Samsung Targets Gamers With 3 Extremely Fast 990 Pro NVMe SSDs

darael · 2 Aug 2023 at 16:39

Raymond Lin said:
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.

Samsung Magician can tell you if the firmware is the latest. The first thing I did with drive was check the firmware before installing anything on it, but it didn't need updating anyway.

Raymond Lin · 2 Aug 2023 at 18:05

darael said:
Samsung Magician can tell you if the firmware is the latest. The first thing I did with drive was check the firmware before installing anything on it, but it didn't need updating anyway.

What’s the date of manufacture on your box?

I’ve not put any data on it yet but formatted it to Mac.

darael · 2 Aug 2023 at 21:41

Raymond Lin said:
What’s the date of manufacture on your box?

I’ve not put any data on it yet but formatted it to Mac.

My drive was made a day before yours, on 2023/05/15. So I'd say that your drive will almost certainly come with the latest firmware already installed. :cool:

Murphy · 23 Aug 2023 at 23:03

Just noticed you can pick up a 1TB 990 for £75 and the 2TB for £135, both with heatsinks.

Obviously I'm not going to give the name of competitors but they're pretty easy to find.

mrk · 13 Sep 2023 at 00:09

Now that teh dust has settled, I think I will get another one and make sure it's got the latest FW. I do miss Magician in all honesty. Will keep the 8TB Rocket 4 Plus though as my data drive, but the 2TB R4P-G can be replaced by the 990 Pro again. I am suspecting there are some quirks that have developed with the Sabrent too which affects random disk activity even though all benchmarks put it inline with the 990 Pro.

Edit*
I cannot see it for £135 any more sadly but can get it direct from Samsung for £140 2TB heatsink, so will go for that

Grim5 · 13 Sep 2023 at 01:06

Still happy with my sn850x, keep this till a decent gen5 drive comes around, all current ones suck but at here is new Gen 5 controllers coming soon that should increase gen5 drive speed and cut power consumption in half

mrk · 2 Oct 2023 at 02:12

I notice on the Samsung website under firmwares it states:

*990 PRO I 990 PRO with Heatsink will be manufactured using a mixed production between the V7 and V8 process starting September 2023.

Googling it up, related to the gen of the v-nand:

Samsung’s latest V-NAND solution is the V6, with the V7, V8, V9 and Vxx models forecasted for future development. Each subsequent model will feature larger overhead (spare block) capacity to help with remapping. Samsung’s vision for V-NAND includes modifying the host stack to accommodate sequential write for WAF (Write Amplification Factor) reduction, implementing ZNS (Zoned Namespace) and developing capacity-oriented, read-intensive applications.

My 990 pro heatsink version got delayed and is arriving during the day today it seems, I guess mine will be a September manufacture model.

Murphy · 2 Oct 2023 at 07:09

Basically just increasing the layer count of the NAND chips, something Samsung have kind of be dragging their feet on as the likes of Micro and SK have been manufacturing 232/8 layer NAND chips for sometime now.

Cyber-Mav · 2 Oct 2023 at 08:12

standard bait and switch tactic

mrk · 2 Oct 2023 at 09:18

So if I understand that right, the first release of the 990 Pro drives were v-nand 6 and 7th gen, and now as of September, they are producing them in mixed 7 and 8th gen?

Mallers · 2 Oct 2023 at 15:01

Am i right in thinking that the largest size , 4tb, that i see available, is because that's a "hard" limit for the technology and you cant make a higher capacity? Or just that no one has yet?

mrk · 2 Oct 2023 at 15:27

You can get 8TB NVMe drives, I have the Sabrent. for example. Anything larger is out of the realms of cost effectiveness and you only get larger drives in server environments really for now. Samsung don't make an 8TB version of this as it's not cost effective.

Murphy · 2 Oct 2023 at 16:49

Mallers said:
Am i right in thinking that the largest size , 4tb, that i see available, is because that's a "hard" limit for the technology and you cant make a higher capacity? Or just that no one has yet?

Like mrk said 8TB is the current maximum.

Although i think that's more a *limitation of the form-factor than a technology (hardware/hard limit) or cost thing as you can get U.2 NVME's with some pretty mental capacities, +30TB.

*AFAIK the largest NAND chips are 2GB and you can only fit two on each side.

mrk · 2 Oct 2023 at 17:22

Just cloning over now, the heatsink is substantially smaller than the Sabrent one, both sided of course, quite cool actually.

Edit*

Came shipped with the latest FW, and all looks good. The write speed of the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G was a shade faster but the reads on the 990 Pro are faster. The random 4K is the same between both.

darael · 13 Oct 2023 at 00:07

Has anybody seen the Health Status value n CrystalDiskInfo drop for their 990 Pro yet? After writing ~11,118 GB to my 2TB drive, mine has dropped to 99%.

I'm not overly worried, but I wanted to check whether this seemed normal and how much data others had written to their drives before the value dropped.

mrk · 13 Oct 2023 at 08:29

That's about expected. Mine is on 2.3TB written but the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G lost 1% at around 9TB written, then dropped to 98% at around 22TB written for reference.