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PCI Express M.2 NVMe SSDs have revolutionized the data storage industry. Within a few years of their introduction, read and write performance has dramatically improved, even the console world has adjusted to the standard with PS5 and Xbox Series X , and has done so even before a mass diffusion of this technology on PC. . Today, many gamers still focus on SATA SSDs, a downward choice in performance but obligatory for many, given the decidedly more accessible cost, at least in the larger cuts. smarttechnofy
Unfortunately, the SATA interface is an insurmountable limit
that does not allow you to go up with performance, which is why those who want
maximum speed must go to the NVMe SSDs with PCI Express standard, which have
already been able to count on the 4.0 revision of this standard for some time.
Thanks to it the speed increases enormously, but if you want even more you have
to focus on models like the Samsung 980 Pro , the currently fastest consumer
SSD on the market.
At maximum speed
The sales pack of the Samsung 980 Pro is very basic and
includes only the SSD, along with the classic instruction manual. In the past
we had seen bundles with disk management software, or, at least in the
competition, the inclusion in the box of a heatsink for cooling, but it must be
said that motherboards with support to the PCIe 4.0 standard are well supplied
on the front. dissipation, as they are normally medium-high range products.
There are no differences in appearance compared to similar products, what
changes are the memories and the electronics present on the PCB.
Samsung 980 Pro is available in denominations of 250 and 500
GB, or 1 or 2 TB (the 2 TB variant has not yet arrived on the market). All
models are based on PCIe 4.0 x4 standard, use Samsung 128L 3D TLC memories and
a Samsung Elpis memory controller made at 8 nm .
Being a high-end SSD we find a buffer of LPDDR4 RAM, of 512
MB for the 250 and 500 GB cuts, which rises to 1 GB for the 1 TB one and 2 GB
for the 2 TB top of the range. Obviously there is also an SLC cache, which in
the 1 TB model we tested varies from 6 to 114 GB. The specifications, again for
our 1 TB test sample, indicate a sequential read speed of 7000 MB / s, while in
writing it reaches 5000 MB / s .
These are quite impressive numbers, especially when you
consider that these claimed speeds are achieved without data compression . When
technologies such as NVIDIA's RTX I / O , based on Microsoft's DirectStorage
APIs, are used on a large scale on PCs, the pairing of a GPU and a PCIe 4.0 SSD
like this will lead to even faster read speeds for you to discover, at least in
the gaming field.
For now we cannot yet test this functionality, the data we
obtained with CrystalDiskMark and ATTO Benchmark however already show a very
good sequential reading speed today, which with our test configuration,
consisting of a Ryzen 5900X processorand from the ROG Maximus Hero VIII
motherboard, it reached 6390 MB / s in sequential reading, the highest value we
have ever encountered , but which does not reach the one declared by Samsung.
Unfortunately reaching the declared speed peak is not at all
easy, because the read-write speed varies according to the type of data read,
or the benchmark used , there are many factors that affect performance. In
sequential writing our peak was 4964 MB / s, but even here a lot depends on the
type of load to which the disk is subjected, they are not always reached, as
happens in all SSDs.
Based on our test then we can say that Samsung has created
the fastest consumer SSD we have tested so far, but as always when it comes to
SSD the peak speed should not be confused with that obtainable in daily use,
which can also vary. a lot based on the workload required.