Samsung 990 PRO: New NVMe SSD top model reaches the limit of PCIe 4.0 with 7,450 MB/s
[12:13 Sun,28.August 2022 by Thomas Richter]
Samsung has introduced a new high-performance NVMe SSD specifically for gamers and content creation professionals that nearly pushes the maximum speed limit of PCIe 4.0. That&s because the new 990 Pro SSD in M.2-2280 format achieves sequential read speeds of up to 7,450 MB/s and comes very close to PCIe 4.0&s theoretical maximum read speed of 8,000 MB/s.
Thanks to a new controller and new NAND flash storage technology, Samsung&s new top model thus not only surpasses the 6,500 MB/s fast previous model 980 PRO released in fall 2020, but also overtakes the fastest PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD to date, the SK hynix Platinum P41, which "only" achieves around 7,000 MB/s read performance. The improvement compared to the predecessor is even bigger in the area of random 4K transfers - here, the 990 Pro achieves a 55% higher performance with up to 1.4 million IOPS read and 1.55 million IOPS write.
Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD
Samsung&s newly developed controller of the 990 PRO is said to offer up to 50% higher energy efficiency compared to the 980 PRO thanks to its power-saving architecture. For thermal management of the 990 PRO, both the controller and the heatspreader are nickel-plated. With the help of Samsung&s Dynamic Thermal Guard technology, the drive&s temperature is also said to remain at a suitable level to prevent performance fluctuations and enable stable, high performance.
Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD
Time to double bandwidth via PCIe 5.0
. This makes it clear that the time is ripe for PCIe 5.0 SSDs, which will then no longer be slowed down by the limited bandwidth of the PCIe 4.0 4x4 interface. The new PCIe 5.0 generation doubles this upper limit from a theoretical 8 GB/s to 16 GB/s - the actual speed in practice is around 7 (PCIe 4.0) or 14-15 GB/s (PCIe 5.0) due to the overhead. At CES 2022 this spring, the PCIe 5.0 SSDs Samsung PM 1743 and ADATA&s "Project Nighthawk" and "Project Blackbird", which are supposed to achieve a sequential read speed of 13-14 GB/s, could even already be seen, but they are not yet available for purchase. And since these new models are already very close to the limits of PCIe 5.0 at launch, PCIe 6.0 is already in the starting blocks for even more performance.
Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD
The problem with PCIe 5.0
. This is due to the problem that there are no suitable systems with PCI 5.0 yet: although PCIe 5.0 is supported by the new Intel Alder Lake CPUs of the 12th generation including the corresponding chipset, since their M.2 interface is only connected via PCIe 4.0 CIe, ADATS PCIe 5.0 SSDs, for example, only reach their maximum speed if they are directly connected via four PCIe 5.0 lanes using an expansion card via NVMe 2.0 protocol. However, this can of course only be a stopgap solution until there is either a new interface standard or M.2 slots that are directly connected to the PCIe 5.0 lanes of the CPU, which will only be the case in the next CPU generation from Intel and AMD.
The speed doubling with each new PCIe generation.
Faster is better in video editing
. For video editing, at least (especially of higher-resolution formats like 6K and 8K, as well as RAW capture), higher mass storage bandwidths are always good news, as they can avoid potential bottlenecks in the work - whether it&s transferring data to and from an NVMe SSD or using (multiple) GPUs to compute effects.
Price and Availability
The new Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSDs should be available for pre-order in October in two storage variants at a price of around 175 euros for the 1 TB model and around 325 euros for the 2 TB model. The series is to be expanded by another, 4 TB model as well as a version with a heatsink (and RGB lighting) for heat dissipation in 2023.
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