Samsung Delivers Next-Level SSD Performance with 980 PRO

[MxPhenom 216]

The results are not impressive. You are better off buying SK Hynix's PCIe 3.0 drive. I am definitely not impressed with PCIe 4.0 drives. Being actually slower than PCIe 3.0 drives in a range of tasks is a no no. Double the price for nothing.

The current Sabrent 4.0 drives seem pretty damn good. Id get one of those before a Samsung. Those Phison controllers, and then the new one coming out are great.

 

[R0H1T]

So what are you going to call 6 bit MLC?

Sexa MLC

 

[theonek]

970 evo plus are with the same TBW, so the difference is only transfer rate if you have pcie 4.0....

 

[R0H1T]

You're making it sound as if that's not the biggest difference that people generally look for in high end drives?

 

[nemesis.ie]

The results are not impressive. You are better off buying SK Hynix's PCIe 3.0 drive. I am definitely not impressed with PCIe 4.0 drives. Being actually slower than PCIe 3.0 drives in a range of tasks is a no no. Double the price for nothing.

The Anand results? The note says the tests were done on gen 3, so they should be better on 4 and likely if you have 3 and don't plan on getting for any time soon, they are indeed not a good buy for a 3.0 board.

 

[Cheeseball]

Its $230 for 1TB on pre-order on Amazon.com (US) right now.

 

[bonehead123]

Its $230 for 1TB on pre-order on Amazon.com (US) right now.

So that prob means ~$440-ish for the 2TB model ?

That suks when there are many other gen4 drives that are just as fast or faster for less $$...

Hey Sammy, B.M.A.........

 

[TheLostSwede]

The Anand results? The note says the tests were done on gen 3, so they should be better on 4 and likely if you have 3 and don't plan on getting for any time soon, they are indeed not a good buy for a 3.0 board.

I think you need to put on your glasses...

Our new PCIe 4 test system uses an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X processor and an ASRock B550 motherboard. This provides PCIe 4 lanes from the CPU but not from the chipset. Whenever possible, we test NVMe SSDs with CPU-provided PCIe lanes rather than going through the chipset, so the lack of PCIe gen4 from the chipset isn't an issue.

 

[Animalpak]

No, you just won't get the full pcie 4.0 bandwidth they are advertising for the ssd. Itll work in pcie 3.0 boards.

Thanks for all the info's, yeah but then no reason to upgrade if will be slower. So im sticking with Gen 3.0 unitil Intel... Again will release whole new Motherboards and CPU's.

 

[Tomgang]

I am hornestly a bit disappointed. I expected more from Samsung latest m.2 nvme SSD. Well I might have to reconsider another SSD for my zen 3/ampere system i am planning.

A review of the 1 tb variant can be seen hear.

Samsung 980 Pro 1TB NVMe SSD review

Samsung has released its first-ever PCIe Gen 4.0 NVMe SSD, meet the 980 PRO that is advertised at blistering performance running towards 7 GB/sec. based on 3-bit per cell writes will Samsung be able t...

www.guru3d.com

 

[HugsNotDrugs]

Waiting for all the children to cry about how TLC is teh worst...

TLC is good enough but in this case you're paying Ferrari prices for a BMW product. People are allowed to want MLC for such a huge price premium.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Looks like it does better when it comes to server benchmarks.

Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Review

The Samsung 980 Pro was the best-performing consumer SSD we’ve tested to date, more than 2x the numbers of its competitors in some areas.

www.storagereview.com

 

[Bubster]

iF you use gen4 M2 with Pci-e gen 4 you get the full or near speed promised (but the temps play a role and sometimes when they get too hot they throttle down like in the kingston A M2 nvme and speed nearly halves).
if you use gen 4 M2 with Pci-e gen 3 you get 3500 mbs read and about 3000 write which is still fast. one has to remember about the M2 cooling and one have to have a good chunk of fast RAM at least 32 gb.

 

[chrcoluk]

Thanks for posting, there is this odd note "Note2: We are currently in the process of testing these benchmarks in PCIe 4.0 mode. Results will be added as they finish. "

Not sure why they would post a review of a PCIe4 drive not using it.

because many people will buy this to use on their pcie3 boards.

 

[Octopuss]

So what is the real speed of the NAND? All these higher and higher advertised speeds are just the DRAM/SLC buffers, right?

 

[zlobby]

The Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 SSD Review: A Spirit of Hope

www.anandtech.com

Ay, ay, ay! It's beaten badly in every category.

 

[ironwolf]

Newegg Pre-Order pricing:
Release Date: 10/12/2020

250 GB: $89.99
500 GB: $149.99
1 TB: $229.99

 

[voltage]

certainly much faster than the previous 970 pro, but, will not last as long as the 970 pro.

 

[R0H1T]

TLC is good enough but in this case you're paying Ferrari prices for a BMW product

You mean more like a Ferrari with no name off brand tires. These aren't strictly "Ferraris" nor are they marketed as such, unless you think every "premium" car is a Ferrari & everyone of them does the (exact) same thing?

 

[TheLostSwede]

And another review, that still shows it being not that impressive, especially for the asking price.

Samsung SSD 980 Pro Review: Blazing Fast PCIe 4.0 Storage

The flagship SSD 980 Pro from Samsung features a new PCIe 4 controller and cutting-edge NAND flash for a fantastic speed boost.

hothardware.com

 

[btarunr]

I am hornestly a bit disappointed. I expected more from Samsung latest m.2 nvme SSD. Well I might have to reconsider another SSD for my zen 3/ampere system i am planning.

Same here. I wanted this to be an MLC (2-bits per cell) drive.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

You mean more like a Ferrari with no name off brand tires. These aren't strictly "Ferraris" nor are they marketed as such, unless you think every "premium" car is a Ferrari & everyone of them does the (exact) same thing?

You can change tires in your car though. Can customers plausibly change NAND chips in drives they buy?

 

[silentbogo]

How so? MLC stands for Multi-level Cell, it can be six bits per cell in reality.
Yes, three bits per cell is normally called TLC, but MLC could be used for anything with more than one bit per cell.

It boils down to manufacturer-induced conventions, where for the past umphty years MLC was used in context of 2-bits per cell (and yes, TLC can also be configured as 1/2-bit). Samsung is simply playing on technicalities now, which is not fair to consumers. I'm actually surprised they didn't cut the warranty to 3 years along with halving rated TBW. Would've been another QVO fiasco.

And another review, that still shows it being not that impressive, especially for the asking price.

Just looked through Guru3D review, and it's pretty much the same thing - unstable performance unless we're talking sub-100G sequential transfers. May be good for video editing, but for a typical consumer I doubt it'll make much difference even comparing to runn-of-the-mill PCIe 3.0 TLC SSD.

 

[Octopuss]

I am certainly happy with my 1TB 970 Pro. I'll want another - smaller - NVMe drive for Windows when I upgrade my PC though, and I'm not sure what to look for. I certainly don't want to keep the SATA 850 Pro around with all the cables annoying me. The 250GB variant seems to be painfully slow. I might just go backwards and buy what, 970 EVO plus or whatever the model is?

 

[TheLostSwede]

It boils down to manufacturer-induced conventions, where for the past umphty years MLC was used in context of 2-bits per cell (and yes, TLC can also be configured as 1/2-bit). Samsung is simply playing on technicalities now, which is not fair to consumers. I'm actually surprised they didn't cut the warranty to 3 years along with halving rated TBW. Would've been another QVO fiasco.

Yes, sure, but it still doesn't make it wrong. Dodgy, sure, but MLC can be used for any number of bits per cell, as long as it says how many bits there are per cell.

As for the TBW see:

Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Review

The Samsung 980 Pro was the best-performing consumer SSD we’ve tested to date, more than 2x the numbers of its competitors in some areas.

www.storagereview.com

I guess Samsung has worked out the warranty based on how much their average user writes to their drives.

Just looked through Guru3D review, and it's pretty much the same thing - unstable performance unless we're talking sub-100G sequential transfers. May be good for video editing, but for a typical consumer I doubt it'll make much difference even comparing to runn-of-the-mill PCIe 3.0 TLC SSD.

For 99.9% of people it's going to make zero difference. It seems like the 4K reads are up slightly compared to most other SSDs, which is nice, but not nice enough to spend that much money on an SSD.