Samsung Releases 970 PRO and EVO SSDs

rgMekanic

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Samsung has announced today the 970 PRO and EVO solid state drives. The new M.2 drives are using the latest V-NAND technology and an all new Phoenix controller to give speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s read and 2,700 MB/s write, which is nearly 30% faster sequential writes than the 960 series, as well as boasting a 5 year or 1,200TBW warranty.

The 970 EVO will be available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities, and the 970 PRO in 512GB and 1TB starting May 7th. The release is a little confusing on price stating that the MSRP will be $329.99 and $119.99 USD, which we can only assume is the pricing for the 512GB PRO and the 250GB EVO.

Incredible performance, and the MSRP isn't too bad at all. Surprising that they aren't launching a 2.5" version of the 970s and going strictly M.2 so far. You can check out the full press release here.

"Samsung has led the NVMe SSD industry since its inception, and the company continues to define the latest standards of consumer storage with unprecedented performance of the 970 PRO and EVO SSDs," said Un-Soo Kim, senior vice president of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. "The 970 series sets a new bar in all aspects for the NVMe SSD market with groundbreaking performance, superior reliability and best-in-class capacity."
 
I love Samsung SSDs, but (to me) they seem to have turned their disparity between the Evo and Pro lines into nothing more than a cash grab sham.

When the 850 series was out, they tacked on a generous 10 year warranty to the Pro, so the higher price was easier to justify for those wanting longevity of coverage.

With the 960, and now 970, you get a very slight speed increase (which would never be discerned for 99.99% of computing usage) and 3-5 years of warranty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's the TBW, but they are both excruciatingly stout, despite the Pro touting double the endurance of the Evo.
 
They need to make the pro more attractive in some way if they expect any real sales. As it stands the pro gets sandwiched between things like the optane and TLC drives in a pretty unflattering way.

Either you really need speed / endurance (get an optane), or you do not (get TLC and save a lot of money). Something like a 10 year warranty would help, but without that, it's going to be a tough sell I think.
 
Are there any MBs out there with more than just 2 M.2 drivers? Most seem to barely include 1, and I'd prefer multiple of these.
 
If they put it in a 2.5" form factor, what interface would they use? SATA3 is too slow already...
 
Are there any MBs out there with more than just 2 M.2 drivers? Most seem to barely include 1, and I'd prefer multiple of these.

Yes, but you have to usually step up to an X series (Intel) or TR (AMD) platform to get them.
 
Are there any MBs out there with more than just 2 M.2 drivers? Most seem to barely include 1, and I'd prefer multiple of these.


Most/barely? While I haven't looked at mobos in a while, everything I've seen down to budget boards have at least one m.2 NVMe slot.

But, you always have the option of using an adapter card.
 
$329 for the 512gb? yeah fking right. lol. I guess they are not interested in selling many of these.

You can get a 480gb to 512gb drive now from $89 dollars to $119 from most vendors. Sure they are only 500/500 read and right but you're only talking less than a second in speed difference read wise.

I have a 1tb 960 Pro NVMe and love it but I can sure as hell live with something a lot cheaper if I had to.
 
Now if we could get Intel to allow VROC using these instead of Intel drives only!!!!!!
 
I'm still rocking my 950 Pro (512) and it's been more than good to me. The one issue I had with it, Samsung UPS-red early morning delivered me a replacement for free. It had the kind of tracking number where I could see the UPS truck's location updating every 60 seconds or so.

3500 megs/sec is amazing, but even I don't utilize the 2500 megs/sec mine currently does :)
 
I love Samsung SSDs, but (to me) they seem to have turned their disparity between the Evo and Pro lines into nothing more than a cash grab sham.

When the 850 series was out, they tacked on a generous 10 year warranty to the Pro, so the higher price was easier to justify for those wanting longevity of coverage.

With the 960, and now 970, you get a very slight speed increase (which would never be discerned for 99.99% of computing usage) and 3-5 years of warranty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's the TBW, but they are both excruciatingly stout, despite the Pro touting double the endurance of the Evo.
But that's just it. Samsung is doing something pretty cool, which is to acknowledge that hey, for the VAST majority of folks, the Evo is perfect. The PRO probably didn't sell well enough to give it more 'stand-out' features, along with the fact that other SSD manufacturers are catching up. Samsung needs to boost the EVO line more than before, so this makes sense.

The folks who need a PRO for their reasons are few, and they'll pay as usual.

Disclaimer: I have a 840 PRO and a 960 PRO because I like the durability and plan on keeping them both for a LONG time. But I do get what Samsung is doing and I think it makes perfect sense.
 
I have an old 840 EVO and it's still running like a champ. I just dump some games from Steam on it these days. For me, I can't imagine paying extra for the PRO when the EVO is so damn good.

I also have an ancient Corsair X128 Extreme from like... 2009?? I think... and it's still running like a champ in my daughter's computer.
 
I bought a 250GB 850 EVO right as the 860 EVO was coming out. Prob not a big deal.
 
Good SSD but I stick with unpopular Intel.

I will say, the Intel Optane 760P drive is very impressive, in comparison to the 960 Evo.

If it was available back in February when I was ordering parts, I probably would have gone with the 760P instead of the 960 Evo.

But as I said above, its not like these new offerings make the existing drives any slower.
 
Are there any MBs out there with more than just 2 M.2 drivers? Most seem to barely include 1, and I'd prefer multiple of these.
There are, but only in the very pricey and feature rich "gamer" boards. When they were getting popular early last year NVME RAID options were mostly broken in firmware, so it didn't do anyone any good until late last year. The cheapest 2x NVME M.2 options are around $150. 3x are more like $250. 4x options are limited to PCI-E expansion cards (due to the way NVME uses up bus lines and limitations on pre X299 chipsets), but the cards are a pain in the ass. NVME M.2 PCI-E x16 cards somewhat rare, way too expensive, and you need a very specific chipset to run it, and a SAS dongle to unlock the functionality.

Also keep in mind that most PCI M.2 adapters will NOT support NVME, so you still need to have a board with just the one NVME slot to take advantage of any quick booting options.

Currently I use just the one NVME, but since I don't trust its longevity (in spite of the warranty), I have a mirrored SSD just waiting for shit to go down. If I really needed lots of high performance storage, I would go with a non-NVME PCI card and skip the hassle, and still get better than SSD performance at a tiny fraction of the price.

Edit: I forgot to mention the important part: the intel, 4x NVME M.2 PCI-E X16 expansion cards only work with intel brand NVME sticks... lol.
 
Yes, S/M patches & firmware wreak havoc on storage performance. Don’t be surprised when you’re shiny new high dollar *whatever* doesn’t look like some reviewer’s results.
A few good sites are planning a retesting a lot of the mainstream drives post-patch.
 
I love Samsung SSDs, but (to me) they seem to have turned their disparity between the Evo and Pro lines into nothing more than a cash grab sham.

When the 850 series was out, they tacked on a generous 10 year warranty to the Pro, so the higher price was easier to justify for those wanting longevity of coverage.

With the 960, and now 970, you get a very slight speed increase (which would never be discerned for 99.99% of computing usage) and 3-5 years of warranty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's the TBW, but they are both excruciatingly stout, despite the Pro touting double the endurance of the Evo.
It's disappointing, sure, but I'd still take a MLC drive over a TLC drive.
 
I got the 480GB optane 900p and the only thing I wish was that it was bigger....so I kept my 750 series 1.2TB as storage drive
 
I will say, the Intel Optane 760P drive is very impressive, in comparison to the 960 Evo.

If it was available back in February when I was ordering parts, I probably would have gone with the 760P instead of the 960 Evo.

But as I said above, its not like these new offerings make the existing drives any slower.


The 760P is not an Optane drive!
 
Can someone explain to me, or give a reason why it's irrelevant, the difference between 2-bit and 3-bit MLC?

Both the PRO and EVO storage memory per the news release indicate MLC, however the PRO has 2-bit MLC and the EVO has 3-bit MLC.

A quick google search over to Wikipedia tells me that 3-bit is TLC, and not MLC, so am confused.
Is this possibly just a marketing error?
Or Samsung trying to slip one by the ignorant masses?
 
I have still yet to be blessed with using a SSD, closest I had was a SSHD. :(
Don't know what I'll do with all that extra time I lose if I ever start using one?
 
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