Samsung launches 980 NVMe, its first SSD drive without DRAM

Samsung announced the new affordable SSD 980 NVMe. Not to be confused with the 980 Pro, the 980 is the company’s first DRAM-free option, which is mainly the reason why it is available at a starting price of just $ 50 for the 250 GB variant and reaches $ 130 for the main 1 TB variant.

DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, is an important part of helping to map the contents of the SSD so that it can access your data quickly and efficiently. By removing the module completely, Samsung was able to reduce the price of the SSD, something that has been tried and tested by many other SSD manufacturers. To make up for the absence of DRAM, Samsung says the 980 comes with a Host Memory Buffer feature. This allows the unit to use a small piece of memory (64 MB) from the CPU via PCIe. While this does not make the drive the fastest on the market, the memory sharing feature helps to perform better than an SSD that has no DRAM. The drive also comes with the newly upgraded Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0, which offers ‘improved sustained performance’ over the old 970 Evo by allocating a much larger buffer storage area within the drive.

Compared to a SATA-based SSD, Samsung claims that the 980 can offer up to six times the speed. Expect the 1 TB version of the 980 to offer sequential read speeds of up to 3,500 MB / s and write speeds of 3,000 MB / s, which is roughly on par with the more expensive 970 Evo Plus and better than the write speed sequential top of the 970 Evo. The lower 250 GB storage model will not be as fast as it offers sequential read speeds of 2,900 MB / s and sequential write of 1,300 MB / s. In short, the new 980 NVMe can be fitted somewhere between the company’s 970 Evo Plus and the 970 Evo, with the highlight that the company has managed to offer respectable speeds despite the absence of DRAM.