Results – CrystalDiskMark

We took two routes with the CrystalDiskMark test, first running the benchmark using the standard Windows 10 NVMe driver and then running it a second time with Samsung’s latest NVMe driver 2.1 package from December 2016.

In our standard Windows 10 driver test using default settings at QD32, the Samsung SM961 256GB gets 1161MB/s sequential read speeds, 1528MB/s sequential write speeds, 539.5MB/s random 4K read speeds and 328.9MB/s random 4K write speeds.

In our Samsung NVMe driver test using default settings at QD32, the drive gets 1,671MB/s sequential read speeds, 1,502MB/s sequential write speeds, 558MB/s random 4K read speeds and 332MB/s random 4K write speeds. There is a noticeable drop in sequential (non-QD32) read performance with this driver as the drive dips by about ~215MB/s yet increases by about ~90MB/s in writes, while also bringing up sequential QD32 reads by around ~19MB/s. We personally prefer the higher sequential read performance that the native Windows driver provides and will use unless Samsung’s driver improves noticeably over the course of time.

In our standard Windows 10 driver testing using 0Fill data, the drive gets 1,665MB/s sequential read speeds, 1,539MB/s sequential write speeds, 536MB/s random 4K read speeds and 329MB/s random 4K write speeds.

In our Samsung NVMe driver test using 0Fill data, the drive gets 1,670MB/s sequential read speeds, 1,537MB/s sequential write speeds, 560MB/s random 4K read speeds and 346MB/s random 4K write speeds. Again, there is a noticeable drop in sequential (non-QD32) read performance by around 252MB/s, yet a slight bump in overall random 4K read and write performance by around 15 to 25MB/s.