Samsung today announced its newest generation of midgrade consumer SSD --- the 980 NVMe SSD. It is a follow-up to the 970 Evo but without that 'Evo' suffix for branding purposes.
DRAM-less designs are generally taken to have slower speeds for fast access to data.
Samsung’s 980, however, is said to use Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology, which links the drive directly to the host processor’s DRAM to overcome any performance drawbacks.
This technology, coupled with the company’s latest sixth-generation V-NAND as well as optimized controller and firmware, "enables the 980 to provide NVMe performance with six times the speed of SATA SSDs," Samsung said.
The 980 SSD offers sequential read and write speeds up to 3,500 and 3,000 megabytes per second, respectively.
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980 SSD ideal for everyday users as well as gamers
“Through both hardware and software innovations, our new 980 SSD brings greater value without compromising the high-end NVMe performance,” said KyuYoung Lee, vice president of Memory Brand Product Biz team at Samsung Electronics.
“The 980 offers an excellent blend of speed, power efficiency and reliability, making it suitable for everyday PC users and gamers as well as content creators,” he added.
For users working with extremely large files or running graphics-heavy games, the new ‘Full Power Mode’ added to Samsung’s Magician 6.3 software allows the drive to continuously run at peak performance for uninterrupted work and play.
980 SSD is 56% more efficient than the previous version
Samsung claimed that its upgraded Intelligent TurboWrite 2.0 solution also provides improved performance by allocating a much larger buffer storage area inside the drive.
The newest SSD boasts of improved power efficiency of up to 56% in comparison to the previous 970 EVO, the company said.
Samsung added users can enjoy stable and reliable performance even during prolonged use thanks to the 'Dynamic Thermal Guard' technology, nickel-coated controller and heat spreader label solutions.
The latest consumer SSD will be available in three models — 250GB, 500GB and 1TB — and will be launched in about 40 countries.
