Samsung SSD 980 Pro Review – 1TB & 500GB Capacities Benchmarked

SPECworkstation 3 Benchmark

The SPECworkstation 3 was introduced in 2018 and features 30 workloads containing nearly 140 tests. The developer updated the storage workloads that are based on traces of nearly two-dozen applications. We ran the storage workload (WPCstorge) and are using the results from just three of the tests to show the performance difference between the SSDs that we are testing. Individual scores are generated for each test and a composite score for each category is calculated based on a reference machine, yielding a “bigger is better” result. We are using the actual ‘raw score’ result in three tests that we want to show actual transfer rates rather than a composite score.

The first workload that we will be showing is a trace that uses Microsoft Visual Studio to compile a build of Mozilla Firefox browser. The Samsung SSD 980 Pro 1TB NVMe SSD finished this workload with a read speed of 2456.8 MB/s. The Samsung SSD 980 Pro 500GB drive finished at 2060.5 MB/s.

The next trace involves a Handbrake transcode and the Samsung SSD 980 PRO 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD finished with 896.4 MB/s on the read speed and 338.2 MB/s on the write side. The Samsung SSD 980 Pro 500GB came in slightly behind that with 770.2 MB/s read and 290.6 MB/s write speeds.

In the 7zip workload the Samsung SSD 980 PRO 1TB drive dominated the group with a result of 5869.3 MB/s read and 247.6 MB/s write. Unbelievable results from the Samsung SSD 980 PRO on this workload and even the smaller 500GB capacity model was impressive as it managed to have the second fastest speeds.