Samsung is the latest SSD maker spotted swapping components

[HEXUS]

To Samsung's credit it has changed its 970 Evo Plus box, part number, and spec sheets.

Read more.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Also,our little Hexus investigation also seems to indicate there are potentially two versions of the WD SN750,one which has much worse write performance.

[mtyson]

Also,our little Hexus investigation also seems to indicate there are potentially two versions of the WD SN750,one which has much worse write performance.

I have just seen that "Western Digital promises to introduce new model numbers from now on if the company adjusts an internal SSD and that change has consequences for the specifications of a product. "

via Tweakers (Dutch, take a translator.)

[huggi]

Samsung has the advantage of also being one of the very few SSD manufacturers who make all the parts in-house and doesn't need to depend on external supply chains. So this hardware revision doesn't really smell of shortage issues but probably some internal supply optimisation since they only need to manufacture one controller for two product lines now.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have just seen that "Western Digital promises to introduce new model numbers from now on if the company adjusts an internal SSD and that change has consequences for the specifications of a product. "

via Tweakers (Dutch, take a translator.)

Well I hope they clarify the SN750 situation!

[acewing905]

Looks like it's a net gain to be honest

[LSG501]

Yeah seems more of a consolidation of controllers and an overall better balanced drive imo.

I don't mind there being different versions as long as things are clearly marked and any performance difference is easily found (ideally on the packaging), however most don't clearly mark things and often as not there is a performance difference (usually worse).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

For anyone buying this for video work,the fact performance drops off massively after 115GB kind of makes other drives look somewhat better now. The drive performance drops in half to 800MB/s(the older one is closer to 1500MB/s).As Extremetech pointed out you can generate a few 100GB of writes doing video work,and the changes makes this drive markedly worse off. The main advantage of the upper tier PCI-E 3.0 drives was very long sustained writes,which are maintained consistently over 1000MB/S which is great for write heavy workloads for any amount of writes.

For gamers,a cheaper SSD probably does the same job,and if you really want maximum Directstorage speeds you realistically would want a PCI-E 4.0 device anyway.At this point its quite clear these are being orientated towards gamers,and they want content creators to buy more expensive drives now.

[Iota]

the fact performance drops off massively after 115GB kind of makes other drives look somewhat better now. The drive performance drops in half to 800MB/s(the older one is closer to 1500MB/s).

Sustained read / writes are massively different, I'm wondering if that's a controller issue, considering the other parts seem fairly similar. Also, performance will differ depending on how the drive has been setup in terms of provisioning and what hardware / chipset it's being run on, as well as how full the drive actually is. Not everything is as straight forward as shown, case in point, my ~2 year old with 10% over provisioning on the Z390 chipset. Aside from that massive drop off in sustained writes though, the rest looks like it's pretty similar to where it was (give or take a bit). That sustained though can change the use case for these drives, so bad show from Samsung for this. I'm sure they could update the firmware for the controller to address that, considering the other hardware is similar.

[sinhaomar]

Samsung is the latest and the best SSD maker.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Sustained read / writes are massively different, I'm wondering if that's a controller issue, considering the other parts seem fairly similar. Also, performance will differ depending on how the drive has been setup in terms of provisioning and what hardware / chipset it's being run on, as well as how full the drive actually is. Not everything is as straight forward as shown, case in point, my ~2 year old with 10% over provisioning on the Z390 chipset. Aside from that massive drop off in sustained writes though, the rest looks like it's pretty similar to where it was (give or take a bit). That sustained though can change the use case for these drives, so bad show from Samsung for this. I'm sure they could update the firmware for the controller to address that, considering the other hardware is similar.

It is kind of weird - you would imagine it can't be just the newer controller. I suspect we might need some independent reviews and product shots,to see exactly what has been changed. OTH,it could be good old product segmentation - the PRO series drives have very decent sustained writes,so it could be various companies trying to push consumers who need that performance towards higher tier and more expensive products!

Edit!!

Also another issue is if the caches are dynamic - as the drive fills the sustained write performance might drop further!

[Primey0]

This should be illegal

[Iota]

It is kind of weird - you would imagine it can't be just the newer controller.

If it's the same controller as the 980 Pro, then it's probably a firmware issue. I see no reason for them to drop the performance on the sustained writes aside from what you suggested about product segregation. The Evo Plus as originally produced is a solid drive in most areas. I'm guessing the latency difference is either down to chipset used / CPU, or controller differences (I wouldn't have thought it would be higher latency though)

[Rubarb]

Surley with that much diference you could claim a refund?