Samsung’s new 980 NVMe SSD costs less to make, so it costs less to buy

Samsung has announced its newest SSD, a follow-up to the 970 Evo called 980. The drive is an NVMe M.2 PCIe 3.0 drive, and is accessible as well. It costs up to $ 129.99 for the 1 TB version and only $ 49.99 for the 250 GB model.

There’s a reason for the low price – it’s Samsung’s first DRAM-free NVMe SSD, a cost-cutting measure that many other storage manufacturers have already ventured with varying degrees of success. The 980 does not have fast dynamic random access memory, normally used to map the contents of an SSD, which would help you to provide your data quickly and efficiently.

However, despite removing the feature, Samsung is promoting impressive performance compared to other DRAM-free options, because this unit takes advantage of the Host Memory Buffer feature in the NVMe specification. In the case of Samsung, it is using up to 64 MB of CPU DRAM via PCIe to compensate for the SSD. The result is not as fast as an SSD with its own DRAM, but the Host Memory Buffer feature helps you perform much better than a model that does not have it – while you get some cost savings. Samsung claims that this SSD can reach speeds up to six times faster than a SATA-based SSD.

Also helping to provide these fast speeds is Samsung’s Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 feature, which multiplies the maximum buffer region allocated within the 980 to up to 160 GB, from just 42 GB on the 970 Evo. This feature simulates the fast single-cell (SLC) performance on the 980, despite the fact that it uses 3-bit multi-layer cell (MLC) memory, and aims to provide sustained performance when transferring large files.

Image: Samsung

Samsung claims that the 1 TB version of the 980 can provide sequential read speeds of 3,500 MB / s and write speeds of 3,000 MB / s, which is almost on par with its fast (and more expensive) 970 Evo Plus SSD , surpassing the upper sequential of the 970 Evo writing speed. However, it is a far cry from Samsung’s 980 Pro, which has sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,000 MB / s and 5,000 MB / s, respectively, when connected to a PCIe 4.0 compatible motherboard.

As usual, there is a sharp drop in performance for smaller capacities: the low-end 250 GB model guarantees up to 2,900 MB / s sequential read speed and 1,300 MB / s sequential write speed, for example. One of the other big highlights here in programming is that, even without DRAM, Samsung claims that the random read and write input and output speeds during intense tasks are similar to the 970 Evo and not far from the 970 Evo Plus.

So even if you omit a component that helps an SSD run quickly, Samsung’s 980 still looks very fast. In case you’re curious, the Samsung test systems that provided these benchmarks run an Intel Core i7-6700K, Ryzen 7 3700X and 8 GB of DDR4 RAM of 2,133 MHz.