Dubbed the 970 PRO and 970 EVO M.2 NVMe SSDs use a newer controller and Samsung's latest 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory. The outgoing 960 PRO and 960 EVO were first announced in September 2016 and shipped in the autumn, so they have had a long run as Samsung's flagship consumer SSD.
Compared to its predecessor, the 970 EVO promises a small improvement in sequential read speed and a more substantial boost to sequential write speed for all but the smallest 250GB model. Peak random access performance is also substantially improved, but again the 250GB model gets left out and is rated as slower than the 960 EVO 250GB. The warranty on the EVO has been extended from three years to five years, and the write endurance ratings have been increased by 50 percent to retain almost the same drive writes per day rating.
The 970 PRO's performance specs aren't too different from the 970 EVO. Many of the ratings are the same, and the ones that differ are mostly better by just three to 11 percent for the PRO. The PRO doesn't rely on SLC write caching so it can maintain its write speed far longer than the EVO. Second, the rated write endurance of the 970 PRO is twice that of the EVO, going from just over 0.3 Drive Writes Per Day to 0.6 DWPD.
While most consumers will not give a monkey's about these differences, they help the 970 PRO look good as a premium product. Anandtech found a spec sheet and price list
Samsung 970 EVO Specifications | ||||||
Capacity | 250 GB | 500 GB | 1 TB | 2 TB | ||
Interface | PCIe 3 x4 NVMe 1.3 | |||||
Form Factor | M.2 2280 Single-sided | |||||
Controller | Samsung Phoenix | |||||
NAND | Samsung 64-layer 256Gb 3D TLC | Samsung 64L 512Gb 3D TLC | ||||
LPDDR4 DRAM | 512 MB | 1 GB | 2 GB | |||
SLC Write Cache | Dedicated | 4 GB | 4 GB | 6GB | 6 GB | |
Dynamic | 9 GB | 18 GB | 36 GB | 72 GB | ||
Sequential Read | 3400 MB/s | 3500 MB/s | ||||
Sequential Write (SLC Cache) | 1500 MB/s | 2300 MB/s | 2500 MB/s | 2500 MB/s | ||
Sequential Write (TLC) | 300 MB/s | 600 MB/s | 1200 MB/s | 1250 MB/s | ||
4KB Random Read | QD1 | 15k IOPS | ||||
QD128 | 200k IOPS | 370k IOPS | 500k IOPS | 500k IOPS | ||
4KB Random Write | QD1 | 50k IOPS | ||||
QD128 | 350k IOPS | 450k IOPS | 450k IOPS | 480k IOPS | ||
Active Power | Read | 5.4 W | 5.7 W | 6 W | 6 W | |
Write | 4.2 W | 5.8 W | 6 W | 6 W | ||
Idle Power | APST On | 30 mW | ||||
PCIe L1.2 | 5 mW | |||||
Write Endurance | 150 TB | 300 TB | 600 TB | 1200 TB | ||
Warranty | 5 years | |||||
MSRP | $119.99 (48¢/GB) | $229.99 (46¢/GB) | $449.99 (45¢/GB) | $849.99 (42¢/GB) |