Samsung 990 EVO Plus (vs. 990 Evo): An Improved Variant with Double Capacity and Faster Speed

Today, Samsung announced the availability of its latest PCIe 4.0 NVMe internal solid-state drive (SSD), the 990 Evo Plus.

If the name rings a bell, that's because there's the 990 Evo that came out at the beginning of the year. The Plus drive, as the name suggests, is slated to be an improved version.

Considering the original 990 Evo proved to be plenty fast, one must wonder how much of a difference the 990 Evo makes. But different it indeed seems to be.

Samsung 990 EVO Plus: The same hybrid drive that’s faster

The first thing to keep in mind is that like the case of its predecessor, the Samsung 990 EVO Plus is a hybrid PCIe 5.0/ PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.

Specifically, when used with a PCIe 4.0 motherboard, it functions as a four-lane (4x4) PCIe 4.0 drive, and when hosted by a PCIe 5.0 board, it's now a 2x2 PCIe 5.0 drive.

This approach proved to be innovative. The 990 Evo was plenty fast—the PCIe 5.0 is so fast that cutting the bandwidth in half still yields plenty of speed—and didn't suffer from heat issues like the case of all 4x4 PCIe 5.0 drives.

PCIe Gen	Commercially Available	Rate per lane (rounded)	x1  Speed	x2 Speed	x4 Speed	x8 Speed	x16 Speed
1	2003	2 Gbps	250 MB/s	0.5 GB/s	1.0 GB/s	2 GB/s	4.0 GB/s
2	2007	4 Gbps	500 MB/s	1 GB/s	2.0 GB/s	4 GB/s	8.0 GB/s
3	2010	8 Gbps	984.6 MB/s	1.97 GB/s	3.94 GB/s	7.88 GB/s	15.8 GB/s
4	2020	16 Gbps	1969 MB/s	3.94 GB/s	7.88 GB/s	15.75 GB/s	31.5 GB/s
5	2022	32 Gbps	3938 MB/s	7.88 GB/s	15.75 GB/s	31.51 GB/s	63 GB/s

Besides that, the new 990 Evo Plus shares the same feature set and the Samsung Magician dashboard software as the 990 Evo, allowing users to handle all of its features, including overprovisioning and firmware updates.

After all, both drives are standard NVMe SSDs coming in the popular 2280 M.2 design. The table below shows the hardware specs of the two.

Hardware specifications: Samsung 990 Evo Plus vs. 990 Evo

	Samsung 990 EVO Plus	Samsung 990 EVO
Interface	PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, PCIe 5.0 x2, NVMe 2.02
Form Factor	M.2 2280
Storage Memory	Samsung V-NAND 3-TLC
Controller	Samsung In-house Controller
Capacity	1TB, 2TB, 4TB	1TB, 2TB
DRAM (LPD DDR4)	Dram-less
Sequential Read Speed (up to)	1TB: 7,150 MB/s 2TB, 4TB: 7,250 MB/s	5,000 MB/s,
Sequential Write Speed (up to)	6,300 MB/s	4,200 MB/s
Random Read Speed (QD32) (up to)	1TB: 850K IOPS 2TB: 1,000 IOPS 4TB: 1050 IPS	1TB: 680K IOPS 2TB: 700K IOPS
Random Write Speed (QD32) (up to)	1TB, 2TB: 1350 IOPS 4TB: 1400 IOPS	800K IOPS
Management Software	Samsung Magician Software
Data Encryption	AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption, TCG/Opal V2.0, Encrypted Drive (IEEE1667)
Total Bytes Written	1TB: 600TB 2TB: 1200TB 4TB: 2400TB	1TB: 600TB 2TB: 1200TB
Warranty	5-year
US Price (at launch)	1TB: $109.99 2TB: 184.99 4TB: 344.99	1TB: $124.99 2TB: $209.99

An overall improved SSD

As noted in the table, the 990 Evo Plus is slated to deliver up to 50% improvement in performance compared to the previous model. The performance numbers make the new drive seem similar to the Crucial P310, though the new Samsung drive has much higher endurance.

Samsung attributes the 990 Evo Plus' new performance to its latest 8th generation V-NAND technology and 5-nanometer (nm) controller. The drive also uses a nickel-coated heat shield that minimizes overheating, with an estimated 73% greater power efficiency over the 990 EVO.

Addtionally, the new 4TB means the 990 Evo Plus will make those needing lots of storage space happy.

Availability

The Samsung 990 Evo Plus NVMe SSD is available today. It carries the suggested retail price of $109.99 for the 1TB model, $184.99 for the 2TB model, and $344.99 for the 4TB model, which is slightly lower than the 990 Evo at its launch.

Looking for a flexible SSD that can take advantage of both PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 equally well? Consider 990 Evo Plus today!