Samsung Targets Gamers With 3 Extremely Fast 990 Pro NVMe SSDs

Depending on the price, maybe. None of these higher class gen 4 drives are massively far apart from each other in terms of performance, even a few hundred MB/s in sequential read/write isn't going to be noticeable at all, the rest of the specs are aligned with the competition, so go by what is priced better rather than articles that state "fastest drive on the market", because that metric is not relevant
:p

In games and day to day use, even gen 3 drives won't feel any different.
 
Last edited:
Capitano said:
i heard the reliability of samsung ssd's as of late are quite terrible which is putting me off from using them for my future upgrade. Is sabrent the best alternative?
Click to expand...
I think, and don't quote me on this, they're still in the top 3 for reliability and performance it's just that recent events have probably drop them down from first or second place to second or third.

As mrk says though WRT top end drives you're in the territory of splitting hairs that you probably wouldn't notice outside of benchmarks.

e: Personally I'd say 4k read/write IOPS at single queue depths are the most important metrics for an OS drive, that and latency. Transfer speeds are pretty pointless as you'll typically be bottlenecked by your slower drives, unless you're transferring from two drive to one or working on datasets that are too big to fit in RAM.
 
Last edited:
Murphy said:
I think, and don't quote me on this, they're still in the top 3 for reliability and performance it's just that recent events have probably drop them down from first or second place to second or third.

As mrk says though WRT top end drives you're in the territory of splitting hairs that you probably wouldn't notice outside of benchmarks.

e: Personally I'd say 4k read/write IOPS at single queue depths are the most important metrics for an OS drive, that and latency. Transfer speeds are pretty pointless as you'll typically be bottlenecked by your slower drives, unless you're transferring from two drive to one or working on datasets that are too big to fit in RAM.
Click to expand...

Thats true thank you. In all fairness I think any drive that uses the new phison controller and youre probably fine
 
IMO until the random 4k r/w has increased in a generational leap kind of way, there's little point spending big money on top end SSDs, because until that happens, it's all diminishing returns and as mentioned, outside of benchmark scores, you're never going to see a difference where it matters most, gaming and OS/app performance. Seems manufacturers are so fixed on those big sequential numbers that they forgot to also bump up the random reads and writes.

As a means of evidence, look at any video doing side by side comparison of gen 3, gen 4 and gen 5 loading the latest games, they are all within seconds apart of each other, in some games not even 1 second between them, with the worst case scenario I saw being up to 6 seconds on specific games.
 
Last edited:
mrk said:
Seems manufacturers are so fixed on those big sequential numbers that they forgot to also bump up the random reads and writes.
Click to expand...

It's not that they forget, it's that they pick the lowest hanging fruit. The low, small queue depth 4k performance of Nvme drives is caused by the type of flash memory used in these drives and all the brands are all using the same type of memory (it's called NAND flash). To increase gaming performance requires inventing a new type of flash memory for this purpose.

The reason why Intel's old Optane drives were 6 times faster in the 4k performance compared to Nvme drives is because they did not use NAND flash memory chips, they used a type of memory called XPoint and XPoint runs at low latencies that NAND flash memory can only dream of.

Basically you can forget about 4k random read/writes getting faster until we replace these cheap NAND drives that have flooded the market with a new storage technology that's focused on lower latency and right now there is no incentive for the likes of Samsung to switch away from NAND because NAND is cheap
 
Last edited:
I think developers now actually making use of SSD bandwidth and low latency in general will means 4K is given even less priority going forwards by SSD makers. Take the latest games that have come out in the past year or even beyond. Dead Space, Res Evil 4, Cyberpunk, etc, these all load very very quickly, if not instantly, none of them use Direct Storage, but simply leverage the instant latency of a PCIe SSD. Dead Space is a prime example, no load times at all, click load game from the main menu and it's loaded the moment you let go of the mouse button, there are no further loading screens in the entire game.

So with gaming desirables, 4K random is done for, as it's not needed it would seem, and where it might have been before, DirectStorage will take over for streaming in large world assets in realtime in future games.

Where I think things will be pushed however is by Microsoft. Tech blogs and other posts have hinted at Microsoft wanting Windows to finally be up to speed with other applications/games that leverage current SSD tech. There's no reason the OS itself could not utilise Direct Storage in some way to have an instant cold-boot without using any fast boot hybrid system like Windows currently can use if enabled by a user. But having a system like DS employed right at the UEFI level means boot times that are currently 20 seconds (accounting for UEFI POST) could, or should, be mere seconds to get to a fully loaded desktop.
 
Last edited:
Is there a recommended NVME driver for the Samsung 990 Pro? I know the Samsung driver doesn't support the 990 Pro, but I feel as though my old EVO Plus performs a bit quicker in benchmarks.

For my Intel i5 7th gen system, Snappy Driver Installer Origin is suggesting that I install an updated drive - however it is named AMD-RAID Bottom Device, which doesn't sound quite right when my system is Intel based. I'll stick with the stock Microsoft NVME driver for now until I find a solution.
 
There is no newer driver, and one isn't needed for optimum performance either as the Windows one does the same job. Samsung's own driver just adds support for additional diagnostic features in the Samsung Magician app on drives that support their now old driver.

I've done all the testing with my 970 Evo Plus between MS and Samsung drivers and there's zero difference to performance.
 
mrk said:
There is no newer driver, and one isn't needed for optimum performance either as the Windows one does the same job. Samsung's own driver just adds support for additional diagnostic features in the Samsung Magician app on drives that support their now old driver.

I've done all the testing with my 970 Evo Plus between MS and Samsung drivers and there's zero difference to performance.
Click to expand...
I'll show you my findings tomorrow, but I am finding the 990 Pro slower in some benchmarks. Perhaps I need a motherboard with gen4 M.2 slots to unlock the full potential.
 
If you've only got gen 3 then the drives are only going to perform at gen 3 read/write, so typically 3500MB/s read and write is where it maxes out. You won't always get sustained results on each drive or run either, it all comes down to a number of variables, even on gen 4 drive comparisons. If it's just a few hundred MB/s difference, then that's the norm. It's not something you will see in actual difference in real world use, whether gaming or otherwise.

A drive in gen 3 mode will feel just as quick as gen 4 in day to day use as no game or app leverages the full bandwidth of even gen 3 at 3500MB/s, let alone gen 4 or above. Only benchmark tools is where you will see those differences, but they are meaningless for actual real world usage.
 
Last edited:
mrk said:
If you've only got gen 3 then the drives are only going to perform at gen 3 read/write, so typically 3500MB/s read and write is where it maxes out. You won't always get sustained results on each drive or run either, it all comes down to a number of variables, even on gen 4 drive comparisons. If it's just a few hundred MB/s difference, then that's the norm. It's not something you will see in actual difference in real world use, whether gaming or otherwise.

A drive in gen 3 mode will feel just as quick as gen 4 in day to day use as no game or app leverages the full bandwidth of even gen 3 at 3500MB/s, let alone gen 4 or above. Only benchmark tools is where you will see those differences, but they are meaningless for actual real world usage.
Click to expand...
I agree with what you're saying and the 990 Pro is still faster on sequential reads and writes. The number of IOPS on the 990 Pro seems slower though.

As you say, it's not likely I'll see a real world difference. But I just picked on this when doing the benchmarks, more as a diagnostic. This then made me wonder if my CPU or motherboard was holding the IOPS back - the transfer speed I naturally expected to be around ~3500MB/s.
 
Could well be the board/CPU since it's a 7th gen system - The CPU reliance to maintain high IOPS etc. Either way if the difference is only small in even IOPS, then you won't notice those differences in use so can casually upgrade board/CPU as time goes on.
 
^JP^ said:
Anyone updated their firmware recently? How's it going?
Click to expand...
After over a month of using my 2TB 990 Pro, my drive is absolutely fine and it's health remains at 100%. It came with the 3B2QJXD7 firmware, which I assume is the latest, as there's been no further updates offered to me.
 
Last edited:
darael said:
After over a month of using my 2TB 990 Pro, my drive is absolutely fine and it's health remains at 100%. It came with the 3B2QJXD7 firmware, which I assume is the latest, as there's been no further updates offered to me.
Click to expand...

I just got one too, without a Windoes PC with a mobo with internal SSD slot (I do have a Mac with Windows installed on it), not sure how i can update the firmware, can it be checked or done via the Samsung software?

But if it comes with the latest firmware from factory, it should be just forget and go from the start?

Production date on the box is "2023 05 16"

So I guess it has to have the latest firmware bearing in mind the firmware came out in March.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom