Samsung 980 Pro 500GB NVME M2 drive - very low write speeds

[Members_Ex6wkUY]

Hi all,

I've noted in the last few days that my PC has felt pretty sluggish, both in starting up and also running applications. I have a Samsung 980 Pro 500GB NVME M2 drive.

Upon checking in Samsung Magician, the write speeds have nose-dived, to around 25% of what they were previously. See image attached.

I've gone through all the usual checks. Samsung Magician is updated. There's no Firmware pending. Motherboard chipset drivers are up to date. I've rebooted several times, ensuring that the PCI settings in BIOS are correct (Gen 4). Nothing makes a difference.

Notable changes to the OS in the timeframes involved would be the Cumulative Update For Windows 10 Version 20H2 which took place on the 12th of December but as you can see on the attached image, the write speed was fine on the 14th of December, so unlikely to be related. Nothing else has changed on the system.

Motherboard is MSI MEG Godlike x570 with latest BIOS and chipset drivers (via AMD directly) running a 5950x CPU. I've also attempted reinstall of the chipset drivers, which has made no difference.

I've performed a TRIM on the drive, no difference.

Can anyone help? I don't know where else to turn with this.

[Members_Ex6wkUY]

After having no replies here and a stock response from Samsung support directly, I did lots more digging.

Turns out, these drives suffer from cache write speed fallofs, after a period of usage. See this article..

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/samsung-980-pro-m-2-nvme-ssd-review/2?fbclid=IwAR1PRcY6Vmx6D...

Specifically this text..

You have to be careful when filling up the 980 Pro because it will do so quicker than you might expect. Samsung's 980 Pro sustained 100GB of writes to its TurboWrite cache at a rate of 4.5 GBps before performance degraded. Once its cache filled, write speed averaged 1 GBps until full, outwriting the competition. Cache recovery is on the slower side, however. While the static 6GB cache recovered immediately, the 'Intelligent' dynamic cache did not recover within a half-hour idle window.

What I've found, so far, is that this issue simply requires the 980 to clear its cache. I have two drives, a 500 and 1TB and both had this problem. The 1TB, after several hours of downloading games and then immediately playing a game, saw write speed drop to 1600mb from what should be about 5000mb. Leaving the PC idle for 5-10 minutes saw the write speed resume to normal.

The 500gb went through several reformat/reimage attempts, all of which failed to rectify the write problem (this was before I knew about the above issue). However, the final attempt which also included a secure erase, then saw me leave the PC idle for a couple of hours. Upon returning, the write speed was back to normal.

So if you find your 980 write speed impacted in this way and evidenced via Samsung Magician performance tests, leave your PC idle for a couple of hours and then retest. You may find the issue has been fixed, without having to waste any of your valuable time reformatting the drive or wasted with Samsung "support".

[TehSpyKeeR]

Same problem here...

Everything is up to date :
ROG BIOS Updated last version 
AMD Chipset Drivers Last version
Samsung Magician Last Version
980 PRO firmware updated

This drive is my Windows Drive, i doesn't want to Secure Erase it just because a Cache TurboWrite thing is fulled of something i doesn't want to be cached... How can i clear this cache...


I bought this drive so called : "The best" and now is worse than a SATA SSD ... 

Pls do something samsung ! 

[User_67Ntg0Z]

Hi,

Any updates from Samsung regarding this issue? Flagship SSD for individual customers and no support?
How can I return my 980 "PRO" as it is out of specification?
Every time I test SSD with Samsung Magician or some other program, the result is the same. Four times slower write speed than stated in the specification. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, whether the drive is empty or full. The result is always the same. write around 1122.99 MB/s to 1719 MB/s

[TehSpyKeeR]

Hi everyone ! 

A New update of the firmware for the 980 Pro finally correct the problem ! 

Need to Open/Close Magician multiple times to get the Update on it.

Last Magician Software update on middle of march, implemented the "Full Power Mode" function, and i left enabled it (Which makes my 980 Pro hotter, without performance gain)
But the firmware update won't works with it, every time i get an error on updating firmware.
I disabled the Full Power Mode function, restart, and after a reboot, i finally get the update working.

Now i'm on the 3B2QGXA7 Firmware and my Speed is finally correct, hope, it will stay like that!

[Ultraboss77]

Hi there,

I did the firmware update on 1st May, and I ran a bench test :

Ok performance was restored, but after a day, hibernate or reboot, write speed are capped again...

980Pro 500GB on PCIE 3.0 ~75% space used.

[TehSpyKeeR]

no problem for me for the moment (after 6-7 days from the last firmware update)
980Pro 500GB on PCI4.0 40% space used. (OS Disk)

No hibernation.

[Wim-Bart]

Having latest firmware and issue still exists. So the firmware update is not working. So i think the drives are hardware defective. I buy a 980 PRO because it stands for the best of the best on consumer SSD, but actually it is terrible worse product not worth the name PRO.

[mahouti]

I am here to tell you that the Samsung SSD 990 PRO also has the same problem 😞

The read speed is above 7000 MB/s but the Write is about 450MB/s !!!!

I am not able to find any solution or firmware to fix this problem, it's sad to see the older version had that problem and despite that, they didn't fix that in the newer version!

Motherboard: MSI Z-790 Carbon wifi

CPU: i9 13900k 

[Jonoesteban]

Same problem since i bought the 980 Pro two weeks ago, when i plug it in PCIe 3 slot the speed is exactly the half it should be (3500 mb/s seuqential read and writte), so the problem could be with the PCIe 4, i don't know but im seriusly thinkin on plug it in the PCIe 3. Finally, what about the temp? never drops bellow 48° with heatsink, but again when i plug it in the PCIe 3 the temps goes normal, 37°.