Samsung 970 Pro vs 970 Evo Plus

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Gabe

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Some benchmarks are showing the 970 Evo Plus as faster than the 970 Pro:

Is there any reason I'd want to go for the Pro over the Evo Plus?

I am looking at the 500GB drives.
 
Evo plus only has 300TBW, Pro is twice that at 600TBW.

If you need speed buy the evo plus, if you need endurance buy the pro.
 
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Something to note, they have the same 5y warranty, I got the 1tb evo plus (from frys for 192$ with their 20% off coupons they've been giving out).
 
Some probable flaws in the review (they don't appear to have a page up for the 970 Evo Plus to verify, and I'm not sure I'd trust Google Translate anyways):
  • The memory types have changed. The 970 Evo Plus uses 96-layer NAND, the original 970 Evo uses 64-bit.
  • Also, the Evo Plus has upgraded the interface between the NAND and controller. (This probably explains the Evo Plus' better 4k IOPS)
  • None of their tests would seem to consider the Evo line's SLC caching (The Pro lacks SLC cache, as it's not really needed with MLC (2-bit) NAND). Once you overrun that (admittedly, most consumer-level usage never will) and have to write directly to the NAND, performance of either Evo will crash relative to the Pro.
  • I'm 99% certain they installed Samsung's software, and who knows what sorts of trickery (right or wrong) it's performing behind the scenes that make the benchmarks look better.
The moral is: don't get your product info and reviews from YouTube channels that rely on cute accented women (or really, most anyone else) who read from a script.

Anandtech usually has good breakdowns and reviews of SSDs:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12674/samsung-announces-970-pro-and-970-evo-nvme-ssds
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13761/the-samsung-970-evo-plus-ssd-review

Though not always as thorough at breaking down specs, Tech Report also is very good at doing real-world testing.
 
I have an 860evo, 960 pro (500gb), a 970 pro (500gb) and a 970 evo plus (1tb) in the same system. I'm currently using the 970pro as the os drive (replaced the 960) and the 970 evo+ for my games. For a regular gaming/web browsing/media pc there was little to no noticeable difference between them. Ive had games (like ac odyssey) installed on both 970s (and on the 960) with load time seeming the same (I didn't use a stopwatch or anything.) One difference between the 960 and 970's is the temperature on the controller, with the 960 being about 9 degrees hotter at its max (in my system.) The 970s temps are about the same +/- a degree or two.

The only time I did notice a difference was when I used my dash cam app. Moving the timeline back and forth or playback of 1080p video with overlays, the 960 pro sometimes jumped frames; no such issues with either 970s. This pc is also used sometimes for photoshop/video editing and I'm told that saving and loading large files (measured in gigs) is faster/smoother or at least seems that way on both 970s but probably not by much if actually timed. I do sometimes transfer 1-2gig files to/from the drives and then to my HDDs but again, without timing it I can't really notice any difference in speed.

My 960 was a bit over a year old when it was replaced with a 970 and it showed as 98% life remaining (so about 2% use as an os drive in a pc on 24/7.) Unless my day job was editing large video files all day, or I had to transfer large multi gig files all day, I would save the cash and go with the 970 evo+.
 
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