Samsung 970 evo vs crucial p1: Crucial P1 1TB vs Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB: What is the difference?

However, not feeling worthy of competition, last year Samsung somewhat slowed down the pace of improving its products, and the announcement of the 970 EVO in May did not become another revolution that users were waiting for from the company. This model only slightly increased performance compared to the «people’s favorite» 960 EVO, which opened a «window of opportunity» for Samsung’s competitors. And they did not fail to use this window.

As a vivid illustration of what has been said, I would like to quote from our final article about the SSD market last year: “ If a year ago, Samsung 960 EVO was the benchmark for consumer NVMe SSD , demonstrating fundamentally better performance compared to any other option, then in 2018 everything has changed radically. And even though the South Korean manufacturer has updated its main offering with the improved 970 EVO , today the best price-performance ratio NVMe SSD is no longer in the assortment of Samsung . Now there are already at least two alternative platforms, drives based on which can offer at least as good consumer qualities as .

Indeed, the WD Black NVMe SSD and ADATA Ultimate SX8200, which appeared in the second half of last year, could seriously undermine Samsung’s hegemony. These drives offered a better combination of price and performance than the Samsung 970 EVO, which, although it did not undermine the sales of the South Korean manufacturer’s products, at least hurt its pride. So it’s no surprise that the retaliatory move was not long in coming: today Samsung is announcing an upgraded NVMe drive that should become a new enthusiast favorite.70 EVO Plus. And although its name seems to hint that this is just an improved version of the 970 EVO, the manufacturer promises a very noticeable improvement in performance. In a press release, they write about the new product: “ Thanks to the combination of the latest technology V -NAND and firmware optimizations, 970 EVO Plus provides random write performance 57% higher than 97 0 EVO «. And such a noticeable increase in one of the basic characteristics makes us believe that we have a model that can really become a new icon in the consumer NVMe SSD segment.

The release of the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is also interesting for another reason. This drive is one of the first to use 3D flash memory with 96 layers. Formally, Toshiba has already announced such models, but the 970 EVO Plus is a much more mass-produced product, on the example of which we can trace the trend — what the further growth of the flash memory structure in the vertical dimension leads to.

⇡#Specifications

In short, the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is a re-release of the well-known 970 EVO, timed to coincide with the move to denser fifth generation TLC 3D V-NAND with 96 layers. The regular 970 EVO used fourth-generation 64-layer memory, but now Samsung has a more progressive filling ready, which, on the one hand, has a reduced cost, and on the other, has improved performance and power consumption. Mass production of 96-layer memory began at Samsung enterprises back in July last year, but now its volume and yield have reached such proportions that the manufacturer has begun officially transferring its current drives to such memory.

But in fact, the 970 EVO Plus is not the first Samsung product to use fifth-generation flash memory. Since the fall of last year, small batches of Samsung 860 EVO have been delivered to the market, transferred from 64-layer to 96-layer TLC 3D V-NAND, and if you bought such drives towards the end of the year, then it is likely that you could get a version with updated memory. You can find out about this from the detailed model number given on the drive: if the third character from the end is “B”, then you have an improved version of the 860 EVO based on fifth generation memory.

However, in the case of the Samsung 860 EVO, the move to 96-layer memory changed almost nothing. The fact is that the characteristics of this drive are largely limited by the controller and the SATA interface, so the manufacturer decided not to announce a change in the filling for this model. But in the case of the 970 EVO NVMe drive, the changes turned out to be really very noticeable.

Fifth generation flash memory has received an updated Toggle DDR 4.0 interface with a 40% increase in bandwidth, as well as a lower operating voltage from 1.8 to 1.2 V. In addition, latencies have noticeably decreased in it: the speed of writing to cells has increased by about 30%, and the response time when reading has decreased by 37% — up to 50 μs. In other words, the application of the new 96-layer memory, subject to proper firmware optimization, can increase the performance of the drive, which is illustrated by the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. All the basic performance characteristics have increased in it: both the linear recording speed and the performance during random operations, and we are talking about a fairly noticeable progress.

However, you need to understand that the Samsung 970 EVO Plus remains a close relative of the 970 EVO and is equipped with exactly the same eight-channel Phoenix controller with five ARM cores as its predecessor. Still, the performance improvements are due solely to the use of new flash memory and the firmware optimizations necessary to build the correct work with it.

It is appropriate to recall here that the 96-layer TLC 3D V-NAND, which is designed and manufactured by Samsung, is fundamentally different from similar memory from other manufacturers. Samsung’s approach involves growing 96-layer semiconductor chips in a single process, while other manufacturers practice assembling 96-layer chips from a pair of 48-layer blanks. It was this engineering approach of the South Korean manufacturer that made it possible, on the one hand, to introduce a significant number of improvements at this stage, and on the other hand, to maintain a low and convenient capacity of 256 Gb crystals for modern SSDs. Therefore built on 9With 6-layer memory of the fifth generation, Samsung’s SSDs are definitely better than existing and promising competing products.

At least their specs look really promising.

Manufacturer	970 EVO Plus
Model number	MZ-V7S250	MZ-V7S500	MZ-V7S1T0
Form factor	M.2 2280
Interface	PCI Express 3.0 x4 — NVMe 1.3
Capacity GB	250	500	1000
Configuration
Flash memory: type, manufacturing process, manufacturer	Samsung 9x-layer 256Gb 3D TLC V-NAND
Controller	Samsung Phoenix
Buffer: type, volume	LPDDR4, 512 MB		LPDDR4 1 GB
Capacity
Max. sustained sequential read speed, MB/s	3500	3500	3500
Max. sustained sequential write speed, MB/s	2300	3200	3300
Max. random read speed (4 KB blocks), IOPS	250,000	480 000	600 000
Max. random write speed (4 KB blocks), IOPS	550 000	550 000	550 000
Physical
Power consumption: idle / read-write, W	0.05/4.2-6.0
MTBF (mean time between failures), million h	1.5
Recording resource, TB	150	300	600
Dimensions: L × H × D, mm	80. 15 x 22.15 x 2.38
Weight, g	10
Warranty period, years	5

First of all, it is worth noting that in everything that does not concern performance, the Samsung 970 EVO Plus repeats the characteristics of its predecessor. In particular, with the transition to a new memory, there were no changes in the terms of the guarantee and the declared resource. The warranty period for the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is the same five years, and the maximum resource is determined based on the ability to overwrite a third of the drive’s capacity per day.

The similarities between the 970 EVO Plus and the 970 EVO include the recommended prices. They are exactly the same for drives of different series, and in the end, the new 970 EVO Plus models will force out the SSD of the previous family, which are currently being discontinued.

However, as follows from the above table, the Samsung 970 EVO Plus model range does not yet have a drive with a capacity of 2 TB, while the 970 EVO of this size exists. This is explained by the fact that Samsung has not yet managed to launch the release of the fifth generation 512-gigabit TLC 3D V-NAND crystals necessary for increasing the capacity, and the 2-terabyte version 970 EVO Plus will be released at a later date (April is given as a tentative time target).

As for the increase in performance, it is associated exclusively with changes in the characteristics of the flash memory. There are no tricks in the Samsung 970 EVO Plus firmware, and the Intellegent TurboWrite SLC caching technology works exactly the same in this SSD as in the 970 EVO. The fast cache is formed from two segments: static, 3 or 6 GB in size, and dynamic, the size of which can be several times larger. While the static segment resides in the spare area of ​​the flash array, the dynamic segment uses the unallocated portion of the main flash array and therefore can vary in size depending on how much free space is available on the drive.

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It’s very easy to illustrate how Intellegent TurboWrite works with the graphs of continuous sequential write speed on the Samsung 970 EVO Plus version of various capacities (measurements were made in the most advantageous situation — on a free SSD).

The size of the SLC cache in the 970 EVO Plus has not changed compared to the 970 EVO, but the speeds have clearly increased both when writing data in the SLC mode and when writing directly to the TLC memory array. In high-speed mode, versions of a drive with a capacity of 500 GB and higher now give out 3. 2-3.3 GB / s limit for the PCI Express 3.0 x4 interface, and when writing directly to a flash memory array in TLC mode, the speed of a terabyte model can reach incredible 1.7 GB/s. The graphs well reveal the fact that the linear recording performance of the 970 EVO Plus really improved by 35-50% in absolutely any situation.

Moreover, if you don’t go beyond the SLC cache, the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is even more productive than the 970 PRO MLC drive! And this means that Samsung’s new massive NVMe SSD can safely be declared the drive with the fastest TLC memory in write mode. True, the gap from competing products is not too big. Almost the same speed of writing to a flash memory array in TLC mode can be offered by WD Black NVMe based on 64-layer SanDisk BiCS3 memory.

⇡#Exterior and interior design

In appearance, the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is almost the same as its predecessor. The novelty is made in the form factor M.2 2280 and has a one-sided design. Traditional stickers are placed on both surfaces of the drive. On the reverse side there is a special heat-dissipating label with a layer of copper foil, and on the front side there is an information label that contains detailed information about the product, including serial number, article number, release date and a key to reset the encryption.

If you remove the stickers from the drive, you can see that the Samsung 970 EVO Plus has inherited the PCB layout from the 970 EVO. The only difference is in the range of installed microcircuits. Here, for example, is what the exposed 500 GB version of the 970 EVO Plus looks like.

The Phoenix base controller is the easiest to recognize as it has a nickel-plated cover to facilitate heat dissipation. Next to it is an LPDDR4 memory chip, which is used to store a copy of the address translation table. Its capacity is standard and is determined at the rate of 1 MB per 1 GB of flash memory. The TLC 3D V-NAND array is equipped with two chips, each of which contains 4, 8 or 16 semiconductor crystals, depending on the capacity of the SSD.

For example, a half-terabyte drive uses chips with 8 flash memory chips inside, since the capacity of the fifth generation 96-layer TLC 3D V-NAND chips used in the 970 EVO Plus is 256 Gbps. Thus, the Phoenix controller in the Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500 GB can use two device interleaving in each of its channels. For this reason, the fastest option in the 970 EVO series is the 1TB model.

Declared volumes for 9 series representatives70 EVO Plus are multiples of 250 GB, which means that approximately 91 percent of the total amount of installed flash memory is available to the user. Another 2.5-4.5 percent of the capacity is given over to a static SLC cache, which works as part of the Intellegent TurboWrite technology. The rest of the space is used by the controller for internal needs — for garbage collection, wear leveling and for a reserve fund.

⇡#Software

Samsung’s mass drives are traditionally equipped with Magician’s proprietary service utility, which, starting from version 5. 3, is also compatible with 970 EVO Plus. It is customary to set this utility as an example of what software should be accompanied by consumer SSDs, because it is not so easy to make any claims about its functionality or interface.

Samsung Magician 5.3 allows you to get general information about the drive, its operating mode, firmware version and the amount of recorded data. The utility also makes it possible to get acquainted with the state of the attributes returned in S.M.A.R.T.

The program allows you to evaluate the performance of the drive and make sure it is fully compatible with the system in which it is installed.

Using Magician, you can manually send a TRIM command packet to the drive, as well as adjust the size of the unallocated space by the file system by transferring part of the SSD capacity to an additional reserve zone.

Magician also manages Samsung 970 EVO Plus’ AES-256 hardware encryption features that are compatible with the full range of current standards (including Microsoft eDrive/Encrypted Drive-IEEE1667 and TCG Opal).