Samsung 9100 Pro SSD: The successor to the 990 Pro goes to the limit of PCIe 5.0 79 comments
It’s taken a while, but now Samsung is introducing its first full PCIe 5.0 SSD with four lanes to consumers. The Samsung 9100 Pro doubles the throughput of the previous flagship 990 Pro to almost 15 GB/s.
Doubles in performance, increases efficiency
Compared to the Samsung 990 Pro (test), PCIe 4.0 x4 is changed to PCIe 5.0 x4. This allows almost completely high throughput to be achieved, which the 9100 Pro almost achieves with up to 14,800 MB / s. It also moves directly to the practical limit of PCIe 5.0. The maximum write rate increases to 13,400 MB/s. The maximum IOPS from former 1.6 million PIO now increases increasingly to 2.6 million IOPS when writing.
In principle, Samsung has been offering SSDs to consumers with PCI Express 5.0 for a year, but the 990 EVO (test) and 990 EVO Plus (test) only offer this standard on a maximum of two lanes.
9100 Pro (4TB) 990 Pro (4TB) SEQ. Read/Write 14,800/13: 400 MB/s 7,450/6,900 MB Watt
However, power consumption also increases a bit. The Samsung 9100 Pro with 4TB should need around 2.5 watts more than its predecessor. However, as performance doubles, efficiency increases significantly. Energy efficiency increases by 43% and writing by 35%. In the 2 TB model, the efficiency advantage should even reach 49% according to Samsung.
A new 5nm controller
As usual, Samsung is in charge of its own house. This is now codenamed Preston, while Pascal is still on the 990 Pro. A significant difference is the finer manufacturing process, which should also be decisive for the increase in efficiency. Preston is manufactured in 5 nm, Pascal still in 8 nm.
Samsung 9100 Pro (Image: Samsung) Image 1 of 4
V-Nand V8
It also becomes more modern for memory. The fleeting DRAM cache type LPDDR4 is now replaced by faster LPDDDR4X. The size remains unchanged at 1 GB by 1 TB.
Samsung’s 8th generation 3D-NAND (V-Nand V8) is now the real mass memory. Overall, many more bits per area are accommodated across 236 layers than the 990 Pro’s V-Nand V7. At the same time, performance increases thanks to the Toggle-DDR-3.0 interface with 2,400 Mt / s.
With cooler or without
Samsung only subsequently released the variant with a heat sink on the 990 Pro, the 9100 Pro is available as an option for the start. With this, the single-shot Samsung 9100 Pro with 1TB, 2TB or 4TB measures a maximum of 8.88 mm in thickness and therefore also fits the PlayStation 5 and some notebooks without any problems. The 9100 Pro with 8TB, of which 8TB, is already 11.25mm on both sides, but this too is just enough to meet the installation requirements in the PS5.
Samsung 9100 Pro (Image: Samsung) Image 1 of 10
Price, availability and testing
On March 18, the Samsung 9100 Pro with storage capacities of 1TB, 2TB and 4TB and each with coolers will be available. There is still a price for the 8 TB version, but this is only expected to appear in the 3rd quarter of 2025.
RRP cooler variant Samsung 9100 Pro SSD 1 TB (MZ-VAP1T0) with thermal unit 200.99 Euros-182.99 Euros Samsung 9100 per SSD 2 TB (MZ-VAP2T0) with THEPSINK 291.99 EUROS-273.99 EURO Heat sink 519.99 Euros-501.99 Euros Samsung 9100 per 8TB SSD (MZ-VAP8T0) with always open heatsink
Tests can also be expected on March 18.
Model of the new SAMSUNG 9100 Pro SSD with the five predecessors from the editorial team
Techconseil received information about this article from Samsung under NDA. The only requirement was the earliest possible release time.
Topics: Flash Memory M.2 NVME PCIE 5.0 Samsung SSD Source Source: Samsung
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