Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 SSD Rumored to Launch Within Two Months

[Camm]

As third-party dev already said, the SSD thing will be mostly for PS5 exclusive games, since it makes no sense to make few versions of a game. Xbox Series X is like current gen SSD performance also.

Many devs will take that approach (especially considering the lack of fixed target on PC), but whilst the PS5's SSD is really quick, the secret sauce is really being able to directly call data from storage into the GPU with storage speed thats relatively quick. I think we'll see titles doing it across platforms and not just Sony exclusives for that reason, but with PC unable to do that, I think we'll just see RAM requirements increase so more can get buffered into RAM.

 

[1d10t]

Marvelous sequentials, higher transfer rate , but still same old stagnant 4K QD1

 

[jesdals]

4TB would be on my buy list

 

[R0H1T]

Honest question, does anyone make a SLC drive anymore?

Yes they do, most of the applications/products aren't for the consumer market though.

Samsung's 983 ZET is a high-end enterprise SSD and the first retail drive to feature Samsung's low-latency SLC Z-NAND flash memory. Designed for highly performance-bound workloads that favor IOPS and minimal latency above all else, the 983 ZET is designed to compete with the likes Intel's Optane SSDs and...

Spoiler

Enter the 983 ZET: Going Back To SLC
Samsung originally announced Z-NAND in 2016, a year after 3D XPoint memory was announced and before any Optane products had shipped. Fundamentally, the first generation of Z-NAND is an effort to turn back the clock a bit; to step back from today's modern, high-density, (relatively) high-latency Triple Level Cell (TLC) NAND and back to simpler Single Level Cell (SLC) designs.

​

SLC designs are relatively straightforward: since they only need to store a single bit of data per cell, the cell only needs to be in one of two voltage states. And this makes them both faster to read and faster to write – sometimes immensely so. The tradeoff is that they offer less density per cell – one-half or one-third as much data as the equivalent MLC or TLC NAND – and therefore a higher cost per bit overall. This has lead to the rapid adoption of MLC and then TLC, which for most use cases is plenty sufficient in terms of performance while also offering great capacity.
However there are markets and use cases where absolute speed (and not capacity) is king, and this is where a SLC-based storage solution can provide much better real-world performance; enough so to justify the higher per-bit cost. And it's this market that Intel and Samsung have been exploiting with their 3D XPoint and Z-NAND products respectively.
Adding an extra wrinkle to all of this is that Samsung's Z-NAND isn't merely SLC NAND; if simply operating existing NAND as SLC was all there is to Z-NAND, then we would also expect Toshiba, WD, SK Hynix to have also delivered their competitors by now. Instead, Samsung has taken additional steps to further improve their SLC-based Z-NAND. We'll go into greater detail on this on the next page, but one of the big changes here was lowering the read and program times of the NAND, which further improves its read/write performance. This is important for Samsung both to give them an edge over the aforementioned competition, but also to ensure Z-NAND is competitive with 3D XPoint, which has proven to be no slouch in this area.
On paper then, Samsung's Z-NAND looks plenty fast for the kinds of workloads and markets Samsung is chasing. Now it comes to Samsung's 983 ZET to deliver on those ambitions.

The Samsung 983 ZET (Z-NAND) SSD Review: How Fast Can Flash Memory Get?

 

[ShurikN]

Yes they do, most of the applications/products aren't for the consumer market though.

Spoiler

Enter the 983 ZET: Going Back To SLC
Samsung originally announced Z-NAND in 2016, a year after 3D XPoint memory was announced and before any Optane products had shipped. Fundamentally, the first generation of Z-NAND is an effort to turn back the clock a bit; to step back from today's modern, high-density, (relatively) high-latency Triple Level Cell (TLC) NAND and back to simpler Single Level Cell (SLC) designs.

​

SLC designs are relatively straightforward: since they only need to store a single bit of data per cell, the cell only needs to be in one of two voltage states. And this makes them both faster to read and faster to write – sometimes immensely so. The tradeoff is that they offer less density per cell – one-half or one-third as much data as the equivalent MLC or TLC NAND – and therefore a higher cost per bit overall. This has lead to the rapid adoption of MLC and then TLC, which for most use cases is plenty sufficient in terms of performance while also offering great capacity.
However there are markets and use cases where absolute speed (and not capacity) is king, and this is where a SLC-based storage solution can provide much better real-world performance; enough so to justify the higher per-bit cost. And it's this market that Intel and Samsung have been exploiting with their 3D XPoint and Z-NAND products respectively.
Adding an extra wrinkle to all of this is that Samsung's Z-NAND isn't merely SLC NAND; if simply operating existing NAND as SLC was all there is to Z-NAND, then we would also expect Toshiba, WD, SK Hynix to have also delivered their competitors by now. Instead, Samsung has taken additional steps to further improve their SLC-based Z-NAND. We'll go into greater detail on this on the next page, but one of the big changes here was lowering the read and program times of the NAND, which further improves its read/write performance. This is important for Samsung both to give them an edge over the aforementioned competition, but also to ensure Z-NAND is competitive with 3D XPoint, which has proven to be no slouch in this area.
On paper then, Samsung's Z-NAND looks plenty fast for the kinds of workloads and markets Samsung is chasing. Now it comes to Samsung's 983 ZET to deliver on those ambitions.

The Samsung 983 ZET (Z-NAND) SSD Review: How Fast Can Flash Memory Get?

wrong quote

 

[TheLostSwede]

Honest question, does anyone make a SLC drive anymore?

Sure, but they're mainly for embedded industrial applications and cost a small fortune, even for something as small as a 16GB drive.

Addonics Product: Industrial M2 SLC SSD

 

[R0H1T]

wrong quote

I remember having the exact same conversation with @Valantar before & I remember quoting the right person back then as well

Let me recall, it was a glitch in the matrix

 

[Valantar]

I remember having the exact same conversation with @Valantar before & I remember quoting the right person back then as well View attachment 158722

Let me recall, it was a glitch in the matrix

You're probably too fast for the server to handle. Click speed >9000? Typing so fast your keyboard catches fire?

 

[chodaboy19]

We need higher Random I/O, sequential is just cute on benchmarks.

 

[Metroid]

I'd venture saying PCIe 4.0 isn't worth the premium right now, in particular for desktop. I haven't seen datacentre PCIe 4.0 performance, though, but I'm guessing that's not what you're interested in. There's ample testing showing PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs taking on the PCIe 4.0 ones and winning.

It depends the usage, these pcie4.0 speeds is like having many memory rams stickies in your computer, I mean, the 570x AMD motherboard series maximum memory ram supported is 64gb, with pcie4.0 that limit can be overcome, actually can be even better, keep the memory ram for special cases and use the ssd to act like memory ram for other cases. I have applications here which need that because pcie3.0 speed is too slow.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3wch78

128 GB RAM - Install windows to RAM discs - possible ?? - Windows 10 Help Forums

Hi folks. I rescued from the Tip an old server (complete) with 128 DDR 3 GB RAM in it. (fast enough) Is there any way to say create "C" and "D" drives as RAM discs, install windows to that and the run entirely from RAM discs. There are

www.tenforums.com

 

[E-curbi]

at least with sata version you get to show them off
I really need fancier cables for those

And admiring their exquisite SATA beauty - is half the fun.

Grabbed (4) of these 860 Pro SATA drives, went with smaller capacity 256GB since I use them for single work projects and just '"hot-swap" them in and out of a Supermicro 8-bay drive enclosure.

SATA 3 is superfast me thinks for simple storage. Can always go NVMe or Optane NVMe for primary and OS drives...

Nice Sammy SATA drives bro, they totally rock @cucker tarlson

Plus the 256GB 860 Pro capacity are only $89, nice price. lol

 

[IceShroom]

Interesting Article: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15848/storage-matters-xbox-ps5-new-era-of-gaming

 

[B-Real]

Will this new speed translate to real-world performance?

Serious question to experts, in which areas should we expect improvements?

No, when we take OS and game load speeds into consideration.

M.2 or PCI-E SSDs don't offer any performance jump over the SATA3 SSDs when we speak of OS or game load times. Absolutely nothing. If you are not using it for specific fields (rendering, moving big files between SSDs, etc.), you will never see a difference between the cheapest 550 MB/s SATA3 SSD and a 3500 MB/s or even faster m.2 or PCI-E one. The only advantage for general use is you get rid of two slim cables. Their disadvantage is they are more expensive but the real disadvantage of those is that they run MUCH hotter. While a SATA3 is maybe around 30, probably 35 Celsius at full load (mine is around 21C at the moment while not doing anything in a 22-23C room), the other 2 has usually double (!!!) the temperature: at around 60-70C at full load). And that one really sucks when there is a hot summer day.

And that's an absolute winning point for the SATA3 SSD for me: I don't use the higher speed for rendering, etc, I don't care about 2 extra slim cables (we are not speaking of the really thick old power supply cables) but i DO care about the (near) double operating temperature.

 

[cucker tarlson]

No, when we take Win and game load speeds into consideration.

M.2 or PCI-E SSDs don't offer any performance jump over the SATA3 SSDs when we speak of OS or game load times. Absolutely nothing. If you are not using it for specific fields (rendering, moving big files between SSDs, etc.), you will never see a difference between the cheapest 550 MB/s SATA3 SSD and a 3500 MB/s or even faster m.2 or PCI-E one. The only advantage for general use is you get rid of two slim cables. Their disadvantage is they are more expensive but the real disadvantage of those is that they run MUCH hotter. While a SATA3 is maybe around 30, probably 35 Celsius at full load (mine is around 21C at the moment while not doing anything in a 22-23C room), the other 2 has usually double (!!!) the temperature: at around 60-70C at full load). And that one really sucks when there is a hot summer day.

yup,better have more of mid-range sata storage than less of high end nvme.for a home/gaming rig at least.

I mean,even if the sequential speeds are higher,and you do move a lot of files,what would have to be the file size-cache buffer ratio for it to make sense if you think about it.
if you move smaller amount of data the real time difference is low.if you're moving a lot of data,well,you'll run out of cache before the difference in real time becomes considerable.you'll be transferring at nand-limited speeds on both.

 

[BrainCruser]

Will this new speed translate to real-world performance?

Serious question to experts, in which areas should we expect improvements?

With windows defender installed by default on windows 10,you won't see any meaningful improvement.
Defender already gimps normal nvme ssds very close to SATA SSDs.

 

[R-T-B]

Honest question, does anyone make a SLC drive anymore?

Yes, but they are industrial parts.

They aren't built for speed, they are small, and they cost an absurd amount.

Defender already gimps normal nvme ssds very close to SATA SSDs.

[Citation Needed]

 

[watzupken]

This is like a race for a largely meaningless number, similar to the megapixel race on cameras. Will it benefit users, yes, but only for very specific cases where there are frequent transfers of big size files. For most users, the high sequential speed is only visible or obvious when running some benchmarks. SSD response time have been stagnant for a long time.

Other problem that I foresee with Samsung drive is the price. They have been pricing themselves out of the market when there are so many SSD options that perform just as well if not better than their existing 970 Evo Plus series.

 

[Makaveli]

I'm reading, but I'm talking about PCIe in general.

Finalizing the spec does not = consumer launch in 2021.

I hope Samsung will also lower the price per gigabyte as this has always been announced. And what will it be? PCIs 6 are expected next year, and 7.2 Gb / s controllers have also been announced this year. Fat gains are being made in this area but I was more attracted to the 8Tb Sabernet Rocet Q model than the twice as expensive faster model with lower capacity .

No no no you will not be seeing PCIe 6 devices on the market in 2021.

Do you guys just make this stuff up and run with it?

Doubtful, as there's a new controller that is coming out this year capable of 7GB/s. I expect Samsung will release a new drive later that will use that controller that will be even faster than this.

Yup the controller the Corsair MP600 is based on will get an upgrade end of the year.

Phison Previews Next-Gen PCIe 4.0 SSD Controllers: Up to 7 GB/s, NVMe 1.4

www.anandtech.com

It depends the usage, these pcie4.0 speeds is like having many memory rams stickies in your computer

PCIe 4.0 drives are much slower than DRAM in performance and latency so no its not like having additional ram.

 

[Valantar]

The most important SSD metric to improve is random I/O, not sequential speeds (they are pretty much meaningless even for game loading), but more importantly the Windows storage architecture needs a fundamental overhaul. Might even require the addition of bespoke hardware like in the new consoles to fully make use of the fast storage we have today. We of course also need game developers to stop optimizing their installs for HDDs, and instead actually trying to make proper use of the characteristics of SSDs. That AnandTech article linked above is well worth the read.

 

[ARF]

The most important SSD metric to improve is random I/O, not sequential speeds (they are pretty much meaningless even for game loading), but more importantly the Windows storage architecture needs a fundamental overhaul. Might even require the addition of bespoke hardware like in the new consoles to fully make use of the fast storage we have today. We of course also need game developers to stop optimizing their installs for HDDs, and instead actually trying to make proper use of the characteristics of SSDs. That AnandTech article linked above is well worth the read.

Tell them to stop selling HDDs in the first place, and the consumers to stop buying slow HDDs.

Game programmers cannot take full advantage of NVMe SSD performance without making their games unplayably slow on hard drives.

Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher In A New Era of Gaming

www.anandtech.com

The PC platform has so many defects, that it's painful to read their poor "explanations" and "excuses".

Why not go for RAM disks, then ?
Because it's expensive.

Why not go for big SSDs to store data.
Because it's expensive.

One morning you all wake up and realise that we alone sabotage our own progress because we are greedy.

 

[Valantar]

Tell them to stop selling HDDs in the first place, and the consumers to stop buying slow HDDs.

Storage Matters: Why Xbox and Playstation SSDs Usher In A New Era of Gaming

www.anandtech.com

The PC platform has so many defects, that it's painful to read their poor "explanations" and "excuses".

Why not go for RAM disks, then ?
Because it's expensive.

Why not go for big SSDs to store data.
Because it's expensive.

One morning you all wake up and realise that we alone sabotage our own progress because we are greedy.

It's been at least a year since I saw a HDD recommended for any kind of gaming build, even as a supplementary mass storage drive. And while I don't have any sources available, I've seen data to support that being reflected in sales too. The problem isn't new PCs with HDDs, but rather the massive install base of PCs with HDDs. Making all of those people add a new drive or upgrade to a new system is unrealistic. But at some point, hopefully soon, developers will start mandating SSDs, or at least optimizing for them. Simple solution would be to add a warning that the game will play poorly if installed on a HDD, but they could also have differentiated download packages based on the storage medium, etc.

On the other hand, HDDs are unbeatable for mass storage. I could definitely never move my NAS over to SSD storage any time soon - that would cost more than my main PC and then some.

 

[EatingDirt]

It depends the usage, these pcie4.0 speeds is like having many memory rams stickies in your computer, I mean, the 570x AMD motherboard series maximum memory ram supported is 64gb, with pcie4.0 that limit can be overcome, actually can be even better, keep the memory ram for special cases and use the ssd to act like memory ram for other cases. I have applications here which need that because pcie3.0 speed is too slow.

This is wrong. X570 supports 128GB of ram. B550 also will be supporting 128GB.

Previous X370 & X470 were limited to 64GB.

Using an SSD to act as RAM seems like a good way to destroy an SSD quickly, and only makes sense for fringe use cases, or if you have a lot of money to burn, in which case you'd probably want to burn that money on an HEDT platform & grab 256GB of RAM instead.

As for future game development, a dev would be better off upping the requirements for RAM than requiring an extremely expensive Samsung Pro PCIe 4.0 NVME drive, so like previous Samsung Pro's, these will be used for people that need them, professionals, video editors, etc., or alternatively by people with money to burn that want their games to load a few tenths of a second faster(maybe).

 

[Metroid]

This is wrong. X570 supports 128GB of ram. B550 also will be supporting 128GB.

Previous X370 & X470 were limited to 64GB.

I really thought it was still 64gb, good to hear is 128gb, thanks, that really makes it more attractive to buy, especially now MSI released a x570 tomahawk version. I have a msi b450 and I'm gimped to 64gb and thought x570 was the same.

Using an SSD to act as RAM seems like a good way to destroy an SSD quickly, and only makes sense for fringe use cases, or if you have a lot of money to burn, in which case you'd probably want to burn that money on an HEDT platform & grab 256GB of RAM instead.

As for future game development, a dev would be better off upping the requirements for RAM than requiring an extremely expensive Samsung Pro PCIe 4.0 NVME drive, so like previous Samsung Pro's, these will be used for people that need them, professionals, video editors, etc., or alternatively by people with money to burn that want their games to load a few tenths of a second faster(maybe).

Yeah that is the idea, I have workloads that need a lot of memory and even 128gb is not enough, I need like 512gb of memory at moment and will grow. The workload will create hundreds of 8gb files and few writes now and then will be done, the 8gb files will not be created all the time, will be a one time only and then will be maintained with few writes.

Do not worry about destroying it, I believe the new one will be around the same level of wear of the 1tb 970 pro, 1,200 TBW, so by my calculations will be years of writes and by then will have purchased many other ones to replace it.

 

[Valantar]

As for future game development, a dev would be better off upping the requirements for RAM than requiring an extremely expensive Samsung Pro PCIe 4.0 NVME drive, so like previous Samsung Pro's, these will be used for people that need them, professionals, video editors, etc., or alternatively by people with money to burn that want their games to load a few tenths of a second faster(maybe).

I dont think anyone is talking about game developers setting the bar at ultra high end PCIe 4.0 drives. All that's needed is for them to no longer optimize for HDDs (which is how things are done currently) but instead design for the near immediate access times and nonexistent seek times of SSDs, and at the very least use the ~5x increase in sequential speeds of a SATA SSD over an HDD as a baseline. This won't just affect loading times, but has the potential to quite dramatically change level designs and gameworlds, as so many current design methodologies are pretty much just hacks to overcome slow storage and the limitations that sets on getting new data into RAM or VRAM. Increasing RAM requirements won't help with this unless they go to something entirely unreasonable like 64GB and make it a hard minimum, which is a really, really bad idea unless that isn't blindingly obvious.

 

[robot zombie]

No, when we take OS and game load speeds into consideration.

M.2 or PCI-E SSDs don't offer any performance jump over the SATA3 SSDs when we speak of OS or game load times. Absolutely nothing. If you are not using it for specific fields (rendering, moving big files between SSDs, etc.), you will never see a difference between the cheapest 550 MB/s SATA3 SSD and a 3500 MB/s or even faster m.2 or PCI-E one. The only advantage for general use is you get rid of two slim cables. Their disadvantage is they are more expensive but the real disadvantage of those is that they run MUCH hotter. While a SATA3 is maybe around 30, probably 35 Celsius at full load (mine is around 21C at the moment while not doing anything in a 22-23C room), the other 2 has usually double (!!!) the temperature: at around 60-70C at full load). And that one really sucks when there is a hot summer day.

And that's an absolute winning point for the SATA3 SSD for me: I don't use the higher speed for rendering, etc, I don't care about 2 extra slim cables (we are not speaking of the really thick old power supply cables) but i DO care about the (near) double operating temperature.

I can think of ONE case in my experience where it is nvme or bust. And that's heavily modded FO4 with vsync decoupled on the load screens. The load times between any sata drive that will cap out and a decent nvme are actually kind of astronomical. A full minute load vs something like 5-10 seconds, if that. But then, it's pulling gigabytes of textures and extra data each time.

So something about how that game loads is closely tied to drive speeds. There isn't a doubt in my mind. Mostly I think this comes down to sloppy coding, but I also think it may be possible that as data bandwidth goes up, we may see more developers looking to take advantage of that to do actual things that couldn't be done before. Especially in open world games.

The operating temperature is a different thing. I mean, different stuff likes different temps. Some components just run hot. It's not really hurting them. And even though the temperature is high, I think that mostly has to do with it being a very small part. It doesn't take a lot of heat energy to cook a piece of silicon the size of a stick of gum. Highly unlikely to translate to any noticeable temperature increase to the air in the case, mobo, or nearby components. It just saturates with heat very quickly.

An example. If I took a lighter to a paper-clip, how long would it take for it to get red hot? Probably not long right? And the temperature would be quite high. Now how about a 2' long, 1/4" thick flat iron bar? Could you even get it red hot with a lighter? Point is, the same energy that turns the paper clip red hot can't easily do the same to something with much more mass. If the nvme is a paper clip, then the mobo is an iron bar.

Another experiment. Lets heat both the paper clip and the bar up to a solid red glow... so well over 500C. They both measure the same temperature. Now, lets drop them into separate bathtubs full of room temperature water. What will happen when you toss in the paper clip? Not much, right? Maybe a "fshhhhh" sound with some steam and a little boiling around it. Within moments, the paper clip will be touchable with the water temperature being about the same. Now what about the red-hot iron bar? Probably going to boil all of the water in the bathtub right? Wouldn't want to reach in and touch either the water or the bar...

But the temperatures are the same, so what gives? The masses are different, and so the amounts of heat energy absorbed to reach the same temperature are also very different. A little nvme controller hitting 70C is not the same as your CPU or GPU hitting 70C. Being a smaller part, it's gonna heat up faster. But that also means that it cools faster when it is done.