4.0.

It's not. The Phison E16 is a modified version of the E12 (3.0). It uses some updated LDPC (which is not a significant change) and is also slightly higher-clocked than the E12, likely to manage 800 MT/s flash (vs. 667 MT/s most commonly over 3.0, sometimes 533 MT/s for enclosures/portable). This is a dual-CPU design based on the ARM Cortex-R5, which is the basis of most consumer SSD controllers including Samsung's, with co-processors (CoXProcessor) for I/O offloading. Arguably I consider this inferior to some other designs, including Samsung's current penta-core implementation which evolved from their original tri-core Cortex-R4 designs (e.g. UAX/UBX). These had specialized cores - one for reads, one for writes, one for host - with now the first two having two cores each, so inherently Samsung's design is more robust than the E12/E16. WD's proprietary design is based on Phison's work (since they work closely with Toshiba too) but their tri-core implementation as in the SN750 is closer to the UBX. For anything serious, e.g. "traditional" NVMe tasks, that type of implementation is superior.

That's just discussing the controller. There are other related differences with SLC cache for example. Samsung uses a hybrid design, that is static + dynamic, and never has so large a dynamic that it has to rely on folding. The E16 (4.0) drives have full-drive SLC caching, all dynamic, which makes for impressive sequential speeds but has its drawbacks. While it depends on the workload, again in "traditional" NVMe terms the E16 implementation is inferior.

The upcoming E18-based drives should still use this caching scheme, however I expect it to be refined to some degree. There is much work being done in the SLC caching field. From a controller perspective, however, the E18 looks to be tri-CPU with CoXProcessors (albeit at a smaller process node) which with the appropriate improvements should be worthwhile.

 

[Fernando 1]

I'm in the hunt for a new build, and all the specs indicate the Sabrent is faster than the Samsung...

The Sabrent Rocket 4.0 SSD is indeed much faster than the Samsung 970 EVO Plus ( I have compared them both), but only if your mainboard has an AMD X570 chipset and your Ryzen CPU allows the full PCIe 4.0 speed.
Here are my benchmark results (left Pic: 500 GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus, right Pic: 1 TB Sabrent Rocket 4.0):

 

[Shyatic]

The Sabrent Rocket 4.0 SSD is indeed much faster than the Samsung 970 EVO Plus ( I have compared them both), but only if your mainboard has an AMD X570 chipset and your Ryzen CPU allows the full PCIe 4.0 speed.

I have an x570 board with a 3600, so I went ahead and did my build off that. No complaints so far, seems smooth.

 

[Makaveli]

I have the Corsair 600MP drive which uses the Phison E16 controller. Have also updated the firmware via Corsair SSD toolbox.

 

[gibolocopt]

I currently have a x570 board with 1TB 870 evo plus. I was thinking about adding more disk to the system. Should I buy a 2TB sabrent (and return my 870 evo plus to amazon) or maybe buy another 1.0TB (samsung or sabrent?) to make a raid-0?

 

[Makaveli]

Raid 0 is only worth it for SATA ssd's and not NVME drives at the moment if you ask me.

My build is setup like that my Raid 0 array is basically for games and some small storage. While my NVME drive is my OS / app drives and this drive is faster than my Raid 0 but less capacity 1TB vs 2TBs.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm running RAID-0 of Intel 660p 1TB NVMe SSDs on my Asus B450-F mobo. Reads are 3200MB/sec, writes 2800-3000MB/sec. I did it mainly for cheap(er) storage, I got two of these drives open-box, lucked out and they were unopened. $168 for 2TB. Worth it to me. I do backup my main SSD(s) daily, should it fail. I'm not too worried though, Intel drives are pretty robust.

 

[WarthogARJ]

I'm in the hunt for a new build, and all the specs indicate the Sabrent is faster than the Samsung... my primary use case is gaming, so appreciate any thoughts?

Hi,
I've been a lurker, and am busy researching benchmarks to make myself a better metric for assessing SSD's.

But based on what I've seen so far, I'd suggest you look at the 2TB Addlink S70 as an option based on "speed" alone.

When you say "faster", it's a bit vague, but if you look at trasfer rates under heavy write loads, then the Addlink S70 2TB is tied with the Samsung 970 Pro 1TB. (1 review has ut faster, two rank it slightly slower).

The Samsung 970 Plus 1TB is a bit faster up to about 50 GB, and then after that the Addlink is faster.

The Sabrent doesn't have many very thorough reviews that I'm aware of, and without that, you don't know how it handles heavy loads, as in its cache behaviour, and/or thermal throttling effects.

For gaming, you are not going to see ANY difference with any of the better SSD's with any gaming use, except loading big data files onto it. That is, if you are looking at the Samsung 970 EVO Plus and similar (very) high end SSD's.

If you just want high speed with short and small writes, then use Samsung's Magician, or Rapid for another make, to use system DRAM to boost the short term speed.

And in all cases, you're better off getting a 2TB drive rather than a 1TB is you can afford it, if it means you won't run it too full. As soon as you start to fill them up, performance starts to drop across the board.

As I said, it's still early days for my analysis, but based on what I've see, this seems correct.

Alan

 

[Makaveli]

I'm running RAID-0 of Intel 660p 1TB NVMe SSDs on my Asus B450-F mobo. Reads are 3200MB/sec, writes 2800-3000MB/sec. I did it mainly for cheap(er) storage, I got two of these drives open-box, lucked out and they were unopened. $168 for 2TB. Worth it to me. I do backup my main SSD(s) daily, should it fail. I'm not too worried though, Intel drives are pretty robust.

I have two Intel G2 160GB's in Raid 0 in my previously built that are still going stronger after 8 Years the are using MLC flash which I believe does help.

 

[JustMe21]

The Sabrent Rocket 4.0 SSD is indeed much faster than the Samsung 970 EVO Plus ( I have compared them both), but only if your mainboard has an AMD X570 chipset and your Ryzen CPU allows the full PCIe 4.0 speed.
Here are my benchmark results (left Pic: 500 GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus, right Pic: 1 TB Sabrent Rocket 4.0):
View attachment 18217View attachment 18218

Write performance is better for the Sabrent until you fill up its cache, then its performance tanks. I still prefer the Samsung Pro series as they have consistent sustained speeds.

Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0 M.2 SSD Review: A High-Performance Value (Update)

Sabrent’s Rocket NVMe 4.0 offers unparalleled speed and endurance for the price.

www.tomshardware.com

I'd never use an Intel 660p as a main drive. In 2 laptops, I had to turn off Windows Protection because caching shaders to disk and Windows Protection being on killed the drive performance.

 

[Makaveli]

Write performance is better for the Sabrent until you fill up its cache, then its performance tanks. I still prefer the Samsung Pro series as they have consistent sustained speeds.

Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0 M.2 SSD Review: A High-Performance Value (Update)

Sabrent’s Rocket NVMe 4.0 offers unparalleled speed and endurance for the price.

www.tomshardware.com

I'd never use an Intel 660p as a main drive. In 2 laptops, I had to turn off Windows Protection because caching shaders to disk and Windows Protection being on killed the drive performance.

The performance drops on that controller as it runs out of SLC cache at like 330GB's.

On my 1TB drive the amount of times i've written over that amount of data in one shot has been 0 in 6 months. I don't think many people will run into this situation in typical drive usage.

And the Samsung PCIe 4.0 drive isn't out yet so we will have to so we will have to wait until close to the end of the year to see its performance. Not to mention PS5018-E18 is also coming out to replace the PS5018-E16 controllers in the current PCIe 4.0 drives.

 

[gibolocopt]

The Samsung has better read speeds (20%), that is more important for gaming. I feel that Samsung will also longer (they are manufacturing ssds since forever, not sure how reliable the sabrent will be). I am considering returning my sabrent 2tb to buy the 970 Evo plus (50 dollars more expensive)

 

[Makaveli]

The Samsung has better read speeds (20%), that is more important for gaming. I feel that Samsung will also longer (they are manufacturing ssds since forever, not sure how reliable the sabrent will be). I am considering returning my sabrent 2tb to buy the 970 Evo plus (50 dollars more expensive)

Where are you seeing these 20% better read speeds got a link?

Also

Sabrent Rocket

MTFB 1,700,000 hours

Samsung Evo

MTFB 1,500,000 hours

Based on the manufactures numbers the Rocket should last longer.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Where are you seeing these 20% better read speeds got a link?

Ya, I thought the Sabrent smokes the Samsung in sequential read (esp. burst)?

 

[gibolocopt]

Where are you seeing these 20% better read speeds got a link?

Also

Sabrent Rocket

MTFB 1,700,000 hours

Samsung Evo

MTFB 1,500,000 hours

Based on the manufactures numbers the Rocket should last longer.

Here is the comparison. The Samsung is considerably faster in read speeds

Please click the green human to continue - UserBenchmark

 

[Makaveli]

Here is the comparison. The Samsung is considerably faster in read speeds

Please click the green human to continue - UserBenchmark

Userbenchmark?

Really dude lol we will let that slide since you are new.

 

[Ajay]

IDK, the PCIe 3.0 NVME SSDs are so fast, I wonder if you will really notice other than in benchmarks. I'm really impressed with my non-plus 970 EVO.

 

[Makaveli]

IDK, the PCIe 3.0 NVME SSDs are so fast, I wonder if you will really notice other than in benchmarks. I'm really impressed with my non-plus 970 EVO.

WIth most of these drives you are looking at differences in ms or maybe 1 sec at best won't be noticeable to most users.

 

[NewMaxx]

The performance drops on that controller as it runs out of SLC cache at like 330GB's.

When it's empty, yes. Full-drive SLC caching means the SLC cache is roughly 1/3 the available/free space.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Think I got mixed up that the HP and ADATA drives had a Phison E12 when it's a Silicon Motion contoller. Oops.

 

[StrangerGuy]

WIth most of these drives you are looking at differences in ms or maybe 1 sec at best won't be noticeable to most users.

Agreed, I never understood the weird obsession for having the fastest NVME drive, especially for consumer workloads. I will never notice that my SX8200 Pro 2TB is slower than the 970 Evo 2TB in server grade I/O loads, but i will definitely notice the huge price differential in my wallet when the former is priced just 1/2 of the latter at time of purchase.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Agreed, I never understood the weird obsession for having the fastest NVME drive, especially for consumer workloads. I will never notice that my SX8200 Pro 2TB is slower than the 970 Evo 2TB in server grade I/O loads, but i will definitely notice the huge price differential in my wallet when the former is priced just 1/2 of the latter at time of purchase.

I happen to have both these drives in my system I have a hard time seeing a difference. And since I can't copy from a much faster drive to test the limits of either, well you get the picture. The Samsung does seem better handling very large files and random reads but I can't verify that. Don't think I would buy the Samsung over the Adata if I was buying another NVME.