# Samsung 980 PRO NVMe SSD Uses TLC NAND Flash with Half the Endurance of 970 PRO: Product Page



## btarunr (Aug 31, 2020)

Samsung's hotly anticipated 980 PRO M.2 NVMe flagship client-segment SSD is the company's first "PRO" branded SSD to feature TLC NAND flash memory, breaking from a unique tradition of using MLC (2 bits per cell) NAND flash. Product pages of the drive went live, and its specifications clearly state the use of "Samsung V-NAND 3-bit MLC," which is another way of saying TLC. "MLC" generally referred to as NAND flash memory that stores 2 bits per cell, even through the term "Multi-level" is amorphous.

The product page lists other juicy specs of Samsung's first M.2 NVMe client SSD that takes advantage of PCI-Express gen 4. The drive uses Samsung's in-house design "Elpis" controller, which uses NVMe 1.3 protocol over PCI-Express 4.0 x4, and an LPDDR4 DRAM cache. The 980 PRO comes in capacities of up to 1 TB, with up to 1 GB of DRAM cache. Samsung rates the 1 TB version as capable of up to 7000 MB/s sequential reads, up to 5000 MB/s sequential writes, and up to 1 million IOPS 4K random reads/writes at QD32. The use of TLC impacts endurance adversely in comparison to that of the drive's immediate predecessor, the 970 PRO, with the 1 TB 980 PRO warranty covering only up to 600 TBW, in comparison to 1200 TBW of the 970 PRO 1 TB, and the 500 GB 980 PRO offering just 300 TBW warranty coverage in comparison to 600 TBW of the 970 PRO 512 GB. 



 

 

 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## Selaya (Aug 31, 2020)

Maybe we'll finally see a PCIe 4.0 NVMe that isn't basically a dressed-up SATA drive. Even if it's TLC.


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## Object55 (Aug 31, 2020)

TLC, 1TB Max, Half endurance... what is this, Samsung ?


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## Ed_1 (Aug 31, 2020)

Those specs sound more for a non-PRO version, wonder if they will have lower PCI-E Gen4 models.


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## ssdpro (Aug 31, 2020)

That landed with a giant festering thud. Funny they call it 3-bit MLC where they call the 970 Pro 2-bit MLC like MLC is. No PR blitz, no early samples to match the launch, just a *semi-hidden webpage* revealing it is common zzzz TLC used in everything from value junk to ordinary mid-mainstream. Who cares about TLC burst speeds, TLC is burst then flop flat on face short life trash. Grab those 970 Pros while you still can - price is already up a bit. It doesn't burst as high but the thing is plenty fast and a tank.


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## Searing (Aug 31, 2020)

Object55 said:


> TLC, 1TB Max, Half endurance... what is this, Samsung ?



Samsung has been garbage in SSD land for a few years now. They don't have better performance but they charge up to twice as much.

I really want a Phison E18 drive, should see that much cheaper and now that Samsung also uses TLC I don't see any reason to pay any premium at all for Samsung.


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## watzupken (Aug 31, 2020)

That’s very sneaky of Samsung to call it 3bit MLC. I saw the specs earlier on another site, but thought it’s a typo. If it’s not real MLC, then what is so Pro about this? The Pro vs Evo series used to be segregated by MLC vs TLC.


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## jeremyshaw (Aug 31, 2020)

ssdpro said:


> That landed with a giant festering thud. Funny they call it 3-bit MLC where they call the 970 Pro 2-bit MLC like MLC is. No PR blitz, no early samples to match the launch, just a *semi-hidden webpage* revealing it is common zzzz TLC used in everything from value junk to ordinary mid-mainstream. Who cares about TLC burst speeds, TLC is burst then flop flat on face short life trash. Grab those 970 Pros while you still can - price is already up a bit. It doesn't burst as high but the thing is plenty fast and a tank.



You just furnished a link to their Singaporean site, in English.

MLC is Multi Level Cell. For some reason, people decided to get cute with the naming after that. Multi-level and the # of bits is a perfectly reasonable definition, IMO, and it is one Samsung has used for a while (long enough for me to remember people griping about it in the past, too). TLC ended up working as a name. Next we have QLC for Quad. Cannot use Q for Quint, so... what? PLC for Penta? What happens with 6? No quick escape though latin anymore, and SLC is already long taken. 7 has the exact same problem. 8, we can go with O, a wonderful letter to use in the computing world, where nobody will ever confuse it with 0 or misread it for Q.

#-bit MLC is perfectly descriptive and avoids the mess of randomly sorting through languages to find an unused calque to salvage a letter from. If that's too silly, then 1LC, 2LC, 3LC, 4LC is just as definitive and still works as an initialism.

But naming schemes are usually built on piles of "I'm already used to it being this way" and "things were better back then, when we named it. I'm keeping the old name" so any chance of fixing it is basically out the window. Hopefully, by the time PLC rolls around, nobody outside of the actual R&D engineers will care about the differences between different voltage levels.


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## Caring1 (Aug 31, 2020)

It's still MLC, considering anything with more than a one bit layer is MLC.
I prefer Samsung's naming method as it makes it very clear what you are getting.


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## Dave65 (Aug 31, 2020)

Has Samsung went to sheet or am I missing something?


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## XiGMAKiD (Aug 31, 2020)

The future of storage is a 4TB SSD that you have to replace every 2 year because of its 6-bit per cell NAND


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## CapsulateRhyme8 (Aug 31, 2020)

Does Samsung not know how to make an SSD controller with good wear leveling or are they just using garbage NAND flash and overcharging for it???
My budget TLC Phison e12 SSD (and most other e12 drives) is rated for 1600TBW for the 1TB model, higher than the 970 "PRO" and much higher than the 980 "PRO". Don't pros want reliability?


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## Caring1 (Aug 31, 2020)

CapsulateRhyme8 said:


> Does Samsung not know how to make an SSD controller with good wear leveling or are they just using garbage NAND flash and overcharging for it???
> My budget TLC Phison e12 SSD (and most other e12 drives) is rated for 1600TBW for the 1TB model, higher than the 970 "PRO" and much higher than the 980 "PRO". Don't pros want reliability?


Most Pros just want the money.


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## Searing (Aug 31, 2020)

You also must remember that there is probably some kind of SLC caching so write amplification is a thing. So when they say 1 drive write, you might only be copying 1/4 of a drive and it actually wrote an entire drive then converted it from SLC to TLC in storage after the fact.


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## Makaveli (Aug 31, 2020)

600 TBW is low.

The Corsair MP600 1TB drive i'm using is 1,800 TBW and also uses TLC with Phison E16.

Now i'm curious to see what the updated Phison E18 will do which I believe comes out towards the end of the year.


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## Ashtr1x (Aug 31, 2020)

This is big blow to consumer. I often see these NVMe drives prone to high wear and tear due to higher temperatures for not so ground breaking gains over a SATA SSD. In enthusiast laptops like Clevo and Alienware LGA laptops these PRO drives are the go to choice for the people who want to get best for top buck. Now SATA 860 is probably Samsung's last MLC lineup, 4TB of that drive I wished to see it drop to an affordable cost to play all the fantastic past decade games but looks like it's also soon going to exit from market if Samsung's top PCIe 4.0 NVMe doesn't use MLC technology anymore. With "Samsung tax" I wonder who is going to buy these now. With increased layers from Kioxia, and other SSD makers Samsung is going to lose it's prized top crown for the best SSD for top price in NVMe very unfortunate. No reason to buy these Samsung drives anymore imho, an ADATA / WD and now with Phison's new controllers this is going to be a bust for Samsung, too greedy.


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 31, 2020)

Not for that price. If Sammy wants that price, they will deliver MLC NAND with a generous DRAM cache and excellent performance.



XiGMAKiD said:


> The future of storage is a 4TB SSD that you have to replace every 2 year because of its 6-bit per cell NAND


Eff that. Hardcore no thank you with both middle fingers displayed tall and proud!!


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## trparky (Aug 31, 2020)

Oh no, they better not make the EVO model based upon QLC-NAND because they can just shove that shit up where the sun doesn't shine.

Are they going to make the Pro model cheaper because... Oh hell, what am I thinking? They wouldn't do that. That would make too much sense. Silly me.


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## R-T-B (Aug 31, 2020)

Suddenly my Mushkin Pilot-E NVMe solution doesn't feel so bad...


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## Metroid (Aug 31, 2020)

Object55 said:


> TLC, 1TB Max, Half endurance... what is this, Samsung ?



Well, I dont see that as a problem if price is also halved. Now if is not then we do have a problem and I will gladly boycott it.


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## Makaveli (Aug 31, 2020)

Metroid said:


> Well, I dont see that as a problem if price is also halved. Now if is not then we do have a problem and I will gladly boycott it.



Will have to see what they do as I have a feeling they will try to use PCIe 4.0 as a reason to keep the prices high. 

Lets hope i'm wrong.


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## trparky (Aug 31, 2020)

Makaveli said:


> Will have to see what they do as I have a feeling they will try to use PCIe 4.0 as a reason to keep the prices high.
> 
> Lets hope i'm wrong.


Don't be silly, I didn't think you were naive. They'll most _definitely_ charge a premium despite less NAND endurance.


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## Minus Infinity (Aug 31, 2020)

Seriously underwhelmed by the 1TB capacity. Why bother going to TLC if you can't offer higher capacities.


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## trparky (Aug 31, 2020)

Minus Infinity said:


> Seriously underwhelmed by the 1TB capacity. Why bother going to TLC if you can't offer higher capacities.


Yep, most definitely yes!


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## Athlonite (Aug 31, 2020)

Less TBW than my Adata SX8200 Pro (640TBW) and probably a $300+ or more in cost who cares that it's PCIe gen 4 x4 you'll never notice the difference in the real world what they need to be doing is going for better write capacity instead of faster faster faster soon it'll be 15GB/s and 200MBW ( Megabytes Written) and 5 minute warranty for the low low cost of 1 kidney 1 nut and your first born child's soul


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## Vayra86 (Aug 31, 2020)

This will only get worse. Scarce product is scarce, and this is what you get.

It really was better in the old days, I think we will be saying that a lot in tech in the near future.


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## Breit (Aug 31, 2020)

Anything on price?
Maybe the Samsung PM1733 is the better option at this point... 
These are available in 2/4/8/16 TB sizes and have rated endurances of 3.5/7/14/28 PB.

The 2TB version is available for ~530€, 4TB is ~890€ (in Germany, including taxes). For a fast and long-lasting PCIe4 SSD this sounds reasonable.


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## Space Lynx (Aug 31, 2020)

__





						Sabrent does it again: Rocket 4 Plus SSD packs insane 7GB/sec reads
					

Sabrent's new Rocket 4 Plus has insane speeds of 6.85GB/sec reads, available in 500GB, 1TB, and even a huge 2TB if you need space.




					www.tweaktown.com
				




sabrent has matching competition now.  nice, i will probably just get the sabrent and save the $100 samsung name fee.


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## bug (Aug 31, 2020)

watzupken said:


> That’s very sneaky of Samsung to call it 3bit MLC. I saw the specs earlier on another site, but thought it’s a typo. If it’s not real MLC, then what is so Pro about this? *The Pro vs Evo series used to be segregated by MLC vs TLC.*



And now it's going to be TLC vs QLC. Sadly.

But seriously, has no one seen this coming? The only way NAND has scaled since its inception was added levels. And adding levels suffers big time from diminishing returns. Improved fab process is not really an answer, everybody seems to be strapped for capacity these days.


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## ExcuseMeWtf (Aug 31, 2020)

That's a wake-up call to buy MLC drives while they're still around...


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## Space Lynx (Aug 31, 2020)

ExcuseMeWtf said:


> That's a wake-up call to buy MLC drives while they're still around...



your average gamer user is just fine with TLC... been using a 2tb TLC ssd for many years now and have had 0 issues   meh


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## ExcuseMeWtf (Aug 31, 2020)

> your average gamer user is just fine with TLC... been using a 2tb TLC ssd for many years now and have had 0 issues   meh



For YOUR usage patterns it might be fine. I don't know you, maybe even QLC is fine for you lmao.

Personally, would prefer sth with a bit more longevity, got 8 years out of Crucial M4 64GB for my usage patterns.

Got one of the last Transcend SSD370s 512GB samples, and given above, expect over a decade from it.

Doubt I'd pull out as much from TLC based one, let alone QLC.

Not to mention these are supposed to be PRO drives, with supposedly superior performance and longevity.

And yet we get half the TBW of 970 PRO at respective capacities.

 For less demanding use there is still EVO series...


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## BSim500 (Aug 31, 2020)

lynx29 said:


> your average gamer user is just fine with TLC... been using a 2tb TLC ssd for many years now and have had 0 issues   meh


Gamers may not need MLC but write-heavy stuff like video / audio editing though is a different story. "ExcuseMeWtf" has it right - if you know why you need MLC, then the time to grab one is now before Samsung devalues the range into "new PRO = old EVO".


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## bug (Aug 31, 2020)

lynx29 said:


> your average gamer user is just fine with TLC... been using a 2tb TLC ssd for many years now and have had 0 issues   meh


The problem is up until now you could buy TLC for cheap and spend extra $$$ to get MLC. That won't be an option for much longer. Hopefully QLC matures enough by the time this happens, but I'm not holding my breath.


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## $ReaPeR$ (Aug 31, 2020)

Boy am I glad I got the 970 pro. this really shouldn't be in the pro line.


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## bug (Aug 31, 2020)

$ReaPeR$ said:


> Boy am I glad I got the 970 pro. this really shouldn't be in the pro line.


There's nothing "pro" about these. The professional drives are the enterprise ones.


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## R-T-B (Aug 31, 2020)

BSim500 said:


> Gamers may not need MLC but write-heavy stuff like video / audio editing though is a different story. "ExcuseMeWtf" has it right - if you know why you need MLC, then the time to grab one is now before Samsung devalues the range into "new PRO = old EVO".



I agree if you really need it, but I'd be willing to bet well over 90% of those who think they need it don't, frankly.

Still, always disheartening to see a downgrade like this.


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## AsRock (Aug 31, 2020)

Makaveli said:


> 600 TBW is low.
> 
> The Corsair MP600 1TB drive i'm using is 1,800 TBW and also uses TLC with Phison E16.
> 
> Now i'm curious to see what the updated Phison E18 will do which I believe comes out towards the end of the year.



Still not over Phison personally,  the only SSD that failed me ( i been buying SSD since SATA2 ) and the other from TG who did the Dark decided to stop the PC from booting one day, how ever the drive work in another PC and required to be formatted to work in the original PC.



Vayra86 said:


> This will only get worse. Scarce product is scarce, and this is what you get.
> 
> It really was better in the old days, I think we will be saying that a lot in tech in the near future.



Yeah i enjoyed paying $480 for 2 80GB SSD's .


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## lexluthermiester (Aug 31, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> I agree if you really need it, but I'd be willing to bet well over 90% of those who think they need it don't, frankly.


I expect my drives to still work 10, 15 and 20 years(or more) down the line just like normal HDD's. TLC might make that, MLC very likely. QLC? Never gonna happen. Given the wear leveling on drives I've had a chance to conduct tests on, QLC will be lucky to last 30 months before they degrade to the point of being useless. QLC in a boot drive is unacceptable.

TLC on professional focused products is dubious. MLC and SLC are the only types that have the durability to qualify being in professional tier products. This will be a different story if there has been an advance in NAND chemistry or some other advance that make TLC more durable.


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## evolucion8 (Aug 31, 2020)

Selaya said:


> Maybe we'll finally see a PCIe 4.0 NVMe that isn't basically a dressed-up SATA drive. Even if it's TLC.



Not true, the difference is the interface and usually the controller makes a very good job ensuring it can go much faster than a SATA that can bottleneck almost every SSD out there.


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## ssdpro (Aug 31, 2020)

jeremyshaw said:


> You just furnished a link to their Singaporean site, in English.


That would be because the site referenced in this article is now redirecting and inaccessible. 

Perhaps they will drop the public-facing 3-bit spec as they got trashed on every tech site for using TLC in a Pro product. From the beginnings of SSD tech there was SLC, MLC, then came TLC and QLC. MLC meant 2-bit to the market and of course multi- is indeed applicable to TLC (triple) and QLC (quad). With the stank surrounding the more specific TLC it is no wonder they didn't want to describe it that precisely and try using MLC with an asterisk.


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## Makaveli (Aug 31, 2020)

AsRock said:


> Still not over Phison personally,  the only SSD that failed me ( i been buying SSD since SATA2 ) and the other from TG who did the Dark decided to stop the PC from booting one day, how ever the drive work in another PC and required to be formatted to work in the original PC.
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah i enjoyed paying $480 for 2 80GB SSD's .



I can't speak for the drive you were using which sounds like it an older controller than what is in my own but I've had no issues on the PCIe 4.0 based one.



lexluthermiester said:


> I expect my drives to still work 10, 15 and 20 years(or more) down the line just like normal HDD's. TLC might make that, MLC very likely. QLC? Never gonna happen. Given the wear leveling on drives I've had a chance to conduct tests on, QLC will be lucky to last 30 months before they degrade to the point of being useless. QLC in a boot drive is unacceptable.
> 
> TLC on professional focused products is dubious. MLC and SLC are the only types that have the durability to qualify being in professional tier products. This will be a different story if there has been an advance in NAND chemistry or some other advance that make TLC more durable.



I can confirm MLC last, my previous desktop still has two Intel 160 G2 ssd's in Raid 0 that still operate today and that setup is about 10 years old.

But I will say good wear leveling in the controller helps alot.

How is it the Phison E16 controller with TLC on the current PCIe 4.0 drives are rated for 1,800 TBW written

Yet this new Samsung drive also on TLC is at 600 TBW the difference to me has to be the controller and wear leveling, and I'm not sure what Samsung was thinking but they seemed to drop the ball here.


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## Animalpak (Aug 31, 2020)

Question : 

It is useless to me if i buy one ? 

My chipset : Z390


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## ExcuseMeWtf (Aug 31, 2020)

Animalpak said:


> Question :
> 
> It is useless to me if i buy one ?
> 
> My chipset : Z390



Depends on your existing storage setup.

If you're still on HDD for OS, it won't be useless obviously.

If you already have at least reasonably good SSD, use case for this one will be much more limited.


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## R0H1T (Aug 31, 2020)

The *misinformation *around TLC, heck QLC, is staggering even on this forum 

Find me real life data where you exhaust the drive lifespan without filling it with billions of bits of garbage 24x7 & 365 days a year! FYI some of the best performing drives on the market right now are TLC & most if not all* TBW rating are highly conservative* ~ *The Best NVMe SSD for Laptops and Notebooks: SK hynix Gold P31 1TB SSD Reviewed*

*



















*

Also (rated) endurance ≠ reliability or indeed drive lifespan **


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## bug (Aug 31, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> The *misinformation *around TLC, heck QLC, is staggering even on this forum
> 
> Find me real life data where you exhaust the drive lifespan without filling it with billions of bits of garbage 24x7 & 365 days a year! FYI some of the best performing drives on the market right now are TLC & most if not all* TBW rating are highly conservative* ~ *The Best NVMe SSD for Laptops and Notebooks: SK hynix Gold P31 1TB SSD Reviewed*


The average user doesn't know how to tune on OS and will have indexing and AV software running in the background. Hell, even something as innocuous as a web browser has been found in the past to write tons of data in the background just to be able to restore your tabs in case of a crash.
Others are compiling large projects, some are doing photo/video work.

I don't think we're being scammed into buying inferior products, but I do think it's good to know the limitations of what we buy.



R0H1T said:


> Also (rated) endurance ≠ reliability or indeed drive lifespan **


Considering NAND exhausting p/e cycles is the only thing that can fail on a SSD, endurance is at least 90% of reliability.


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## Makaveli (Aug 31, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> Also (rated) endurance ≠ reliability or indeed drive lifespan **



How else does someone rate the reliability of the drive when you have never used it ?

If the Manufacturers Endurance rating is not good enough then what is?

And i'm aware things can happen during the warranty period so there is no guarantee.


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## R0H1T (Aug 31, 2020)

bug said:


> I don't think we're being scammed into buying inferior products, but I do think it's good to know the limitations of what we buy.


Yes because most SSD manufacturers are now looking to charge for better "endurance" & I'd argue rightly so. The SSD market, much like smartphones, has been commoditized to the extent that enterprise & premium drives are their best profit makers. Don't tell me you want the SSD makers to give these products away for free, do you suppose Intel will also enable *ECC *on their non Xeon (workstation) chips because frankly they're also a ripoff?



bug said:


> Considering NAND exhausting p/e cycles is the only thing that can fail on a SSD, endurance is at least 90% of reliability.


Still waiting on that test/study showing how TBW ratings correlate to drive lifespan, as far as I'm concerned these don't matter much except for QLC & even there Intel/Micron have shown that for most consumer workloads you're not at risk of exhausting them in the drive's warranty period. Now for workloads that are closer to enterprise or indeed sever usage you should get drives that are commensurately more expensive, even if just for the peace of mind.


Makaveli said:


> How else does someone rate the reliability of the drive when you have never used it ?
> 
> If the Manufacturers Endurance rating is not good enough then what is?
> 
> And i'm aware things can happen during the warranty period so there is no guarantee.


The ratings basically show that the NAND is guaranteed to last for x *TBs written* to the drive, the drive can fail before or after for a variety of reasons. Of all the long term tests I've seen, admittedly a fair time back, not one drive failed within these parameters. Heck Samsung drives lasted the longest & exceeded multiple PBs written to them

To answer your question, it's hard to say as of now because of a variety of factors involved. For instance we have no idea how operating drives (3D NAND) at high temps for an extended period of time affects the NAND "lifespan" or indeed what happens when you're using drives for read/write heavy tasks with say good airflow. *To map out scenarios where a standard TBW rating applies to all possible use cases for the drive, since the SSD maker cannot control what the drive is being used for, is nigh impossible*. It's like saying AMD, Intel or Nvidia guarantee their chips work under a trillion other possible (computational) use cases & never fail within that 3 year lifetime. This is why you have the *lowest common denominator* at work.


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## Makaveli (Aug 31, 2020)

lynx29 said:


> __
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I'm far more excited for this launch than the new samsung drive and this has the new
PS5018-E18 controller in it.

The same read speed as the same but faster writes.

7000/5000 Nvme 1.3 vs 7000/6850 Nvme 1.4


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## BSim500 (Aug 31, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> The *misinformation *around TLC, heck QLC, is staggering even on this forum . Find me real life data where you exhaust the drive lifespan without filling it with billions of bits of garbage 24x7 & 365 days a year!



I've seen that several times for those who work with HD+ video editing 9-5 day-in, day-out after a few years.



R0H1T said:


> FYI some of the best performing drives on the market right now are TLC & most if not all* TBW rating are highly conservative* ~ *The Best NVMe SSD for Laptops and Notebooks: SK hynix Gold P31 1TB SSD Reviewed *


"Best performing" yet your charts say "power efficiency" not performance. So that SK P31 drive you picked out certainly looks to be a good laptop drive, but given that it tops out at just 1TB capacity with TLC hardly puts it in the same market as the heavy-duty Samsung PRO's which max at 4TB (MLC) / 8TB (TLC). People don't buy the huge MLC drives just as ordinary boot drives, they are for pros with higher data usage whose sustained throughput doesn't fall apart once the SLC buffer typical of TLC/QLC drives gets exhausted.



R0H1T said:


> Also (rated) endurance ≠ reliability or indeed drive lifespan **


They're hardly unrelated either. That's why warranties and TBW have been falling from 10yr (MLC PRO) to 5yr (TLC EVO) to just 3yr (QLC QVO). There is an underlying reason for that... (Hint: Can you imagine if 2017-era Gold rated PSU's were sold with 10yr warranties whilst 2020-era Platinum rated ones of the same brand were sold with just 3yr warranties. Would certainly raise a few eyebrows, eh?...)



R0H1T said:


> Still waiting on that test/study showing how TBW ratings correlate to drive lifespan


I would have thought that's obvious - the fewer P/E cycles, the faster a drive will burn through it's flash-"writeability" given the same load. On top of that, 2-bit MLC -> 3-bit TLC -> 4-bit QLC also reduces the voltage state overhead vs voltage drift / cell leakage making the latter drives highly unsuitable for rarely powered up external backup drives (since they won't be able to silent background refresh when unpowered and the time between power ups could be long enough to cause problems with a QLC that has barely 7% overhead per voltage state that won't be there on MLC that has 33% or 4.5x the overhead.


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## R0H1T (Aug 31, 2020)

BSim500 said:


> I've seen that several times for those who work with HD+ video editing 9-5 day-in, day-out after a few years.
> 
> 
> *"Best performing" yet your charts say "power efficiency" not performance*. So that SK P31 drive you picked out certainly looks to be a good laptop drive, but given that it tops out at just 1TB capacity with TLC hardly puts it in the same market as the heavy-duty Samsung PRO's which max at 4TB (MLC) / 8TB (TLC). People don't buy the huge MLC drives just as ordinary boot drives, they are for pros with higher data usage.
> ...


Yes & I picked that drive specifically because it is by far the most efficient one I've seen to date, less heat could mean better "endurance" & certainly leads to a more consistent performance. It is a PCIe 3.0 drive so it's nowhere near what the top drives in this segment can do & you realize they cost a ton more, don't you? The 980 pro isn't even out yet, I'm willing to bet that it'll near about top the charts across the board perhaps with the exception of class leading efficiency. Now if you've been following the PC market you'll also know that *chasing the last 1% or indeed last 0.1% of performance* costs way more than the first 90~99% even now.

I'll ask again, can you link me to studies which map out let's say a 1000 *possible use cases for these drives & covering the NAND "endurance" part*? You know why that's not happening ~ the answer's in my last reply!


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## BSim500 (Aug 31, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> Yes & I picked that drive specifically because it is by far the most efficient one I've seen to date, less heat could mean better "endurance"


Unless they run outrageously hot, thermals don't make anywhere near the difference as cell exhaustion or having to write to cells in multiple "passes" of SLC cache -> TLC/QLC transfer vs the single pass of SLC/MLC.



R0H1T said:


> I'll ask again, can you link me to studies which map out let's say a 1000 *possible use cases for these drives & covering the NAND "endurance" part*?


Exactly 1,000, and not 998 or 65,536 use cases? As explained previously, use cases for the high-endurance PRO's are pretty much anyone who needs to write a lot (video editing, multi-track lossless audio, certain databases, 3D rendering, etc). Surely you can figure it out that the guy who spends all day editing 4K video vs granny who boots up Windows to check her e-mail then shuts down after 5 minutes are obviously going to have different needs?...


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## R0H1T (Aug 31, 2020)

BSim500 said:


> Unless they run outrageously hot, *thermals don't make anywhere near the difference as cell exhaustion* or having to write to cells in multiple "passes" of SLC cache -> TLC/QLC transfer vs the single pass of SLC/MLC.


Any verifiable evidence for that?


BSim500 said:


> As explained previously, use cases for the high-endurance PRO's are pretty much anyone who needs to write a lot (video editing, multi-track lossless audio, certain databases, 3D rendering, etc). Surely you can figure it out that the guy who spends all day editing 4K video vs granny who boots up Windows to check her e-mail then shuts down after 5 minutes are obviously going to have different needs?


Right ~ let's day I'm running multiple VM's on that drive & have it properly cooled. The drives doing fantastic, yet at some point involving a *read heavy task* it locks up & just goes kaput. It did say *1.5 PB* in writes, can you then definitively say that the *lower "endurance" rating killed it & nothing else*?

The point, *my point is that you can't have it all* ~ a drive having chart leading performance, which "lasts" 10 years, is cool to boot & covers itself in glory for everything you throw at it. Even enterprise drives compromise on something. Rated NAND writes are the last thing anyone should worry about on most of these *consumer drives*, unless you have a specific use case where heavy writes are to be expected. In which case there's better, albeit more *expensive alternatives*.


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## ssdpro (Aug 31, 2020)

I am only interested in performance in a "Pro" product meant for a desktop. The problem with TLC is the performance plummets under any load to nearly SATA levels. It tries to only "write" to the top layer and gradually move so you get bursts that are high and averages that are abysmal. TLC has its place and works for the novice user that reads that "max spec" but doesn't know the real spec is about 30% of that. See charts:


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## BSim500 (Aug 31, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> Any verifiable evidence for that? Right ~ let's day I'm running multiple VM's on that drive & have it properly cooled. The drives doing fantastic, yet at some point involving a *read heavy task* it locks up & just goes kaput. It did say *1.5 PB* in writes, can you then definitively say that the *lower "endurance" rating killed it & nothing else*?


If it's properly cooled then it wouldn't randomly lockup. And page 7 of the Anandtech article you linked to showed the SK31's drive temps hit 83c, ie, they aren't any lower than any previous SSD tested using same methodology, so I genuinely have zero idea what point you're trying to make in falsely believing a lower power consumption for laptops = lower operating temps or better reliability. They aren't remotely the same thing. Nor does a lower temp TLC / QLC = some "magic beans" compensations for inherently inferior flash endurance...


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## R0H1T (Aug 31, 2020)

BSim500 said:


> If it's properly cooled then it wouldn't randomly lockup.


And you're saying this based on?


BSim500 said:


> Nor does a lower temp= some "magic beans" compensations for inherently inferior flash endurance...


Lower temp (i.e. better efficiency) does mean *consistently good performance*, that's the key point why I linked to the Sk Hynix charts ~


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## Searing (Aug 31, 2020)

Ugh the MLC vs TLC wars again. I'll just say that I find MLC to be completely useless and offer no advantages at all (remember if it costs twice as much, you can buy twice as much TLC storage and solve all your issues). TLC is very mature. QLC on the other hand...


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## Makaveli (Aug 31, 2020)

ssdpro said:


> I am only interested in performance in a "Pro" product meant for a desktop. The problem with TLC is the performance plummets under any load to nearly SATA levels. It tries to only "write" to the top layer and gradually move so you get bursts that are high and averages that are abysmal. TLC has its place and works for the novice user that reads that "max spec" but doesn't know the real spec is about 30% of that. See charts:
> View attachment 167330



Nice!

My drive has a SLC write cache of about 333GB once that is used up it will hit about 600 mb/s for sustained writes.

However I don't think I've ever written 333GB of data to the drive in one shot is usually much lower so I've never see the performance outside the cache. Other TLC drive have smaller cache and the hit on those will show up sooner.


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## BSim500 (Aug 31, 2020)

BSim500 said:


> If it's properly cooled then it wouldn't randomly lockup.





R0H1T said:


> And you're saying this based on?


Observable reality. If a drive is properly cooled, it won't throttle. Period. There's nothing special whatsoever about the SK31 that makes it immune to throttling if you stuck it underneath a horizontal Mini-ITX board and if you're seriously claiming that a TLC drive with a rated 1,000 P/E cycles running at 83c will last twice as long as an MLC drive with a rated 10,000 P/E drive at say 87c like for like, to allow you to pretend there's no difference between TLC / QLC vs SLC / MLC for P/E cycle endurance, simply because it draws literally milliwatts less power, then it's up to you to prove your claim, not everyone else to disprove it. In the mean time, here's a review of an 970 PRO (MLC) drive peaking at 55c load temps, rendering your _"oh yeah, well my 83c SK31 TLC drive will last longer than everyone else's MLC drives because it draws less power and runs cooler"_ point rather moot, not to mention the blatantly obvious that someone paying for an expensive drive will have no trouble sourcing a half-decent $10 M2 cooler even if your claim were true. I honestly didn't think it needed mentioning that light-duty casual SSD users may run out of space before an MLC drive dies of cell exhaustion *is completely irrelevant if they aren't the target market for whom the high-endurance MLC drives are aimed at in the first place*, but here we are...


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## R-T-B (Aug 31, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> QLC?



I never mentioned QLC.



lexluthermiester said:


> TLC on professional focused products is dubious.



Honestly, it's not if the node size is large enough.  But then you lose the space savings.  So yeah, I guess it is A LITTLE dubious since you have to question what their motive is in the first place.

My main point here is though, "professional" does not need mean "absurdly long lifetime" like it has in the past.  But Samsung can and should knock the price down accordingly.  I don't have confidence that will happen however.


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## R0H1T (Aug 31, 2020)

BSim500 said:


> Observable reality.


More like (your) warped reality, *FYI *a drive can die for any number of reasons & my post had no mention of throttling. Also I've never claimed anything about (NAND) endurance & temps ~


> less heat could mean better "endurance" & certainly leads to a more consistent performance


Unlike you who's just posting somewhat contradicting statements ~


> Unless they run outrageously hot,* thermals don't make anywhere near the difference as cell exhaustion* or having to write to cells in multiple "passes" of SLC cache -> TLC/QLC transfer vs the single pass of SLC/MLC.


And then this 


> There's nothing special whatsoever about the SK31 that makes it immune to throttling if you stuck it underneath a horizontal Mini-ITX board and if you're seriously claiming that a TLC drive with a rated 1,000 P/E cycles running at 83c will last twice as long as an MLC drive with a rated 10,000 P/E drive at say 87c like for like


The observation is wrt *efficiency, heat & (consistent) performance*. Now unless you're living in some part of the world where the natural law doesn't apply, your points literally make zero sense!


BSim500 said:


> claiming that a TLC drive with a rated 1,000 P/E cycles running at 83c will last twice as long as an MLC drive with a rated 10,000 P/E


Let's see, the one claiming SK Hynix *4d NAND* has a P/E cycle rating of 1000 & 970 pro having 10000 P/E cycles, yup that's me! Wonder where you're pulling this from 


BSim500 said:


> In the mean time, here's a review of an 970 PRO (MLC) drive peaking at 55c load temps


Wonderful a review from AT, another from Guru3d. Let me have what you're sipping right now.


BSim500 said:


> I honestly didn't think it needed mentioning that light-duty casual SSD users may run out of space before an MLC drive dies of cell exhaustion is completely irrelevant if they aren't the target market for whom *the **high-endurance MLC drives are aimed at in the first place*, but here we are...


There is no such things as high endurance MLC drive in the consumer space! The drives having MLC are first & foremost geared towards better & consistent performance, it just so happens that MLC have better endurance. You want better "endurance" drives get an enterprise one ~
*The Samsung 983 ZET (Z-NAND) SSD Review: How Fast Can Flash Memory Get?*


BSim500 said:


> but here we are...


Yup here we are, making fantastical claims about how *3d/4d NAND, 96L TLC, 128L TLC, xxL QLC or MLC* behave all in a manner which is consistent with *your hypothesis* devoid of any real world studies to back them up


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## BSim500 (Aug 31, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> <Snipped a bunch of mindless troll-bait.>


I genuinely do not understand why you're so hyper-triggered, but you really are sounding out of mind at this stage:-

_- "I've never claimed anything about (NAND) endurance & temps"_ - You literally said in post #51 _"less heat could mean better endurance"_ in direct quoted response to what everyone was very obviously comparing (NAND lifespan based on P/E cycles between MLC vs TLC vs QLC). Again, when people do compare drives then it's pretty damn obvious we mean "like for like", not _"when doing MLC vs TLC vs QLC P/E based NAND endurance comparisons, let's start counting random controller failures that have zero to do with NAND"_ or _"If I hold a hair dryer up against an MLC drive whilst pointing a fan at the TLC one, that could complicate NAND lifespan comparisons_". No sh*t, Sherlock...

_- "Wonderful a review from AT"_ - Dude, that was your own link from your own post #45... 

- _"Higher endurance consumer MLC doesn't exist, it just so happens that MLC have better endurance. Consumer SSD's are not about endurance at all but performance"_. Perhaps you better e-mail Samsung and tell them they've gotten their marketing materials wrong considering that "Pro performance and Endurance" has been literally right there at the top of their SSD PRO range pages going back 5 years with the words "*designed to handle heavy workloads on workstations and high-end computers with IT heavy users in mind*" literally underneath pushing endurance as a primary sales pitch...

Sorry dude but you'll have to find someone else to troll with these mindless "arguing for the sake of arguing" word games. It's pretty obvious who buys MLC drives and your own claims have already been debunked by Samsung's own website in nice big size 64 font. Two people here other than myself have also tried to explain it to you, and if you still can't figure it out, then far from _"curing the forum of misinformation",_ you've ironically ended up the bigger purveyor of it...


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 1, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> I never mentioned QLC.


Didn't say you did. I included it for reference and comparison to help with a certain perspective.



R-T-B said:


> Honestly, it's not if the node size is large enough.


That's actually a very good point. The larger the process, the more durable a NAND gate becomes. If TLC was made on the 20nm or 16nm process for example, durability would be far greater than the current 7nm(or is it still 10?) because there would be more material to "wear" through before failure.



R-T-B said:


> "professional" does not need mean "absurdly long lifetime" like it has in the past.


Have to strongly disagree with that. When I see a physical product focused on the "professional" market sector I expect and demand greater quality & durability for the extra price being paid. Otherwise it becomes a meaningless word that loses it's distinction.



R0H1T said:


> Let's see, the one claiming SK Hynix *4d NAND* has a P/E cycle rating of 1000 & 970 pro having 10000 P/E cycles, yup that's me! Wonder where you're pulling this from


Please review the following in the section "Write Endurance";








						Flash memory - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				






Those are general numbers but are accepted as effective standards in the industry. Endurance numbers will vary somewhat from one manufacturer to another.


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## R-T-B (Sep 1, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> Otherwise it becomes a meaningless word that loses it's distinction.



It doesn't lose it's distinction if it's stronger in endurance than the other products in the lineup, but it certainly makes it less enticing vs the previous gen.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 1, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> It doesn't lose it's distinction if it's stronger in endurance than the other products in the lineup, but it certainly makes it less enticing vs the previous gen.


It does if it's much less durable than previous iterations of the product lineup, which in the case of the above mentioned product in the article, it is. Even if just a "ballpark" estimate, anywhere near half durability is unacceptable if Samsung wants to continue calling it a "pro" product and charge similar prices as before. Samsung's new lineup simply doesn't meet the mark of what can be considered a professional product with this very much lesser standard and is no longer worth the price they're asking.


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## R0H1T (Sep 1, 2020)

*BSim500 *Considering you quoted me first, perhaps you should ask yourself that question? As for the endurance/temps reply from me, are you really pretending to be daft or that you really are? I said *could *~ which was to your own response in my previous post where I said that there's *not enough data to conclude how temps (can) affect all types of NAND*.


> *For instance we have no idea how operating drives (3D NAND) at high temps for an extended period of time affects the NAND "lifespan" or indeed what happens when you're using drives for read/write heavy tasks with say good airflow. *


The scenarios I had in mind were as ~ *persistent writes, likely with mid/high temps vs say a large number of reads/writes & then the drive idling after that*. Tell me what does your* crystal ball* say about *Endurance* for either of them?

*^Dude* you brought up the point about 83C temps for Sk Hynix from the AT review, why are using numbers from Guru3d to compare it to 970 pro! Next you'll tell me pick any random review & compare the numbers from it to any other, for a truly apples to apples comparison you must have a controlled environment wherein the reviewer has used the same system, workload(s) & ideally same ambient temp to test the drives! And let's see the BS you're posting from AT ~


> The power management feature set of the SK hynix Gold P31 is fairly typical. *The warning and critical temperature thresholds are only a degree apart, but realistically, this SSD isn't getting anywhere near those temperatures without a lot of outside assistance.* The power state transition times claimed by the P31 are pretty quick.
> 
> *Note that the above tables reflect only the information provided by the drive to the OS.* The power and latency numbers are often very conservative estimates, but they are what the OS uses to determine which idle states to use and how long to wait before dropping to a deeper idle state.


So do me a favor, next time you quote me at least read the drivel you've posted first heck* I'd be glad if you didn't quote me* 

Also when you respond to me with statements *bring up real life numbers*, not something you conjure up in your mind. *I'm an authority on everything SSD* is not an argument, at least not when you're pretending to ask BS questions (to points which I never made) & answering them yourself!

As for your last point ~ keep the trolling part to a corner where you can deal with it as it seems to be a hobby of yours. I only engaged with you hoping you'd have serious replies, but then looking at your fantastical claims with exactly *Zero Facts* backing them up I have to say this is not worth my time so Ciao, this is my last reply to you


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 1, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> The scenarios I had in mind were as ~ *persistent writes, likely with mid/high temps vs say a large number of reads/writes & then the drive idling after that*. Tell me what does your* crystal ball* say about Endurance for either of them?


No crystal ball is needed. Physics will tell you that high temps + heavy work load = degraded performance & diminished device life span.


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## R0H1T (Sep 1, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> Physics will tell you that high temps + heavy work load = *degraded performance*


Yeah that's exactly what I said.


R0H1T said:


> *less heat* could mean better "endurance" &* certainly leads to a more consistent performance*.


Unlike the poster I was replying to.


> & diminished *device life span*.


True for most electronics or ICs though specifically this part is unclear especially wrt rated endurance or lifetime writes of drives & the various types of NAND we have on the market today. Like I said  there's literally a trillion other use cases or possible combinations involving workload, application, system wherein to *cover all of them for a manufacturer is nigh impossible*. This is why *lower endurance numbers are a reality* ~ they are however as a general rule of thumb highly conservative for most drives on the market today!


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 1, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> Yeah that's exactly what I said.





R0H1T said:


> Unlike the poster I was replying to.


Oh, I am sorry. Misunderstood you. It seemed like you were arguing against that point.


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## olstyle (Sep 1, 2020)

bug said:


> Considering NAND exhausting p/e cycles is the only thing that can fail on a SSD, endurance is at least 90% of reliability


That's just plain wrong. All bigger drive series failes that occured were firmware issues and the sometimes happening "suddenly does not boot at all" error is a controller issue.
I have never come around anyone actually exceeding write cycles = running out of rearranged sectors.


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## Octopuss (Sep 1, 2020)

So the advertised SSD speeds are basically speeds of the cache (be it that few GB SLC buffer or whatever), right?

I don't like this, not because of the durability, but because when I buy something that's supposed to transfer stuff at X MB/s, I expect X, not X/10 if I copy large enough file.


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## olstyle (Sep 1, 2020)

Once the Cache has a size which is bigger then 10 times your normal file size it's kind of academic.
That's a bit like saying my VRAM is not fast because once it's exceeded the system RAM is used.


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## RoyTyrell (Sep 2, 2020)

I’m sorry but had to jump in here... R0H1T... are you seriously trying to suggest that ssd cell burnout is an unproven or controversial phenomenon?

Yeah, you really shouldn’t be commenting on tech boards. This is very basic. To deny it is like trying to argue 2+ 2 = 5

Facts matter. The “endurance” of an ssd drive is 100% correlated to is write cycles and is an extremely important metric for “pros” of all types for whom actual data storage is important.


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## Parn (Sep 2, 2020)

Isn't using TLC one of the methods to increase max capacity? If so then why does 980pro still top out at 1TB? Guess it's time for me to move on from samsung SSDs for my main rig.


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## R0H1T (Sep 2, 2020)

No, in the interest of this topic going off the rails & me having having to repeat everything 10x over here's what I said ~

NAND "endurance" or lifetime writes ~ which are guaranteed by the manufacturer are generally highly conservative for most, if not all consumer drives. You're likely to encounter an issue with the firmware &/or controller than simply running out of P/E cycles. There are no long term studies demonstrating how modern 3D NAND (or SSD) is affected by temps or indeed the usage pattern of users ~ your internet surfing grandparents or what some call themselves "power" users! TLC is a proven tech & is about just as "reliable" as MLC which is to say that your drive will not "wear" itself out just because it's TLC instead of MLC unless you're doing some atypical "server grade" writes. For 90% consumer workload TBW ratings are meaningless, the last 10% ~ *are you sure it isn't the temps or firmware/controller that killed your drive instead of it exhausting its P/E cycles*? If you can't answer that with any authority you have no right claiming whatever's being peddled in the last few pages!

And lastly here's the P/E numbers from the the first consumer 3D NAND drives, unlike the poster who's just making things up here's *the facts* ~


> *Endurance: Close to Planar MLC NAND*
> The big question with every new NAND generation is the endurance. *We already saw 6,000 P/E cycles in the SSD 850 Pro and an amazing 40,000 P/E cycles in the SSD 845DC Pro,* which proved that V-NAND provides substantially better endurance over today's planar NAND nodes. However, endurance was never really an issue with planar MLC NAND except in the enterprise space, so the 850 EVO with its TLC V-NAND offers a much more interesting insight to the capability of 3D NAND technology.
> 
> To test endurance, I put the 120GB 850 EVO through our usual endurance test suite. Basically I just used Iometer to write 128KB sequential data at queue depth of 1 to the drive while monitoring the Wear Leveling Count (WLC) and Total LBAs Written SMART values. The 'Current Value' of the WLC SMART value gives the remaining endurance as a percentage (starts from 99), whereas the 'Raw Data' value indicates the number of consumed P/E cycles. In order to estimate the endurance, I had to find the spot where the increase in 'Raw Data' value decreases the 'Current Value' by one.
> ...


The 1000 P/E cycles numbers are for QLC & even there you won't find latest gen QLC P/E cycles being listed by SSD makers because they aren't relevant for most consumer workloads. Modern multi layer NAND are way more resilient than typical NAND, especially the TLC kind. So next time when challenging someone on facts, better find something other than alternate facts 

What this thread & forum needs is people updating their knowledge & definitely not trying to sound obnoxiously like they know everything about NAND or SSD's just because they see *ZOMG *only half the TBW writes 



RoyTyrell said:


> Yeah, you really shouldn’t be commenting on tech boards. This is very basic. To deny it is like trying to argue 2+ 2 = 5


 Next time you suggest something like that, at least have the decency go through the entire thread not just the last few replies!


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 2, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> because they aren't relevant for most consumer workloads.


That's a load of nonsense. 1000P/E(and that is a best case scenario) cycles is absolutely terrible for a OS/Boot drive. I have been testing QLC drives for reliability and the picture is not good. Less than a year and whole groups of blocks are failing already. SSD Makers are failing to state those stats because they want to hide QLC's pathetic lack of durability. They want to sell a product line and make gobs of money doing it(because QLC is dead cheap to make).

Apply that same thought process to this thread topic and the same mentality fit well here. Samsung is pushing TLC as a professional product because that want to make more money from a product that cost less to make. Granted, to there credit, their latest iteration of TLC 3DNAND has some improvements. However, it is still no comparison to the longevity of MLC and SLC. TLC has no place in professional and prosumer devices, especially at the prices being asked.


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## R0H1T (Sep 2, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> That's a load of nonsense. 1000P/E cycles is absolutely terrible for a OS/Boot drive.


It really depends on what you're using the drive for. I wouldn't recommend QLC for anyone who's using the drive for say applications/tasks with large number of writes but then when you're using the QLC argument for sweeping statements like these ~


lexluthermiester said:


> SSD Makers are failing to state those stats because they want to hide QLC's pathetic lack of durability.


You're also failing to understand the basic premise which I've been trying to debunk over the last few pages!


> Much more important than the performance changes is the write endurance boost the 665p brings compared to the 660p. Both capacities of the 665p have 50% higher rated write endurance than the 660p, bringing them up to about *0.16 drive writes per day* (DWPD) from the 660p's 0.11 DWPD. This is still a lot lower than the 0.3 DWPD that is typical for low-end consumer SSDs that use TLC NAND, but the increase does show that Intel's feeling more confident in their second generation of QLC.









Intel wouldn't back their QLC drives for 5 years if they are as brittle as some of the theories here suggest, in having said that given you actually know your workloads well ~ you should get the appropriate drive  whether QLC, TLC or MLC. At the risk of repeating myself I'd say modern NVMe drives labelled *PRO*, in case of *Samsung*, are geared more towards (higher) performance than durability or *better endurance*. For that you have *enterprise drives*, now you can debate all you want whether these (PRO) drives should be rated as highly as their predecessors wrt *TBW *but there's no evidence to suggest *as of now* they're any less reliable or lasting than their predecessors!


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 2, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> there's no evidence to suggest *as of now* they're any less reliable or lasting than their predecessors!


Other than common sense you mean?


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## R0H1T (Sep 2, 2020)

If only it was as simple as that, looking at this thread though it's pretty apt that "common sense isn't as common" as you'd think. I'm sure you've heard of the term write amplification, haven't you?



Let some of the experts weigh in ~
*1 DW/D Does Not Equal 1 DW/D*


> *A common misconception when examining SSD specifications is that “1 DW/D” on one drive means the same endurance as “1 DW/D” on another drive.* That’s not true, even for drives of the same model but different capacities.
> 
> This effect becomes even more pronounced as drives increase in capacity. When comparing the highest capacity model of the Ultrastar DC SS200 at 1 DW/D with the highest capacity Ultrastar DC SS200 available in a 3-DW/D specification,* we see that even though the DW/D value of one is three times the value of the other, the actual amount of lifetime data that can be written to the 3.2TB model is only about 25% more*


Following up ~


> *Micron's 64-layer 3D TLC NAND* has consistently proven to offer higher performance than their* first-generation 32L TLC*, but Memblaze isn't advertising any big performance increases over the earlier PBlaze5 SSDs. Instead, they have* brought the overprovisioning ratios back down to fairly normal levels after the 32L PBlaze5 drives. Those drives were rated for 3 DWPD, and as a result kept almost 40% of their raw flash capacity as spare area. The PBlaze C916 with 64L TLC, on the other hand, reserves only about 27% of the flash as spare and suffers only a slight penalty to steady-state write speeds, and no penalty to rated endurance*. (For comparison, consumer SSDs generally reserve 7-12% of their raw capacity for metadata and spare area, and are usually rated for no more than about 1 DWPD.)











						Microchip Announces Flashtec NVMe 3108 PCIe 4.0 Enterprise SSD Controller
					






					www.anandtech.com
				




You know the single biggest difference between enterprise drives & the lesser rated *PRO *drives, from someone like Samsung is? Apart from the custom firmware & sometimes different controller ~


Spoiler



If you haven't guessed it already it's overprovisioning!


> The first drives that can take advantage of the new features are already shipping to interested parties. The PM1733 and PM1735 are based on a common hardware platform. The PM1733 is rated for 1 DWPD and offers capacities up to 30.72 TB, *while the PM1735 has more overprovisioning and lower usable capacities to reach 3 DWPD*. Both models are available in either U.2 or PCIe add-in card form factors. The U.2 form factor gives a few more capacity options, while the add-in card versions have a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface to enable 25% higher sequential read performance (for other workloads, PCIe 4.0 x4 is fast enough to not be the bottleneck).
> 
> 
> 
> ...







So to summarize ~
A TLC drive, say 1.5TB, can easily last as long if not longer than an MLC, at 1TB, if you keep enough spare room on it. Write amplification is a drive killer & there's something on the horizon ready to address that ~


> Used properly, *ZNS allows the host software to avoid almost all of the circumstances that would lead to write amplification inside the SSD*. Enterprise SSDs commonly use overprovisioning ratios up to 28% (800GB usable per 1024GB of flash on typical 3 DWPD models) and ZNS SSDs can expose almost all of that capacity to the host system without compromising the ability to deliver high sustained write performance.











						The Next Step in SSD Evolution: NVMe Zoned Namespaces Explained
					






					www.anandtech.com
				




And before you pivot back to the "TBW" ratings I'll add a couple of points ~

No two drives are the same, with the exact same NAND or even controller+firmware. There are minute differences at the atomic & subatomic levels, then there's entropy. That's an undeniable fact. Which also means that to get to the NAND "endurance" rating that some of you want, Samsung will have to sacrifice on the usable space whether doing more OP or going MLC. So pick your poison.

Lastly the useless back & forth here is like someone having a 3950x & complaining it doesn't do 1000 fps in Doom Eternal. People who can afford the 980 Pro can surely afford an enterprise grade drive, & if you don't know the kind of writes (or WA) your applications/work demands then you're not a PRO! Like I said previously, you can't have it all ~


> a drive having chart leading performance, which "lasts" 10 years, is cool to boot & covers itself in glory for everything you throw at it.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 2, 2020)

R0H1T said:


> I'm sure you've heard of the term write amplification, haven't you?


Yes, I have and it is a very serious factor in wear leveling.


R0H1T said:


> A TLC drive, say 1.5TB, can easily last as long if not longer than an MLC, at 1TB, if you keep enough spare room on it.


True! But then that might eat into the profit gains of using TLC over MLC. This depends on the cost of the making the TLC VS the cost of making MLC.


R0H1T said:


> And before you pivot back to the "TBW" ratings I'll add a couple of points ~


Wasn't going too. You make valid points.


R0H1T said:


> No two drives are the same, with the exact same NAND or even controller+firmware. There are minute differences at the atomic & subatomic levels, then there's entropy. That's an undeniable fact. Which also means that to get to the NAND "endurance" rating that some of you want, Samsung will have to sacrifice on the usable space whether doing more OP or going MLC. So pick your poison.


I complete agree with your factual perspectives. The main problem with the cell durability question is a matter of usage model. Heavy usage would indicate the need for a more durable type of storage, lighter usage would make durability a lesser concern.


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## Octopuss (Sep 2, 2020)

olstyle said:


> Once the Cache has a size which is bigger then 10 times your normal file size it's kind of academic.
> That's a bit like saying my VRAM is not fast because once it's exceeded the system RAM is used.


Possibly, but I hate the concept anyway.
What's the cache on 970 Pro models, anyone knows?


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## mechtech (Sep 4, 2020)

Dave65 said:


> Has Samsung went to sheet or am I missing something?



profits.............


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