Samsung had said from the outset that its blazing fast 980 Pro SSD line would eventually get a 2TB capacity model, in addition to the 1TB, 500GB, and 250GB capacities that launched in September. Making good on that promise, the 2TB model has arrived, in preorder form.
At least in the UK, that is—the 2TB 980 Pro is up for preorder at Scan for £444, and is due to arrive on January 14, according the listing. That works out to around $592 in US currency.
Pricing by territory does not always go by a straight conversion of currency, so consider that a rough estimate. As a point of reference, Scan sells the 1TB model for £222, which works out to around $296 in US currency. The same drive sells for $230 in the US. My best guess is it will land at around $500.
The 980 Pro is one of the fastest SSDs on the market. Not only does it leverage the PCI Express 4.0 bus, it's part of a newer batch of PCIe 4.0 models that sling speeds above the 5,000MB/s threshold that initial models offered. Specifically, it reads data at up to 7,000MB/s (and writes at up to 5,000MB/s).
So the speed is there, and soon users will have higher capacities to choose from as well. Not just from Samsung, either. WD is adding a 2TB model to its Black SN850 line—it's up for preorder at Newegg for $450. And like the 980 Pro, it is incredibly fast, with sequential reads of up to 7,000MB/s and sequential writes of up to 5,300MB/s.
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Of course, the best SSDs for gaming are not necessarily the absolute fastest ones. Even a SATA SSD with read and write speeds in the neighborhood of 580MB/s is great for playing games, and knocking around Windows in general.
However, developers now have tools to take better advantage of faster speeds. Namely, Microsoft released its DirectStorage API, which is based on the same underlying storage architecture (Velocity) in the Xbox Series X. So between both next-gen consoles having faster storage systems and the DirectStorage API being available in Windows, it's conceivable that speedier SSDs will play a bigger role in gaming than they have up to this point.
