Back at CES 2020, we got our first glimpse at Samsung’s upcoming 980 Pro SSD. Up until this point, Samsung’s fastest consumer SSDs have used the PCIe 3.0 interface, but the 980 Pro will use the new PCIe 4.0 interface supported by AMD’s X570 and B550 chipsets.
We weren’t given an exact launch date for the 980 Pro when it was initially announced, but reliable hardware leaker Ice Universe is claiming that the SSD family will launch within the next two months. So, it seems as though the worse-case scenario is that we’d see the 980 Pro show up by the end of August.
We know that the upcoming NVMe SSD from Samsung will be of the PCIe 4.0 variety, which means you’ll soon have more choice of high-end SSDs to pair with AMD X570 and B550 motherboards, as well as Zen 3 CPUs.
Samsung is promising maximum sequential reads of 6.5GB/sec, while sequential writes will come in at 5GB/sec. To put that in perspective, the PCIe 3.0-based 970 Pro lays down numbers of 3.5GB/sec and 2.7GB/sec. That’s a huge jump in performance in a single generation, and is sure to be welcomed by gamers and hardware enthusiasts.
According to Samsung, the 980 Pro will be available win 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities when it launches. At this time, we don’t have any idea how the SSDs will be priced, but the 1TB 970 Pro can be had for $319.99 on Amazon.
