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The last Samsung drive we looked at, the 990 EVO Plus, was a kind of halfway house between Gen 4 and Gen 5 as it used a Gen 4 x4 / Gen 5 x2 interface. Now, however, we have Samsung's first full-blown Gen 5 x4 consumer drive to hand, the SSD 9100 Pro. Let's put it through its paces and find out just how fast this drive is.
At launch, the SSD 9100 Pro product line consists of three capacities: 1TB, 2TB and 4TB. A flagship 8TB model is due to come in the 3rd quarter of 2025. Two versions of the drive are available, one plain and one with a heatsink.
The 9100 Pro uses Samsung's in-house PCIe 5.0 Presto controller combined with the company's eighth-generation V-NAND technology. The onboard cache is provided by an LPDDR4X IC (up to 4,266 Mbps) which is sized at 1GB per 1TB of storage capacity.
The Sequential read performance of the range is quoted as up to 14,700 MB/s for the 1TB and 2TB drives and up to 14,800MB/s for the 4TB model. The 1TB drive gets an up to 13,300MB/s Sequential write rating with the 2TB and 4TB models a little faster at up to 13,400MB/s.
Random 4K performance is quoted as up to 1,850,000 IOPS for the 1TB and 2TB drives with the 4TB model at up to 2,200,000 IOPS. All three drives are rated at up to 2,600,000 IOPS for random writes. These random figures are from testing at QD256 using 32 threads.
The 2TB drive has power consumption figures of 8.1W and 7.9W for average active reads and writes respectively.
The TBW endurance for the 2TB 9100 Pro is quoted as 1,200TB and the drive is backed by a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 2TB.
- NAND Components: Samsung V-NAND.
- NAND Controller: Samsung Presto.
- Cache: 2GB (LPDDR4X).
- Interface: PCIe Gen 5 x4, NVMe 2.0.
- Form Factor: M.2, 2280.
- Dimensions: 80.15 x 22.15 x 2.38mm.
- Drive Weight: 7g.
Firmware Version: 0B2QNXH7
Samsung’s SSD 9100 Pro comes in a box with a clear image of the front. On the bottom right-hand side of the box, we find a sticker displaying the drive’s capacity and Sequential read speed (up to 14,700MB/s). The rear of the box has a multilingual information panel giving the web address for more detailed warranty information. Under this is a reminder that the drive comes with a 5-year limited warranty.
Samsung's 2TB SSD 9100 Pro is built on a single-sided M.2 2280 format. Under the long Product label on the front of the drive sits Samsung's latest Presto controller, two packages of Samsung's 8th generation 236-Layer TLC NAND (V-NAND) and a 2GB LPDDR4X cache IC.
Details about the Presto PCIe 5.0 controller are rather scarce but what we do know is that it is an 8-channel design built on a 5nm process.
Gen 5 drives are notorious for the heat they generate. Samsung has tried to alleviate the problem with the SSD 9100 Pro in several different ways. First and most important is the 6nm architecture of the controller, the controller itself has a nickel coating while the product sticker on the rear of the drive has a built-in copper layer and finally there is Samsung’s DTG (Dynamic Thermal Guard) algorithm.
Samsung’s SSD management utility, Magician, can be downloaded from Samsung’s website. Samsung continually updates Magician, and the latest version (at the time of writing) is v8.2. Magician is a pretty comprehensive utility that allows you to do most of the maintenance jobs you may need to do with an SSD and lists them under two headings: Drive Management and Data Management.
Drive Management
Data Management
For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system. This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.
Main system:
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, 32GB DDR5-6000, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 and a Gigabyte AORUS X670E Xtreme motherboard.
Other drives:
Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro 4TB
Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro 2TB
ADATA Legend 970 2TB
Corsair MP700 Pro SE 4TB
Corsair MP700 Pro 2TB
Corsair MP700 Elite 2TB
Crucial T705 2TB
Crucial T700 2TB
Crucial T700 with Heatsink 2TB
Gigabyte AORUS 10000 2TB
Klevv Genuine G360 2TB
Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark 4.
CrystalMark 8.0.0.
AS SSD 2.0.
IOMeter.
UL Solutions PC Mark 10.
UL Solutions 3DMark Storage Benchmark.
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark.
All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using v8.0.5.
In the CrystalDiskMark 4K QD1 test, the SSD 9100 Pro sits on top of the results chart with the fastest read performance we've seen to date for a consumer drive. However, its write performance isn't quite as impressive.
With the CrystalDiskMark 8 default test, we could confirm the official Sequential performance figures of up to 14,700MB/s and up to 13,400MB/s for reads and writes respectively with test results of 14,718.99MB/s for reads and 13,494.41MB/s for writes.
Both of the Sequential test results for the SSD 9100 Pro are the fastest we've seen to date for a consumer Gen5 SSD.
Peak Performance Profile
When it came to 4K performance, our test results were mixed. The read performance of the 2TB SSD 9100 Pro is quoted as up to 1,850,000 IOPS, which we could confirm with CrystalDiskMark 8's Peak Performance Profile tests with a result of 1,865,393 IOPS, which sees the drive slotting into third spot on the results chart. On the other hand, the write test result of 1,632, 903 IOPS was some way back from the official maximum of 2,600,000 IOPS.
Using CrystalDiskMark 8's Peak Performance Profile we could, once again, confirm the official Sequential read / write figures with a test result of 14,641MB/s for reads and 13,405MB/s for writes, which are good enough to put the drive in top spot on the table.
Real World Profile
Using the Real World Profile benchmark, the drive's read result of 10,092MB/s was good enough to put it in top spot in the table as well. The write result of 10,801MB/s is the third fastest we've seen to date for a consumer Gen 5 drive.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage system's performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement, including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data.
We are using version 4.1 for our NVMe disk tests with a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance.
Using the ATTO benchmark we fell short of the official maximum Sequential read/write scores of up to 14,700MB/s and up to 13,400MB/s respectively for the drive with test figures of 13,690MB/s for reads and 12,660MB/s for writes.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. It uses
incompressible data samples which many drives struggle with, so results can be viewed as the worst case scenarios.
AS SSD includes a sub-suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
In the AS-SSD benchmark test, the 9100 Pro read score of 5180 puts the drive into third place in the results table behind both versions of the Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro we've recently tested.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the Sequential read and write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
128KB Sequential Read / Write.
Transfer Request Size: 128KB, Thread(s): 1, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
In these Sequential tests we could confirm the official read rating of up to 14,700MB/s with a result of 14,698MB/s with the write result a bit further back of the official maximum of 13,400MB/s but definitely in the ballpark with a test result of 13,324MB/s.
128KB Sequential Read v QD compared.
The drive takes top spot in every queue depth we tested at and by quite a margin at QD's 1, 2 and 4. However, at QD32 the gap between the Samsung SSD 9100 Pro and the rest is very much narrower.
128KB Sequential Write v QD compared.
When it comes to Sequential write performance, the drive doesn't do anywhere near as well, sitting very near the bottom of the chart at QD1 but climbing up the chart at the remaining queue depths, ending up in second place behind the 4TB version of Biwin's Black Opal C570 Pro drive at QD32.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random read performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
Using our 4-threaded random read 4K tests we couldn't get close to the official maximum of 1,850,000 IOPS. The drive peaked at QD16 with a figure of 500,907 IOPS before slipping back a little to finish the test run at 497,589 IOPS (QD32).
4K Random Read v QD performance comparison.
Even though our 4K random read test results were nowhere close to the official maximum figure at any stage, the drive sits in the top spot at QD1, 2 and 4, by quite a margin. This is very useful as these are the queue depths where most of the everyday usage occurs. However, at QD32 it has fallen down the chart to end up in last place.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
The best result we saw from our 4K random write results was even further away from the official maximum IOPS figure (2,600,000 IOPS) than the random reads. The drive peaked in this test at QD8 with a test figure of 461,228 IOPS before gradually dropping back to finish the test run at QD32 with a figure of 455,551 IOPS.
4K Random Write v QD performance comparison.
The best performance from the drive came at QD1 where it sits in fourth place.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8’s custom settings to test the 4K 70/30 mixed read/write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths using a single thread and four threads.
In our 4K 70/30 read/write tests the SSD 9100 Pro peaked at the QD16 mark using both single and four threads, before the performance began to level off.
Using a single thread the drive accelerates from 28,971 IOPS (118.66MB/s) at QD1 up to 173,141 IOPS (709.18MB/s) at QD8. From this point, the rate of performance begins to slow, finishing the test run at 179,548 IOPS (735.42MB/s) at QD32.
Switching over to four threads the drive climbs from 117,868 IOPS (482.78MB/s) up to 480,141 IOPS (1,966.66MB/s) at QD8. The drive peaks at QD16 (491,839 IOPS, 2,014.57MB/s) but the rate of acceleration has slowed down. The drive finishes the test run at QD32 with the performance dropping back to 488,478 IOPS (2,000.81MB/s).
We used CrystalDiskMark 8 to test the random performance of the drive at lower queue depths (QD1 – QD8 where most of the everyday workloads occur) using 1 to 4 threads.
Random Reads
In the QD1-QD8 random read tests, the drive produced smooth increases in performance as the queue depth deepened without any noticeable dramas. At QD1 the drive speed ranges from 22,778 IOPS (93.29MB/s) using a single thread up to 97,154 IOPS (397.94MB/s) using four threads. At a QD of 8, the single-thread performance had increased to 173,508 IOPS (710.68MB/s) while the four-threaded test reached 498,600 IOPS (2,042.27MB/s).
Random Writes
In the 4K write tests, the performance rose quickly from QD1 to QD2 for all four tested threads with the fastest rise seen in the three and four-threaded tests. Using three and four threads, between QDs 2 and 4, the rate of increase slowed and between QD4 and 8 the performance began to plateau out. Using one and two threads, the performance began to level off after QD2.
In our read-throughput test, the drive peaked at the 8MB block size at 10,284MB/s, quite some way short of the official maximum of 14,700MB/s.
Although the read throughput result is short of the official maximum, it's enough to take the top spot away from Klevv's GENUINE G560 drive.
In the write throughput test, the drive peaked at the end of the test with a result of 11,731MB/s, which, as with the read throughput test, is some way off the official maximum of 13,400MB/s.
The peak write result of 11,731MB/s is a fair way short of the official maximum of 13,400MB/s but it's still good enough to put the drive into second place in the results table.
The PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The benchmark is designed to measure performance of fast system drives using the SATA bus at the low end and devices connected via PCI Express at the high end.
The goal of the benchmark is to show meaningful real-world performance differences between fast storage technologies such as SATA, NVMe, and Intel’s Optane. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses 23 traces, running 3 passes with each trace. It typically takes an hour to run.
Traces used:
Booting Windows 10.
Adobe Acrobat – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Illustrator – starting the application until usable Adobe Premiere Pro – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Photoshop – starting the application until usable.
Battlefield V – starting the game until the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 – starting the game until the main menu.
Overwatch – starting the game until main menu.
Using Adobe After Effects.
Using Microsoft Excel.
Using Adobe Illustrator.
Using Adobe InDesign.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint.
Using Adobe Photoshop (heavy use).
Using Adobe Photoshop (light use).
cp1 Copying 4 ISO image files, 20 GB in total, from a secondary drive to the target drive (write test).
cp2 Making a copy of the ISO files (read-write test).
cp3 Copying the ISO to a secondary drive (read test).
cps1Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, to the target drive (write test).
cps2 Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
cps3 Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test).
Tested using the Adobe startup traces in PCMark10's Full System Drive benchmark, the drive averaged 366MB/s for the six tests, with the fastest being 480MB/s for the Premiere Pro trace and 268MB/s for the slowest, the Lightroom startup trace. When tested with the Adobe usage traces, the SSD 9100 Pro averaged 697MB/s for the five tests, which includes the 1,500MB/s result for the Adobe Photoshop heavy usage trace. The slowest of the five traces was the InDesign trace at 340MB/s
The three gaming traces produced an average result of 1,170MB/s, the fastest being Battlefield V at 1,584MB/s, next came Call Of Duty Black Ops 4 at 1,283MB/s and last and quite some way back, Overwatch at 645MB/s.
When it came to the file transfers, the fastest was the cp3 Read test at 7,588MB/s with the drive averaging 4,092MB/s for the six file transfer tests.
Samsung's 9100 Pro slips into third place in the overall bandwidth chart with a score of 797.7MB/s.
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark uses traces recorded from popular games and gaming-related activities to measure real-world gaming performance.
Traces used:
Battlefield V
Loading Battlefield™ V from launch to the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4
Loading Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 from launch to the main menu.
Overwatch
Loading Overwatch® from launch to the main menu.
Game Move
Copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike®: Global Offensive from an external SSD to the system drive.
Game Recording
Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch®.
Installing Game
Installing The Outer Worlds® from the Epic Games Launcher.
Game Saving
Saving progress in The Outer Worlds game.
In 3DMark’s Storage Test, the drive had an average game loading bandwidth figure for the three games of 1,258MB/s, the fastest we've seen to date in this part of the test with an average access time figure of 41µs (0.041m/s).
In the game moving, recording, installing and saving test traces, the drive averaged 1,505.47MB/s with an average access time of 40µs (0.040m/s) for the four tests, which sees the drive in the lower half of the table.
The overall average bandwidth figure for the 2TB Samsung SSD 9100 Pro for the complete benchmark run was 746.35MB/s, a result which sees the drive sitting close to the bottom of the results chart.
The Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark uses actual maps and playable characters to assign a score to your PC and rate its performance including scene loading times.
The benchmark gives an overall load time as well as loading times by scene.
The drive doesn't seem to handle the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark particularly well as it ends up in the penultimate position in the overall results chart. The drive appears to handle the Scene 1 and Scene 4 tests the best out of the five traces.
We took note of the drive’s temperature during some of our benchmarking runs.
We tested the standard, non-heatsink of the SSD 9100 Pro, sitting under the chunky heatsink of the Gigabyte AORUS X670E Xtreme motherboard we used for testing. The drive has a few design features to combat the Achilles heel of high-end Gen5 drives, being heat generation. The combination of the controller's 5nm process architecture, the nickel plating on the controller, heat spreader label on the back of the drive and Samsung's Dynamic Thermal Guard technology work very well.
The hottest the drive got was the CrystalDiskMark 8 0 fill Read test where it reached 46° C. For the bulk of our testing, the drive averaged 40° C with the 4K focussed tests averaging 35° C.
To test real life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 2TB Kingston KC3000.
Transfer Details
Data file – 100GB.
File folder – 50GB – 28,523 files.
Movie demos 8K – 21GB – (11 demos).
Raw Movie Clips 4K – 16GB – (9 MP4V files).
Audio Folder – 10GB – 1,483 files – (1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
Single large image – 5GB – 1.5bn pixel photo.
3D Printer File Folder – 4.25GB – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
AutoCAD File Folder – 1.5GB (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).
The 2TB Samsung SSD 9100 Pro averaged 4,406MB when writing the 8 transfer tests, with the fastest being the 7,076MB/s for the 4K movie folder with the slowest being the 50GB File Folder transfer at 558MB/s (96sec). Reading back the data the average was 4,088MB/s with the 100GB data file transfer being the fastest at 5,909MB/s.
When the first consumer Gen 5 SSDs hit the market there was one major name missing from the list of companies offering drives – Samsung. The second generation of drives duly arrived and still nothing, then late last year Samsung launched the 990 EVO Plus (reviewed HERE) a drive that can run at PCIe Gen 4 x4 or PCIe Gen 5 x2 speeds… but there was still no full-blown Gen5 drive – until now.
The Samsung 9100 Pro is the company's first PCIe 5.0 x4 drive aimed at the consumer market with headline Sequential speeds of up to 14,800MB/s for reads and up to 13,400MB/s for writes (4TB drive).
It uses an in-house controller in combination with Samsung's 8th generation 236-layer 3-bit MLC (TLC) V-NAND. Details about the new Presto PCIe 5.0 x4 controller are thin on the ground but what we do know is that it's built on a 5nm process supporting 8 channels running at 2,400MT/s. Samsung claims the new 9100 Pro has a 49% improved power efficiency over the Gen 4 SSD 990 Pro but uses 2.5W more power than the older drive.
At launch, the drive comes in three capacities, 1TB, 2TB (the drive we are reviewing) and a 4TB model that is the current flagship drive, though an 8TB model is due in the 3rd quarter of 2025. It is available in two versions, plain and with a factory-fitted heatsink.
Samsung rates the Sequential performance of the 2TB drive as up to 14,700MB/s for reads and up to 13,400MB/s for writes. When we tested the drive with the ATTO benchmark, the best we saw from the drive was 13,690MB/s for reads and 12,6600MB/s for writes. Switching over to the CrystalDiskMark 8 default benchmark we could confirm the official maximum figures with test results of 14,641MB/s for reads and 13,405MB/s for writes – the fastest Sequential speeds we've seen for a consumer Gen 5 drive to date using this benchmark.
When it came to 4K random performance, we couldn't get anywhere close to the official figures using our 4-threaded testing. Samsung quotes read/write figures for the 2TB drive of up to 1,850,000 IOPS and 2,600,000 IOPS respectively. With our standard 4-threaded tests the best we saw from the drive was 500,907 IOPS for reads and 461,228 IOPS for writes. In this test the drive has the fastest QD1 (97,154 IOPS), QD2 (189,444 IOPS) and QD4 (346,138 IOPS) read performance we've seen to date. Random write performance wasn't quite as impressive as the highest position it achieved in our results table was fourth at QD1 (268,424 IOPS).
The best performance figures we saw from the drive came from using the Peak Performance profile in Crystal Disk Mark 8 with reads (default) at 1,865,393 IOPS, confirming the official figure with best write result (compressed data) at 1,652,351 IOPS, way short of the official maximum.
The official random figures came from running the drive with a QD of 256 using 32 threads. We did a quick test using those parameters and with our test system, the best we saw was 1,853,968 IOPS for reads and 1,726,062 IOPS for writes.
To keep the drive cool in operation it uses a combination of the 5mm build process. a copper heat spreader built into the label on the rear of the drive, a nickel coating on the controller and Samsung’s DTG (Dynamic Thermal Guard) algorithm. The combination seems to work very well as sitting under the heatsink of the Gigabyte AORUS X670E Xtreme motherboard we used for testing, the hottest the drive got was during the CrystalDiskMark 8 0 fill Read test where it reached 46° C. For the bulk of our testing, the drive averaged 40° C with the 4K focussed tests averaging 35° C.
The 2TB Samsung SSD 9100 Pro is priced at $299.99.
Pros
- Overall performance.
- Thermal design.
- 5-year warranty.
Cons
- Tested 4K write performance couldn’t match the official maximum figures.
KitGuru says: We've waited a long, long time for Samsung to get a Gen 5 SSD into the consumer space and it's finally arrived in the shape of the 9100 Pro. It manages to combine fast performance and pretty good thermals, a neat trick considering this is a Gen 5 drive. Well worth the wait.
