Samsung Electronics said Wednesday that the company will roll out the first consumer drive without DRAM -- the 980 Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) SSD, which delivers the highest performance among DRAM-less SSDs at a faster speed.

Previously, DRAM-less designs had a disadvantage in speed as they lacked the short-term memory for fast access to data.

To address the issue and overcome any performance drawbacks, Samsung used the Host Memory Buffer technology, which links the drive directly to the host processor’s DRAM.

This technology, coupled with the company’s latest sixth-generation V-NAND as well as its optimized controller and firmware, enables the 980 to deliver NVMe performance at six times the speed of SATA SSDs.

Sequential read and write speeds come in at up to 3,500 and 3,000 megabytes per second.

“The 980 offers an excellent blend of speed, power efficiency and reliability, making it suitable for everyday PC users and gamers as well as content creators,” said Lee Kyu-young, vice president at Samsung.

Dropping DRAM allowed Samsung to cut its manufacturing costs and offer consumer drives at more affordable prices, the company added.

The 980 is available in about 40 countries including the United States, South Korea, Germany and China. It comes in three models by storage volume at different prices: 250 GB for $49.99, 500 GB for $69.99 and 1 TB for $129.99.

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)