Today, Samsung is dishing out official specs for the 980 Pro, and they're even better than what we were told back in January. Overall, Samsung is claiming that the 980 Pro is twice as fast as contemporary PCIe 3.0 SSDs, and up to 12.7 times faster than SATA-based counterparts. Getting down to actual performance, Samsung quotes up to 7,000MB/sec (7GB/s) sequential reads and up to 5,000MB/sec (5GB/s) sequential writes for the 1TB version of the 980 Pro. Random 4K reads and writes (4KB, QD32) are listed at 1,000,000 IOPS.
The 500GB version of the 980 Pro isn't too far behind with sequential reads/writes of 6.9GB/sec and 5GB/sec respectively. As you might expect, the entry-level 250GB version of the 980 Pro is the weakest of the bunch with sequential reads of 6.4GB/sec and sequential writes of just 2.7GB/sec.
Given the high-performance nature of the 980 Pro, Samsung is using a nickel coating on the SSD's controller to keep heat in check, while the SSD's label also serves as a heat spreader. Samsung also includes a full suite of software management tools at the ready with Samsung Magician. You can monitor SSD health, performance, manage firmware updates, and optimize performance all from one easy-to-use interface.
The 980 Pro should be compatible with AMD’s X570/B550 motherboards and Intel’s upcoming Rocket Lake desktop processor platform. Expect similar pricing to the Samsung 970 Pro.