Today Samsung revealed the new iteration of their well known and top performing PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD lineup, with the 970 series continuing to claim top performance once again. As with the 960 lineup, the new sticks of awesome come in a PRO and EVO variant, once again differentiating in 2-bit and 3-bit MLC flash memory. This results in slightly better theoretical performance for the PRO, although reviews stressing these drives to their limits often reveals more than those single digit percentages say. The larger difference is in double the write endurance for the PRO vs the EVO model, making 1.2 PB (that’s 1,200 TB) written the minimum expected lifetime the drive is rated at.
Performance wise, the improvements are made on sequential write speeds and random performance. The sequential read and write speeds of respectively 3,500MB/sec and 2,700MB/sec for the 1TB PRO model and 3,500MB/sec and 2,500MB/sec for the 2TB EVO model. The PRO has the random performance rated at 500K read and 500K write IOPS, while the EVO has a slightly lower 480K write IOPS for expectedly the top 2TB model.
For comparison, the outgoing 1TB 960 PRO clocked in at 3,500MB/sec sequential read and 440K IOPS random read, along with 2,100MB/sec sequential write and 360K IOPS random write performance. The 1TB EVO was limited to 3,200MB/sec sequential read and 380K IOPS random read, along with 1,900MB/sec sequential write and 360K IOPS random write.
Support for NVMe 1.3 is included, while the 960 series was limited to NVMe 1.2. What exactly has changed is explained in detail at Anandtech.
Another change from the previous lineup is that the EVO range now also has 5 year warranty with its bigger brother the 970 PRO, instead of 3 years. These are sized at the 2280 standard, meaning 22mm wide and 80mm long, as most M.2 SSDs released on the consumer market.
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