The solid-state drive market isn’t quite as intense as some others, but vendors have been doing well to eke as much performance out of their drives as possible, and also continue bringing high-end performance to more palatable price-points. With its newest SSD, Samsung proves that it’s serious about keeping on top, and that drive iterations are the name of the game.
Last year, Samsung launched the top-end 970 PRO, and 970 EVO – the latter of which sacrifices a wee bit of write performance, but is attractive to those trying to save some money and don’t need the “ultimate” offering. Today, Samsung has taken the already high-performing 970 EVO and upgraded to a “Plus” model – a replacement, not an addition.
|
970 EVO PLUS |
970 EVO |
Interface |
PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 |
Form Factor |
M.2 2280 |
Storage Type |
Samsung 96-layer V-NAND 3-bit MLC |
Samsung 64-layer V-NAND 3-bit MLC |
Controller |
Samsung Phoenix |
DRAM |
2GB LPDDR4 (2TB)
1GB LPDDR4 (1TB)
512MB LPDDR4 (250/500GB) |
Capacity |
250GB, 500GB, 1T, 2TB |
Seq. Read/Write |
3.5 / 3.3 GB/s |
3.5 / 2.5 GB/s |
Random Read/Write IOPS |
620K / 560K |
500K / 480K |
Management Software |
Samsung Magician |
Data Encryption |
Class 0 AES256, TCG/Opal 2.0, MS eDrive IEEE1667 |
Total Bytes Written |
1.2 PB (2TB)
600 TB (1TB)
300TB (500GB)
150TB (250GB) |
Warranty |
5-year |
Samsung has kindly provided a specifications table featuring both the 970 EVO and new 970 EVO Plus to fill us in on what’s changed. Ultimately, what’s changed is “not much”, but there are some notable moves, such as a transition from 64- to 96-layer V-NAND. That move retains the peak performance of 3.5GB/s read, but increases the 2.5GB/s write of the EVO to 3.3GB/s on the EVO Plus.
Also notable is that the random QD32 IOPS performance has increased between the two drives, with a 24% boost to 620,000 IOPS seen on the read side, and a 16% increase to 560,000 IOPS for writes. Most other features remain in tact between the two models, including DRAM configurations, encryption options, total bytes written, and also the warranty – which is still five years.
Samsung hasn’t revealed pricing for the entire lineup, but did say the bottom 250GB model would kick things off at $89.99. The company also notes that if you want the 2TB model, you’ll have to wait until April.