Samsung's 990 Pro PCIe 4.0 SSD boasts up to 7,450 MB/s

[Daniel Sims]

Something to look forward to: PCIe 5.0 SSDs are just around the corner, along with new CPUs and motherboards to support their bleeding-edge speeds. However, Samsung's new high-performance PCIe 4.0 SSD will probably provide all the speed many users need for a while.

Samsung unveiled today the 990 Pro PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, positioning the new drive for gaming, 3D rendering, data analysis, and 4K video editing. The 990 Pro advertises sequential read speeds of up to 7.450 MB/s and write speeds of up to 6,900 MB/s, pushing beyond the 980 Pro's already impressive 7,000/5,000 MB/s read/write speeds.

The 990 Pro should also improve upon the 980's random read/write performance by 55 percent, hitting 1,400/1,550K IOPS. Samsung plans to launch the new SSD this October at an MSRP similar to the 980 Pro's – $179 for the 1TB model and $309 for 2TB with heatsink included. A 4TB variant will launch in 2023.

The performance spec listed by Samsung is likely aspirational. TechSpot's tests showed the 980 Pro attaining a read speed of 6,300 MB/s compared to its 7,000 MB/s on-the-box rating. Whatever the 990 Pro's real-world speeds are, Samsung says it will cut gaming load times. If that happens, the performance difference will likely appear in games launching in 2023 and later.

According to tests, recent high-end PC games provide the same experience on SATA and NVMe SSDs. Even PlayStation 5 games are currently passable with a 3,200 MB/s SSD. However, things might change when Microsoft's DirectStorage API debuts on Windows next year with the release of Luminous Productions' Forspoken.

Samsung uses Forspoken as an example, saying the 990 Pro loaded one of the game's maps in roughly one second. Luminous technical director Teppei Ono said SSDs with read speeds over 5,000 MB/s should load some of Forspoken's scenes as fast. However, demonstrations at GDC 2022 showed NVMe load times of just under two seconds compared to nearly four seconds on a SATA SSD and 21 seconds on an HDD.

Those planning to buy or build new PCs later this year are probably waiting on PCIe 5.0 SSDs, which Intel's latest Alder Lake processors and AMD's upcoming Zen 4 CPUs support. This fall's SSDs from companies like Corsair and Apacer promise speeds over 10,000 MB/s.

However, high-performance PCIe 4.0 SSDs like Samsung's 980 or 990 Pro are probably worthwhile for users intending to hold onto PCIe 4.0 systems for the next few years, including the PlayStation 5. The 990 Pro's announcement doesn't mention the PS5, but Samsung pushed the 980 Pro as an ideal PS5 storage option, so it wouldn't be surprising if the company did the same with its latest offering.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/95755-samsung-990-pro-pcie-40-ssd-boasts-up.html

 

[Vulcanproject]

Ehhh I think even with DirectStorage that should improve performance across the board there are diminishing returns for 'cutting game load times.'

It's one thing going from a 500MB/s SATA SSD to a 3500MB/s PCIe one, and then 'only' doubling that performance for a more extreme drive like this.

I have seen the loading time tests between solid mid tier products and high end ones. It is pretty much now whether the game loads in 9 seconds on the cheap SSD or you spend another $100 and it loads in 8 seconds.

 

[hahahanoobs]

"However, demonstrations at GDC 2022 showed NVMe load times of just under two seconds compared to nearly four seconds on a SATA SSD"

lol What?! What is there to be proud of here? I don't get it.

 

[PurpleYoda]

As Linus said about a year ago in one of his videos.. nobody cares! Drives are so fast already that the difference is negligible and honestly hard to spot. It was a different situation when we were swapping our goid old hdd drives for ssds but now waiting 2 sec instead of 3 or 4..? Nobody cares anymore, it is already so fast no one can tell the difference in real world applications. Hardly a newsworthy material.. ;-)

 

[gigantor21]

"However, demonstrations at GDC 2022 showed NVMe load times of just under two seconds compared to nearly four seconds on a SATA SSD"

lol What?! What is there to be proud of here? I don't get it.

Seriously. That only shows the value of keeping your old drive, LOL.

 

[brucek]

Yep, pretty negligible on a game that you load once then play for 3 hours. OTOH there are games that switch zones/maps much more frequently than that, and then there are non-skilled gamers like me who need hundreds of save/load cycles to get through something like a perfect stealth playthrough of Deus Ex. Those are the days I'd shell out for a 2 second wait for a 4 second wait, if it was really true.

Overall though, the long term trend I've noticed is that raw read/write speeds are increasing much more steeply than my subjective perceptions of using the computer for ordinary tasks.

 

[yRaz]

Frankly, the limiting speed is software bloat. It's not just windows, look at the size of drivers these days. It's that everything is so poorly coded that it bogs down the hardware.

 

[3volv3d]

Frankly, the limiting speed is software bloat. It's not just windows, look at the size of drivers these days. It's that everything is so poorly coded that it bogs down the hardware.

Do you remember the days of under 100mb for an Nvidia driver package. Will be 1gb soon.

As for storage Samsung's ssds had the best write life. Petabytes before fail. Isn't that what we care about. How long it lasts before you lose your lord of the rings extended cut with commentary. Nerds

 

[Mr Majestyk]

50% increase in random r/w performance is much better than any sequential headline act figures. 4TB might be on my shopping list next year for my new Zen 4 build. No need for PCI-E 5 unless the new 230+ layer ssd's deliver on the promise to improve random performance. But even if so, why be an early adopter and pay through the nose.

 

[rmcrys]

Frankly, the limiting speed is software bloat. It's not just windows, look at the size of drivers these days. It's that everything is so poorly coded that it bogs down the hardware.

That's the whole point from a manufacturers ' point of view:
- why spend time and money optimizing if the hardware keeps up?

- if we increase the need for more speed, we'll sell more new hardware

NASA for example uses on their satellites very old hardware and even so, it does so much with it: the software optimization is kept at an extreme.

About this SSD: it is useless the gain of speed, if it doesn't come with a big size increase... it is the same as having a Ferrari with a 5L gas tank, it will go 360 km/h but just for some few km, what's the point?

 

[hahahanoobs]

Prices will take even longer to come down for consumers with how fast PCIe and nVME are advancing. I thought I'd be able to buy a solid 1TB nVME drive for less than $100 CAD by now. The 500GB SN750 I have was like $109 CAD.

 

[yRaz]

That's the whole point from a manufacturers ' point of view:
- why spend time and money optimizing if the hardware keeps up?

- if we increase the need for more speed, we'll sell more new hardware

NASA for example uses on their satellites very old hardware and even so, it does so much with it: the software optimization is kept at an extreme.

About this SSD: it is useless the gain of speed, if it doesn't come with a big size increase... it is the same as having a Ferrari with a 5L gas tank, it will go 360 km/h but just for some few km, what's the point?

the hardware hasn't been able to make up for bade code for the last 10 years, probably longer

 

[rmcrys]

the hardware hasn't been able to make up for bade code for the last 10 years, probably longer

Do a midrange CPU, gpu and ssd in 2022 give you less performance than the same midrange 10 years ago? No. So the hardware advances faster than software.

 

[yRaz]

Do a midrange CPU, gpu and ssd in 2022 give you less performance than the same midrange 10 years ago? No. So the hardware advances faster than software.

Windows xp boots faster on 20 year old hardware than windows 10 on a 13900k. Advancement in hardware creates lazy developers

 

[TheBigT42]

Don't get me wrong I love Samsung SSDs. Unfortunately they are just playing catchup in the NVME area.

My 1 year old Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB is $50 dollars less and delivers the same if not faster Read Write performance. Read 7300 MBps / Write 6900 MBps.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Don't get me wrong I love Samsung SSDs. Unfortunately they are just playing catchup in the NVME area.

My 1 year old Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB is $50 dollars less and delivers the same if not faster Read Write performance. Read 7300 MBps / Write 6900 MBps.

But it's a Seagate.

 

[TheBigT42]

But it's a Seagate.

I know
It is the First Seagate product I purchased since my 500MB IDE Drive in the 90s.

 

[rmcrys]

Windows xp boots faster on 20 year old hardware than windows 10 on a 13900k. Advancement in hardware creates lazy developers

I don't know what hardware you compare, but my SP8 with an 11th Gen i5 and my Asus laptop with an 8th gen i5, both 8 GB RAM and nvme SSDs boot almost immediately, the UEFI (brand) logo takes longer than the boot process (1.5-2.0 seconds). Your XP with an HDD is as fast? Doubt it...

 

[rmcrys]

Don't get me wrong I love Samsung SSDs. Unfortunately they are just playing catchup in the NVME area.

My 1 year old Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB is $50 dollars less and delivers the same if not faster Read Write performance. Read 7300 MBps / Write 6900 MBps.

Seagate wants to get a name on SSDs so they are aggressive with pricing. Samsung is well known, they can afford to keep the prices high, no-one will question that.

For me no crucial, they sent worldwide units to review from my SSD (before I bought it) and they were praised, then the commercial units had lower quality flash and controller, they even changed the datasheet after they sent the first units and noticed that people complained. I noticed outside my 30 day return windows, showed crucial the original datasheet and they just answered "your unit corresponds to the updated datasheet" and didn't care.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Seagate wants to get a name on SSDs so they are aggressive with pricing. Samsung is well known, they can afford to keep the prices high, no-one will question that.

For me no crucial, they sent worldwide units to review from my SSD (before I bought it) and they were praised, then the commercial units had lower quality flash and controller, they even changed the datasheet after they sent the first units and noticed that people complained. I noticed outside my 30 day return windows, showed crucial the original datasheet and they just answered "your unit corresponds to the updated datasheet" and didn't care.

Dunno about your country's laws but that would be smacked by consumer protection laws in Australia.

 

[rmcrys]

Dunno about your country's laws but that would be smacked by consumer protection laws in Australia.

In my country CPL also protects against it but:

1) crucial may argue that review samples and old internet specs were changed on commercial units, with which the website was also updated (even at a later time point).
2) difficult to prove that, that was done with bad intentions
3) on my country, if there is no joined lawsuit with several dozens or hundreds of affected persons, the government doesn't give a c..p. Then you have to pay A LOT to a private lawyer against a... big company. The chances you win are almost zero and the amount of money involved on the SSD makes it dumb to sue that company. It would help all consumers worldwide, but I'm not so rich and have free time for such tasks...

So for that matter I prefer to make the fact known so that I and many others just avoid buying from the brand, it is much more effective than to get my money back.