Samsung have been at the top of the SSD market for a fair while now especially thanks to
the shift to NVME, they've generally been at the top of the market when it comes to
their 950, 960 and 970 Pro drives.
They've always had an EVO version of those drives though where you get a little bit slower
speeds but you get it at a lesser price too.
This is actually the newest version which is the 970 EVO plus.
Now, because of a number of factors including potentially the limitation of just the NVME
and PCIe x4 in terms of the connectivity itself of PCIe x4 is a 32 gigabit per second connection,
so a theoretical maximum speed there would be 4 gigabytes per second but because of other
overheads like we saw with the SATA 3 SSDs where those you know, have a 6 gigabyte per
second connection, so a theoretical maximum there was 750 megabytes per second but the
fastest we ever really saw was about 600.
With these, the theoretical maximum is...
I said four gigabytes but you're likely in a more real world solution going to be seeing
about 3.5 gigabytes per second which is what we're already seeing at least on the reads
anyway and writes tend to be pretty close as well.
Now, because of that and a number of other factors, the 970 EVO plus is aiming more towards
reliability and using a few tricks to eke out the most performance possible from that
connection.
The drive uses the familiar three bit MLC V NAND flash that we've seen from a number
of other drives but it uses a new version of their Phoenix controller.
Each of the drives actually have pretty impressive throughputs that the new controller rose for
3.5 gigabytes per second in reads and at least for the one terabyte version
anyway, it has up to 3.3 gigabytes per second in writes.
I have the 250 gig model here which has a little bit lower, just use its capacity, quoted
writes at 2.3 gigabytes per second but still very impressive.
In terms of the rest of the specs, you also have up to either 512 megabytes or 1 gigabytes
of LPDDR4 for caching, the Phantom Meg is for the 250 and 500 gig models and the 1 gigabyte
cache is for the 1 terabyte one.
And finally, I should also mention that there actually launching a two terabyte version
of this drive in a few months’ time, so if you're interested in a bigger capacities,
then make sure you stick around for that one too.
And as I mentioned, Samsung are really pushing towards the endurance and reliability side
of these drives rather than trying to eke out the most performance possible and they're
doing that with a pretty impressive number here.
So, I think it's the one terabyte drive they're quoting but they're quoting a little bit over
1 petabyte of total lifetime, expected lifetime of the drive which is pretty impressive and
a warranty period of six hundred terabytes written for the one terabyte with my 250 gig
one being only 150 terabytes written but obviously because of its capacity, that's still writing
to the drive literally hundreds and hundreds of times.
They've also improved their intelligent turbo write feature which allows for a fitfully
dynamic allocation of SLC buffer, so normally there's only four gigabytes available on the
250 gig model, but with the intelligent turbo write feature, it can dynamically allocate
up to an extra nine gigabytes of space which in theory is pretty impressive for large file
transfers and especially regular or large file transfers and stuff at that, so obviously
it's also the 13 gigs there.
The one terabyte model actually has a two, so a 42 gig available to it as well.
So that's the spec, let's talk about the performance and the benchmarks.
Now, of course the usual synthetic ones, AS SSD, CrystalDiskMark and ATTO, I would also
mention the AS SSD is almost always a good bit slower than the other two, there's obviously
slightly different tests that they're running but just to keep that in mind when you're
looking at the - the results here.
Now, the - obviously I have the 250 gig model, so this is slower on the writes than, say
the one terabyte one but for my testing, I was looking at the quoted 3.5 gigabytes per
second in reads but actually, generally speaking we're looking at 2.4 gigabytes per second
in writes which is about 100 megabytes higher than the quoted number which is always nice
to see.
Moving on to my more torture test scenario, this one is duplicating the GTA 5 game files
on the drive which really tests the controller in both reads and writes simultaneously.
Now, the interesting thing here is that most drives do fairly well in this and a very good
score for a drive here would be seeing sustained over one gigabyte per second for a substantial
amount of the copy.
This drive did that for the first few gigabytes but after, I guess the SOC buffer ran out,
it slowed right down to about 500 megabytes per second which while not slow is not the
fastest that I’ve seen and even from competitors like the ADATA SX8200, it's - you know, that
drive which in theory should be a bit cheaper than this one when it comes out is actually
a little bit faster in that scenario.
And of course, that's not to say that the drive is slow in any way and if you're using
this for you know, a boot drive with some games on it for you know, your gaming PC or
whatever, then this is a fantastic option.
Pricing is still to be confirmed at the time of filming because I'm filming this before
the product launches, so feel free to check out the link in the description if you want
to check out pricing when and where you watch this for the different models but either way, from what
I understand of the pricing, it should be relatively competitive if maybe a little bit
on the expensive side of things.
And probably you want to use this as a cash drive for a server or whatever else is, I
know that a lot of people do, this may not necessarily be for you.
I would also mention that while the drive itself in my test bench which was an 8700K
where they just add 370 board by the way with a heatsink on it, it did pretty
well at 42 degrees maximum under loads but the heatsink off, you're looking at a lot
closer to the 70 degree thermal limit, so if you are planning on using this especially
for a sustained race, then make sure you do have a heatsink on it as it will thermally
throstle.
So of course, as I said, the conclusion here is that if you're a consumer, you want to
stick this in your workstation, your home PC or a gaming PC, this gets a good recommendation
for me as long as the pricing is reasonable but only more caching side of things, unless
you don't care so much for the crazy high sort of performance but you want the endurance
that this offers, then otherwise it's probably not necessarily the drive for you.
Would I put this in my rig?
I'd be pretty happy to.
As I said, as long as the pricing is reasonable, I'd be very happy to put this in my system
and while I do still use a WD 1 terabyte black drive myself and therefore a bit quicker,
it's still a great Drive, it's still a great form factor that I enjoy using quite a fair
bit, so definitely recommend it.
So as always, if you're interested in picking up the drive, take a look at the link in the
description down below.
That'll take you to your local Amazon store where you can see pricing when and where you
watch this.
You can also check out the other links in the description if you want to support the
channel and keep me making these videos on a Monday Wednesday and Friday basis with live
streams on Thursday nights.
Make sure you're subscribed for more videos there and check out the other videos over
there as well.
The links in the description include Amazon and Overclockers UK affiliate links which
are free for you to use, they no cost you anything but massively help me out and you
can check out the other stuff like patreon where you can support me directly or the other
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support charities too.
That's pretty much it, let me know what you think in the comments down below and if you
have any questions, leave those down there too.
Thanks for watching, I'm gonna see y'all in the next video.