Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD

[Newtun]

Review at Anandtech.

Review at storagereview.com.

I like to pronounce NVMe as Envy Me; how about you?
But oh, darn, I just realized that I should have posted this in the Computers/News subforum.

 

[Chewy509]

That SR review? When did they become worse that Toms Hardware?

Seriously bench marking a storage device through Hyper-V, and not clarifying if the guest OS had direct/sole access to the device? The SQL transactions per second look like RAM/CPU limited and not storage limited... The WD Blue SSD gets 3109 TPS, and the 980 Pro gets 3160 TPS, the Intel Optane (which is a ideal for SQL Server) doesn't even get a mention? All devices are with ~3% of each other?

And those graphs? Backward lines with some looking like a preschooler drew them? (What did I miss on how to interpret them)?

Oh, is the 980 Pro is TLC or MLC... On Samsungs own spec sheet:

Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 SSD | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Samsung 980 PRO delivers the best performance in heavily loaded environments such as gaming and graphics with the PCIe 4.0 speeds. Available from 250GB to 2TB.

www.samsung.com

It mentions 3-bit MLC. I was under the impression that 3-bit = TLC unless Samsung are trying to redefine what MLC (which IIRC is 2-bits per cell) is.

Anand's review says TLC, SR mentions MLC ? Surely people how solely review storage would have picked that up and mentioned it in their review?

 

[Newtun]

Sorry, my memory is bad and I don't recall the details, but SR used to have it's own forum, which had problems, so this one was created and SR forum members transferred to it. Here's a link to an early thread of this forum, from January, 2002.

 

[Chewy509]

No need to apologise, I myself was at one time one was a member of the SR forums, and migrated to here a few years before Eugene sold it... (the quality of posters was steadily dropping, and saw a post mentioning here that the 'old timers' were migrating to).

IIRC, the migration occurred as SRs forum's DB was lost with no/little backup...

Here is a story to verify: https://techreport.com/news/3295/storagereview-com-closing-up-shop/?post=232503

 

[Adcadet]

I talked with the folks at SR immediately after the DB crash. No real backup due to user error. Lessons learned!

 

[time]

It mentions 3-bit MLC. I was under the impression that 3-bit = TLC unless Samsung are trying to redefine what MLC (which IIRC is 2-bits per cell) is.

Samsung is probably trying to distract you from the fact that their 'non-Pro' products are actually using QLC NAND (4 bits per cell, or 16 levels!). By labeling everything as MLC, the vast majority of their customers won't realize that they're buying crap. And maybe they have plans for 5 bits per cell (32 levels)? Disposable storage anyone?

 

[Handruin]

Samsung is probably trying to distract you from the fact that their 'non-Pro' products are actually using QLC NAND (4 bits per cell, or 16 levels!). By labeling everything as MLC, the vast majority of their customers won't realize that they're buying crap. And maybe they have plans for 5 bits per cell (32 levels)? Disposable storage anyone?

I just got a non-pro Samsung 860 EVO 2TB and it comes with 3bit MLC. It does seem like they're re-branding MLC though. I'd of called that TLC NAND.

 

[time]

Sorry, I thought Samsung had switched the EVO line to QLC (4-bit MLC), but they are still labeling those drives as QVO models.

I mean, the 870 is only available with 4-bit (but it's still called QVO).

 

[Chewy509]

I went and tried to find out when Samsung switched from SLC to MLC to TLC and QLC on their products and even some of the product datasheets don't list the technology of bit cell count. Listing just Samsung V NAND as the technology doesn't tell me much, since there is 2bit, 3bit and 4bit variants.

Reading from reviews and even this wasn't clear in some circumstances, but:

1. 2bit MLC = 830 Evo, 840 Evo
2. 3bit TLC = 850 Evo, 860 Evo
3. 4bit QLC = 870 Evo

PS. Feel free to correct the above, sources were often contradictory.

 

[Mercutio]

My understanding is that the Samsung 860 Pros were the last 2-bit MLC Pro-line drives in an easily obtained mainstream drive. Those are drives that can still be purchased new and are reasonably affordable, so they're my go-to for the moment. I know we're all excited about NVMe stuff but I've seen what happens when low write endurance drives get put in systems with active databases on them and those are not two great tastes that taste great together. There's really nothing I deal with that needs the 3000MB/s of write speeds of high end NVMe but almost everything I deal with will choke and die on laughably small QLC write endurance.

 

[time]

Good to know, thanks.

Samsung also says that the NVMe 970 Pro is 2-bit MLC, but that's limited to 1TB rather than 4TB.

 

[sedrosken]

Hm. I wonder what my EX920 is. Probably 4-bit, seeing how it was only fifty bucks or so for 256GB and a DRAM cache...

 

[Handruin]

No those are 3D TLC NAND.

 

[LunarMist]

I went and tried to find out when Samsung switched from SLC to MLC to TLC and QLC on their products and even some of the product datasheets don't list the technology of bit cell count. Listing just Samsung V NAND as the technology doesn't tell me much, since there is 2bit, 3bit and 4bit variants.

Reading from reviews and even this wasn't clear in some circumstances, but:

1. 2bit MLC = 830 Evo, 840 Evo
2. 3bit TLC = 850 Evo, 860 Evo
3. 4bit QLC = 870 Evo

PS. Feel free to correct the above, sources were often contradictory.

Per the Samsung spec sheets 870 EVO uses Samsung V-NAND 3bit MLC and 870 QVO uses Samsung 4bit MLC V-NAND.