Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs launched

[HEXUS]

Samsung's first PCIe 4.0 consumer SSD is aimed at gaming and high-end PC applications.

Read more.

[DevDrake]

Wow, 7GBps/5GBps its a slow RAM territory. I would love to see a review

[Hoonigan]

Very surprised to see that it tops out with a 1TB drive. That's not very "Pro".

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Anandtech has done some testing:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16087...4-ssd-review/6

A number of the Hynix and Seagate SSDs hold up well to it.

Very surprised to see that it tops out with a 1TB drive. That's not very "Pro".

Neither is the change from MLC to TLC NAND. It makes me wonder whether the 980 EVO will end up being QLC!

[Ttaskmaster]

Still pretty expensive compared to HDDs.
Aren't we already at the stage where between these and SSD speeds? That suggests to me that a reduction in price per TB would be the better focus at this point, rather than this 'So fast, it's faster than fast' quest for imperceptibly higher speeds.

Very surprised to see that it tops out with a 1TB drive. That's not very "Pro".

"A 2TB model will become available before the year is out".

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Still pretty expensive compared to HDDs.

Aren't we already at the stage where between these and SSD speeds? That suggests to me that a reduction in price per TB would be the better focus at this point, rather than this 'So fast, it's faster than fast' quest for imperceptibly higher speeds.

The problem is cheaper QLC NAND,has performance penalties(they can be as slow as HDDs!) and endurance penalties over TLC NAND. Also companies such as Samsung instead of passing the savings onto consumers,price their QLC NAND drives the same as competitors TLC NAND drives. In the end QLC was supposed to push prices down,but has ended up being a bit of damp squib.

[Hoonigan]

They've also halved the TBW rating compared to the 970 Pro. You could even argue that you can burn through a TBW rating twice as fast with double the throughput.

They're a year late to market with Gen. 4 drives, they haven't launched with a 2TB model, and they've halved the durability of the drives. Not good, in my eyes. This is what I'd expect from the Evo range.

[kompukare]

They've also halved the TBW rating compared to the 970 Pro. You could even argue that you can burn through a TBW rating twice as fast with double the throughput.

They're a year late to market with Gen. 4 drives, they haven't launched with a 2TB model, and they've halved the durability of the drives. Not good, in my eyes. This is what I'd expect from the Evo range.

Yes, was surprised yesterday when reading / glancing at the ComputerBase review:
https://www.computerbase.de/2020-09/...-pro-ssd-test/
My 960GB Corsair MP510 has nearly three times the endurance. 600TWB is really Evo not Pro.

[rs4847]

I was waiting for the 980 Pro as it was going to be my boot/OS drive in my planned new build, now I think I will wait for the Phison E18 based drives before I make a final decision.

As already mentioned this is an Evo/Evo Plus with Pro branding.

Disappointed.

[azrael-]

FWIW Anandtech lists a 2 TB model in their review. For me the important thing about this isn't so much what it is as what it is not. And that's a true follow-up to earlier "Pro" drives. No MLC (as ill-chosen as that abbreviation always has been, although DLC wouldn't have made it better) and subsequently a much lower endurance rating. As has been said before this really bodes ill for any "Evo" model down the road, which will probably feature QLC.

As it is, I'm gutted ...and so is the 980 Pro.

[quantasm]

I have a question related to endurance, my Samsung 840 EVO 500GB currently has Total Bytes Written = 82.1 TB and the wear leveling count is 89. I'm assuming wear leveling count indicates endurance has been roughly reached when it gets to zero. Is it correct that I can expect roughly 746TB written from my drive assuming rate is the same between 89 to 0? 82.1 / ((100 - 89) / 100) = 746.36 Total Bytes Written.

[DanceswithUnix]

That suggests to me that a reduction in price per TB would be the better focus at this point, rather than this 'So fast, it's faster than fast' quest for imperceptibly higher speeds.

These are not intended to be low cost products. There are other SSDs for that.

They were originally fast, robust products and they seem to be failing at the robust bit.

And that's a true follow-up to earlier "Pro" drives. No MLC (as ill-chosen as that abbreviation always has been, although DLC wouldn't have made it better) and subsequently a much lower endurance rating.

I'm sure I remember the original Pro drives being single bit per cell.

MLC made *some* sense, you need 4 voltage levels to represent 2 bits vs the two levels (with one boundary to compare against) for what we now call "slc" despite it having a level for 0 and another level for 1

Modern stuff should be Quad Bit Cell to really make sense.

[Orcworm]

I'm all for the improved speeds, but will we actually see any automatic benefit over a "slow" SATA SSD in terms of game load times, or is it still reliant on developers optimising how resources are loaded etc?

[JazzSmoothie]

I’m glad to see more competition in pcie4 ssds, it’s out my budget but i hope the 980 evo line also uses 4.0, could help give the new tech some mass market appeal.