Samsung's 9100 Pro PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD Leaks Ahead of Official Launch

[TheLostSwede]

Although we've been aware of Samsung's 9100 Pro SSD since June last year, it appears that Samsung India got ahead of things and released a press release early about what we can only expect is a soon to launch product. The 9100 Pro is, as you'd expect, a PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD and it will be available in capacities of 1, 2 and 4 TB initially, but it appears that Samsung is also planning to release an 8 TB SKU, which would be a first for its Pro series of SSDs. Samsung will offer all SKUs with or without a heatsink and the 1 to 4 TB versions will come with an 8.8 mm thick heatsink, whereas the 8 TB model will come with an 11.25 mm thick heatsink.

Sadly, Samsung India only shared the sequential performance figures, and we're looking at read speeds of up to 14,800 MB/s and write speeds of up 13,400 MB/s, neither is sticking out from the competition already available in the market. The pulled press release also mentioned random read performance of 2,200K IOPS and random write performance of 2,600K IOPS. As the press release was intended for the Indian market, we only have pricing in Indian rupees and the 1 TB SKU will sell for 14,999 INR or around US$172, including 18 percent VAT, followed by the 2 TB SKU at 25,499 INR or US$293 and finally 49,999 INR or US$573 for the 4 TB SKU. No pricing was revealed for the upcoming 8 TB SKU.



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[Bwaze]

"49,999 INR or US$573 for the 4 TB SKU. No pricing was revealed for the upcoming 8 TB SKU."

I imagine tax and country specific markup is very high here, but this price seems absurdly high. I don't think we need to see 8 TB model's price.

 

[Chaitanya]

That pricing seems to be cheaper than competing PCIe 5 drives(Crucial T705 1TB with heatsink sells for INR19500) available here in India. Would wait for reviews to find if Samsung has managed any improvements over their competition.

"49,999 INR or US$573 for the 4 TB SKU. No pricing was revealed for the upcoming 8 TB SKU."

I imagine tax and country specific markup is very high here, but this price seems absurdly high. I don't think we need to see 8 TB model's price.

Crucial's T705 4TB is listed for INR 64800 here so Samsung is actually quite cheap, plus they have advantage of better after sales support.
Edit: Generally street prices tend to be a little lower than ones officially listed on manufacturer website.

 

[Space Lynx]

Hmm, looking forward to review on this one. Tom's Hardware says the 990 Pro nvme drive gen4 beats out almost all other drives on qd1 reads, even the t705. So, it will be interesting to see if samsung can beat their gen4 drive on qd1 reads since that is essentially the only score that matters for most people.

 

[mtosev]

Nice. I have been using samsung's ssds for a long time and I'm very satisfied with them.

 

[Bwaze]

But there's basically no discernable real world difference between this and PCIe 4 drives like Samsung 990 Pro, which can be had for half that price? Well, maybe not in India.

 

[docnorth]

Nice. I have been using samsung's ssds for a long time and I'm very satisfied with them.

Me too, especially for the OS drive.

 

[Philaphlous]

PCIe 5.... nobody cares about speed. People only care about power consumption and throttling in this gen....

 

[docnorth]

That's good news, although I obviously don't need a PCIe 5.0 disk. Expensive, but still reasonable compared to other PCIe 5.0 SSDs and finally 8TB. Now if this could bring pricing of good quality 2 or 4TB disks back to lower levels remains to be seen. Right now my main SSD is ~25% more expensive than in June of 2023(!).

 

[Wirko]

Hmm, looking forward to review on this one. Tom's Hardware says the 990 Pro nvme drive gen4 beats out almost all other drives on qd1 reads, even the t705. So, it will be interesting to see if samsung can beat their gen4 drive on qd1 reads since that is essentially the only score that matters for most people.

I think Tom's did a parallel re-review of the SN850X, KC3000 and 990 Pro a few months ago but can't find it now, or was it some other site? The differences in most results were minor, including QD1 reads. Those won't improve much as long as the basic technology remains the same, so don't expect new drives to reach 140 MB/s if best old drives are around 130 MB/s.
However, what also matters to many people is heat, so much more in notebooks. Judging by the 990 Evo, chances are good that we'll see a nice cool new gen SSD from Samsung.

 

[TheLostSwede]

"49,999 INR or US$573 for the 4 TB SKU. No pricing was revealed for the upcoming 8 TB SKU."

I imagine tax and country specific markup is very high here, but this price seems absurdly high. I don't think we need to see 8 TB model's price.

As I wrote in the news piece, 18 percent VAT/sales tax.

But there's basically no discernable real world difference between this and PCIe 4 drives like Samsung 990 Pro, which can be had for half that price? Well, maybe not in India.

You got some benchmarks you want to share with us of this yet to be released drive?

 

[Wirko]

Samsung's 9100 Pro SSD

Poor Samsung (and WD too), the name 1080 Pro was already taken...

 

[Frozoken]

I think Tom's did a parallel re-review of the SN850X, KC3000 and 990 Pro a few months ago but can't find it now, or was it some other site? The differences in most results were minor, including QD1 reads. Those won't improve much as long as the basic technology remains the same, so don't expect new drives to reach 140 MB/s if best old drives are around 130 MB/s.
However, what also matters to many people is heat, so much more in notebooks. Judging by the 990 Evo, chances are good that we'll see a nice cool new gen SSD from Samsung.

The 990 pro literally has notably qd1 random reads than the other two. Talking like 90mb/s vs 115. The 4tb one does regress tho

 

[Space Lynx]

I think Tom's did a parallel re-review of the SN850X, KC3000 and 990 Pro a few months ago but can't find it now, or was it some other site? The differences in most results were minor, including QD1 reads. Those won't improve much as long as the basic technology remains the same, so don't expect new drives to reach 140 MB/s if best old drives are around 130 MB/s.
However, what also matters to many people is heat, so much more in notebooks. Judging by the 990 Evo, chances are good that we'll see a nice cool new gen SSD from Samsung.

look at the new micron 4600 review on toms hardware, its the new king of qd1 reads, but only if you are rocking Intel cpu, with amd cpu it drops quite a bit.

990 pro in that same reviews graphs show it being leader of the pack for qd1 reads in a meaningful way. 20-25% better than the next best drive.

anyways, i just think it will be interesting if this new samsung gen5 drive improves it further, i suspect it will.

 

[csendesmark]

Looks great, might buy one when it is released for a year - so not getting a bad experience like with my 980 PRO.
Also would love to see the Wattage of this drive!

 

[Balzoro]

I’m actually so excited for this. My crucial t700 experience with temps wasn’t great, and I’m positivity hopeful that Samsung (that historically don’t wait when it comes to new technologies) decided to wait for a whopping 2 years until their controllers were mature enough for mainstream use. Otherwise they could have just launched a competitor to the crucial/corsair/etc gen5 and have the same heat issues as they had.

I’m getting this the moment it comes out

 

[Bwaze]

You got some benchmarks you want to share with us of this yet to be released drive?

I was just aiming on how many of the tasks don't really benefit from all the advancements of speeds PCIe 5.0 drives have brought.

 

[csendesmark]

Also would love to see the Wattage of this drive!

Found it

@TheLostSwede: Samsung's site

 

[Zareek]

What I don't get is the paint yourself into a corner naming. You went from 990 to 9100? WTF happened to 1000-9000??? So dumb!

 

[phints]

Great Samsung is getting into the PCIe 5.0 game, they'll finally beat their >2 year old 990 Pro soon. I'm more wondering about 4K RAND tests, if they will meaningfully improve on the ~100MB/s since 14GB/s sequential peak is meaningless 99% of the time. Hopefully it's power efficient and stays cool too. Pricing looks absurd but we'll see.

 

[Zareek]

Found it
View attachment 386643

@TheLostSwede: Samsung's site

I assume Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 is their marketing speak for SLC Caching. If so, PATHETIC SLC Cache sizes, let's hope their TLC write speed is just amazing.

 

[csendesmark]

What I don't get is the paint yourself into a corner naming. you went from 990 to 9100? WTF happened to 1000-9000??? So dumb!

Oh well, Samsung is like Intel, AMD or Nvidia

Great Samsung is getting into the PCIe 5.0 game, they'll finally beat their >2 year old 990 Pro soon. I'm more wondering about 4K RAND tests, if they will meaningfully improve on the ~100MB/s since 14GB/s sequential peak is meaningless 99% of the time. Hopefully it's power efficient and stays cool too. Pricing looks absurd but we'll see.

Well yeah,
Just bought a 2TB 990 PRO, were considering some PCIe gen5 SSD-s, but most of them using more than 10W which means 60~70°C
The 990 PRO not getting hotter than 55~58°C while stressing the GPU.

marketing speak for SLC Caching.

Dear God! That's me meeting those from the marketing team -->
Wonder they did not use the word AI there...

 

[TheLostSwede]

Found it
View attachment 386643

@TheLostSwede: Samsung's site

Posted the press release, thanks for the heads up, didn't expect it to be up that fast.

 

[mtosev]

What prices can we expect here in Europe?
I'm interested in the 2TB version

 

[csendesmark]

Posted the press release, thanks for the heads up, didn't expect it to be up that fast.

Well, I was curious on the Wattage and gave it an internet search
Notice the suggested pricing too!