News Samsung's 990 Evo is the world's first hybrid PCIe 4.0 x4 and 5.0 x2 SSD — FrankenSSD has two different interfaces with two different lane widths

[Admin]

Samsung has prematurely revealed its upcoming 990 Evo, and this is certainly a weird SSD from the usually desirable brand.

Samsung's 990 Evo is the world's first hybrid PCIe 4.0 x4 and 5.0 x2 SSD — FrankenSSD has two different interfaces with two different lane widths : Read more

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

WinFuture noted that Amazon Germany had prices listed for the 990 Evo, which were a little more expensive than the 990 Pro. Those prices have since been removed, and although it's not clear why, we can probably safely assume Samsung won't launch a midrange SSD that has an MSRP higher than the price of its flagship.

I guess with Samsung and the other manufacturers colluding to slice production in order to increase prices they see a price segment for a new Evo drive, likely where the Pro is now before prices increase.

 

[wakuwaku]

Desktops have plenty of PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 (????) M.2 slots with four lanes to go around

no they don't. Are you an AI hallucinating the future of desktops having alot of pcie 5.0 lanes? because that future is not here yet unless you are using hedt. And if you can afford hedt systems, you can sure afford way better drives than samsung evo ssds.

 

[sininspira]

Another scenario of having four 4.0 lanes or two 2.0 lanes is conservation of PCIe 5 lanes in certain motherboard chipsets...for instance a mobo with 20 max PCIe 5 lanes could then use x16 in the GPU slot and two x2 SSD drives

 

[bourgeoisdude]

Another scenario of having four 4.0 lanes or two 2.0 lanes is conservation of PCIe 5 lanes in certain motherboard chipsets...for instance a mobo with 20 max PCIe 5 lanes could then use x16 in the GPU slot and two x2 SSD drives

That's what I was thinking. Using just 2 PCIE 5.0 lanes means more lanes for the other PCIE 5 connected devices. Still a very niche use case for consumer market anyway.

 

[thestryker]

Ever since we've gotten PCIe 4.0 having x2 drives available has made sense, but we haven't really seen them. Hopefully the additional cost is negligible, because I'd like to see this as the way forward. If we're going to be stuck with M.2 for desktop it might as well be in. fashion that allows for maximizing storage capacity.

 

[usertests]

By contrast, the 990 Evo would be able to retain its normal bandwidth since it can run those two lanes at PCIe 5.0 speeds. Additionally, running two lanes instead of four could also save a little power.

They should call it the 990 Eco because it's Eco-friendly.

 

[domih]

no they don't. Are you an AI hallucinating the future of desktops having alot of pcie 5.0 lanes? because that future is not here yet unless you are using hedt. And if you can afford hedt systems, you can sure afford way better drives than samsung evo ssds.

Yep.

There is also the question about where the PCIe lines connect to. Direct CPU or via the chipset?

Finally, it will be interesting to see if there will be a Chinese OEM making a Gen 5 x4 x 1 --> Gen 5 x2 x 2 adapter to use two of these NVMe on one M.2 slot. The 4 lanes are there, so there would be no need for a multiplexer, though the motherboard BIOS will need to provide the option of x2 x 2 instead of x4 x 1. Unrealistic IMHO.

 

[thestryker]

Finally, it will be interesting to see if there will be a Chinese OEM making a Gen 5 x4 --> Gen 5 x2 x 2 adapter to use two of these NVMe on one M.2 slot. The 4 lanes are there, so there would be no need for a multiplexer.

You'd still need it unless the slot supports bifurcation which to my knowledge no M.2 slots currently do. I sure wish consumer platforms all had better bifurcation support, but currently only the CPU provided lanes do (Intel it's limited to x8/x8 and AMD can do x4/x4/x4/x4) and none go down to x2.

 

[sfjuocekr]

There is a reason why two lanes is better, it saves two lanes and the device can still switch off a lane when not required.

You are still restricted to the amount of lanes exposed from the CPU, so if you can use less you also need to switch (context) less.

 

[Notton]

How does it work?
If it runs at 2x5.0, then is it stuck at 2x4.0~1.0, or can it switch to 4x4.0 on the fly?

To me, it seems like a marketing ploy. It's "technically" a PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD, but it's speeds are similar to budget 4.0 drives.

There is no desktop or laptop CPU that would benefit from "only" using 2x lanes, because none of them support 2x bifurcation. The CPU will allot 4x lanes and the other two lanes would be unused at 5.0 speeds.
Do server or HEDT CPUs support 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2 bifurcation?

 

[castl3bravo]

4x5.0 would simply heat clench sooner, so M.2 has its limitations

Waiting for something like E3.S for a PCIe5.0 SSD to put in a HEDT.

 

[Bluoper]

no they don't. Are you an AI hallucinating the future of desktops having alot of pcie 5.0 lanes? because that future is not here yet unless you are using hedt. And if you can afford hedt systems, you can sure afford way better drives than samsung evo ssds.

You can get consumer motherboards with gen 5 m.2 support and have a lot of m.2 lanes, the msi x670e tomahawk is $280, in no way cheap but way less than any hedt platform, it has a gen 5x16 slot, a gen 5x4 m.2, and 3 gen 4x4m.2 ( from chipset ) so gen 5 is very much in consumer systems, the main benefit i see from the 990 evo is that it would be cheaper to get a dumb card that goes from gen 5x4 to 2 gen 5x2 compared to a card that needs a pcie switch that does gen 5x4 to 2 gen 4x4.