Powerful SSDs for gaming are good news for gamers. So they sat up and took notice when two hit the headlines on Sept. 21.
At the SSD Global Summit in South Korea, Samsung was dead set on impressing the audience and it released two new drives in the 960 series. The company already has a massive 4 TB 850 EVO SSD in its lineup, which it revealed earlier this year.
Storage capacities of the 960 PRO and EVO start at 128 GB and go up to 2 TB. These SSDs form part of the lineup that is based on the V-NAND M.2 form factor. Samsung touts the 960 PRO as the "world's fastest M.2 NVMe- SSD."
Even as details about the SSDs were being made public, SlashGear indicated that they are designed to attract the attention of those who want "higher bandwidth and lower latency for gaming."
As technophiles took stock of the specifications of the SSDs, they were not disappointed in the transfer speeds which were described as "crazy fast" by ArsTechnica. The 960 Pro has top sequential read speed of 3,500 MB/s while its write speed is pegged at 2,100 MB/s. This makes the 960 Pro an improvement compared to the 950 Pro that the company released last year. As for capacity the 960 Pro is going to come in 512 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB versions while the cheaper 960 EVO will be available in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB versions.
Coming to the sequential read and write speeds of the 960 EVO, Samsung pointed out that it will hit "peaks of 3,200 MB/s and 1,900 MB/s respectively." Additionally the 960 EVO comes with TurboWrite technology which is not present on its costlier sibling and Samsung stated that it will result in the acceleration of "read and write speeds."
The warranty available on these new SSDs from Samsung is also a differentiating factor. Among the drives, the 960 PRO comes with a five-year warranty while the 960 EVO only has three years.
Coming to the global rollout of these drives, Samsung has already announced that they will become available in October. Retail prices have also been announced, with the 960 PRO and 960 EVO having a price tag of $329.99 and $129.99 respectively.
ZDNet states that Samsung's semi-conductor division announced a profit in its recent set of quarterly results but it was lower than what the company earned in second quarter of last year.
With the release of the 960 PRO and EVO, Samsung is no doubt hoping that gamers will be impressed. Gauging from the reception that has been afforded to the SSDs so far and the chatter that has risen up in the gaming community, it appears that Samsung has managed to strike a home run. However, it is too early to tell how the drives will perform when it comes to sales.
