Samsung 990 Pro - is it worth a buy ?

[Ichigo16]

Hello

 

I've wanted to ask about Samsung 990 Pro. I was originally going for WD SN850x but i got the 990 Pro very cheap on Amazon for 120$ (EU) which is 40$ cheaper than 850x current price. After some reading online I've found out about the issues with firmware and drives degradation for 990pro that got me concerned. These is quite surprising to me as i've had many Samsung ssd in the past and they've been rock solid. Are these issues solved now or is it an ongoing issue still ?

[Dedayog]

4 minutes ago, Ichigo16 said:

Hello

 

I've wanted to ask about Samsung 990 Pro. I was originally going for WD SN850x but i got the 990 Pro very cheap on Amazon for 120$ (EU) which is 40$ cheaper than 850x current price. After some reading online I've found out about the issues with firmware and drives degradation for 990pro that got me concerned. These is quite surprising to me as i've had many Samsung ssd in the past and they've been rock solid. Are these issues solved now or is it an ongoing issue still ?

Do you need a Pro level drive?

 

For 99.99% of users, it's not worth it when there are solid Gen 3 and 4 drives all over the place and no one can tell the difference anyway.

 

Now, if you need a Pro drive then yes, it's worth it.  Update firmware if needed, done.

[GuiltySpark_]

The 980 Pro/990 Pro firmware issue happened and was solved over a year ago.

[Ichigo16]

1 minute ago, Dedayog said:

 

 

Do you need a Pro level drive?

 

For 99.99% of users, it's not worth it when there are solid Gen 3 and 4 drives all over the place and no one can tell the difference anyway.

 

Now, if you need a Pro drive then yes, it's worth it.  Update firmware if needed, done.

I don't really need such fast drive but the prices for SSD in EU went nuts in 2024.

The cheapest m2 2TB with with dram is P5 Plus which is 120$ same price as that 990 pro that i got. Since they are same price i figured i would just get the better Samsung as long as those issues i mentioned are resolved now, i've seen posts online about people having drives degrading after just a month or 2 of use and i don't want those kinds of issues down the line, which is why i'm asking about whether it's fine now.

[Doobeedoo]

Yes for solid price for sure, I have two. Issues were fixed long time ago.

[porina]

I will have had my 980 Pro 3 years later this week. That's been fine. By chance I think I missed the bad firmware era.

 

I have a 990 Pro in my current system. It's still quite new. I had one weird thing where after leaving my system idle at the desktop, I came back a bit later and found it at BIOS. I noticed the 990 Pro had disappeared. Warm boot didn't help. It came back with a cold boot and has been fine since. In searching around it seems there are many reports of 990 Pro disappearing which was concerning to me. There weren't the same reports for SN850X which I would have bought had it been in stock at the time. I tried putting the SSD to "high performance" mode where it doesn't sleep in case that makes a difference.

[Motifator]

Generally speaking, Phison based sticks like the SN850X typically outperform the Samsung drives while being cheaper to boot, I got both a Phison based drive and a 980 Pro. Unless the Phison lacks cache, etc... most of them like the MSI, Kingston, Apacer etc 4.0 drives are better performers. So even with the price cut on the 990, I'd still opt for the WD.

[porina]

29 minutes ago, Motifator said:

Generally speaking, Phison based sticks like the SN850X typically outperform the Samsung drives while being cheaper to boot, I got both a Phison based drive and a 980 Pro. Unless the Phison lacks cache, etc... most of them like the MSI, Kingston, Apacer etc 4.0 drives are better performers. So even with the price cut on the 990, I'd still opt for the WD.

Got some references for that? I had a quick look, and the review at Tom's Hardware shows the 990 Pro beating the SN850X more often than not. SN850X might have the advantage in some write scenarios, but in most read scenarios 990 Pro came out ahead. 990 Pro and SN850X were released about the same time. 980 Pro is nearly 2 years older so not really surprising there were advances over that time.

[Motifator]

2 hours ago, porina said:

Got some references for that? I had a quick look, and the review at Tom's Hardware shows the 990 Pro beating the SN850X more often than not. SN850X might have the advantage in some write scenarios, but in most read scenarios 990 Pro came out ahead. 990 Pro and SN850X were released about the same time. 980 Pro is nearly 2 years older so not really surprising there were advances over that time.

Mind you that this is the 2 TB version, 1 TB performs worse so it's ought to be worse:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/samsung-990-pro-2-tb/4.html

[porina]

10 minutes ago, Motifator said:

Mind you that this is the 2 TB version, 1 TB performs worse so it's ought to be worse:

On that page you link are synthetic tests. The same capacity MP700 is about the only drive that beats it more often than not on the data as presented.

 

 

Skip forwards and the MP700 barely beats it overall, with a lot of the drives there much of a muchness. If anything the takeaway from this is that even a mid range drive hardly makes a difference in practice.

 

[Motifator]

The review I linked is not fair at all, it's a 2 TB drive compared against various 512gb and 1 TB drives to begin with. Also, the "synthetic" so called tests, were the 4k tests. There's literally nothing synthetic about them. Windows and all your apps consistently work on small files so therefore... you can guess, 4k matters the most as with the usual. Phison E18 outperforms anything save for their own 5.0 implementation when it comes to 4k. Sure, it's not a big difference... but the difference is there. Also you get a heatsink with some of the drives, for what it's worth. Samsung's "heatsink versions" cost more.

[GuiltySpark_]

How about.. just buy the cheaper one since your real world day to day is literally going to be exactly the same. I get being enthusiastic about GPU's or CPU's but like.. comon on now. Modern NVMe for consumer desktop systems, especially the good ones from well known brands are going to give you the same experience. 

[Dedayog]

58 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

How about.. just buy the cheaper one since your real world day to day is literally going to be exactly the same. I get being enthusiastic about GPU's or CPU's but like.. comon on now. Modern NVMe for consumer desktop systems, especially the good ones from well known brands are going to give you the same experience. 

This.

 

People can't tell the difference between NVMe and SATA, they sure as shit can't between various NVMe.

[testcy]

On 5/7/2024 at 2:32 PM, Dedayog said:

People can't tell the difference between NVMe and SATA

Is this a fact? What is all the fuss about NVMe then?

[Dedayog]

12 minutes ago, testcy said:

Is this a fact? What is all the fuss about NVMe then?

Numbers man.  Numbers.  Advancement.  Bigger than last year.  Etc.

 

People buy things for various reasons, and one of those is perception.  If 5 is perceived as faster than 4, we'll have 6 next year!