You're not entirely incorrect newer OS already coming with an driver but from what I know it's not optimized. To be honest I never tried/compared to bench that to see what really 'makes' sense, but as always if you not faced troubles then stick with Windows own drivers.
I do plan on getting a 2-960 EVO NVMe drives in about two weeks, I'll let you know how or what works the best for a clean install of Windows 7 Pro
Yes, I've been to Fernando's web site before Mr.X's suggestion and I already have the NVMe driver for Samsung drives. Yesterday I got two 960 EVO M.2 drives, One for me and one for the Mrs. If I can get time this weekend I'll post my results of a clean install of Windows 7 Pro on a Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 5 board, with an Intel Skylake i5 6600K cpu and 16 gigs Corsair vengeance memory (2x8 modules)
Thank you Mr. X I posted a link to Fernando's web page about a month ago Looks to me that all I need to do is to use Gigabytes software to set up a usb 3 install with the software they provide with my Windows 7 and then create a NVMe folder and put the pure driver into that. Then do the F6 during the install to install the NVMe driver from the folder on my usb, and see if the 960 drive is recognized before completing the install. It sounds a lot like having to install sata drivers on some motherboards from years ago except we don't use floppy's today
I got the 960 EVO installed on the gigabyte Gaming 5 motherboard, popped in some memory and followed the software set up from gigabyte to install the usb 3.0 driver, The software also had a box to check for NVMe drive so I thought... why not? Well that didn't go well because it reported a fail on the driver install so I added the NVMe pure driver from Fernando on my usb drive too. I plugged in the usb and booted it up, started the install right off but when it rebooted I got a BSOD. I figure'd it was the driver for the NVMe drive so I formatted my USB and reinstalled but this time I only checked the box for the usb 3.0 driver and left the other NVMe driver box unchecked. I plugged the usb drive in again and when I got the option during the install to install a driver I did the browse and pointed to my folder with the pure driver for my Samsung drive from Fernando, That installed and Windows 7 Pro finished the install in less than 10 min, I wish I had timed it because it was the fastest install I ever done. Booted up and did OOBE and windows 7 pro is now running on my 960 EVO M.2 drive. Not enough time tonight to do anything more, but Windows is installed now