Samsung has launched the latest in its Pro series of NVMe SSDs, the 990 PRO.

The new PCIe 4.0 drive is blazing fast, offering speeds of up to 7,450 MB/s on the reads and 6,900 MB/s on the writes.

In addition, it brings 55 per cent bump in random performance over the 980 Pro with up to 1,550K IOPS.

Obviously, with specs like this, the drive is going to be a beast for gaming, and Samsung has performed some testing to prove this.

The new drive was tested with Forspoken and the map loading time was just one second, compared to four seconds with a SATA SSD and 28 seconds on an old-school HDD.

Power efficiency is improved significantly, too, an increase of 50 per cent over the previous top dog, the 980 Pro.

Samsung launches the 990 Pro SSD, its speediest drive so far photo 1

"With continuing innovations in gaming, 4K and 8K technology as well as AI-driven applications, consumers’ need for high-performance storage is growing exponentially," said KyuYoung Lee, VP of the memory brand product team at Samsung Electronics.

"The 990 Pro provides an optimal balance of speed, power efficiency and reliability, making it an ideal choice for avid gamers and creative professionals seeking uninterrupted work and play."

As with previous releases, the 990 Pro employs a heat-spreading label to aid in thermal management, but if you need superior cooling, a version with a dedicated heatsink will be made available. Perfect for PS5 users.

The 990 Pro will be available worldwide starting this October at $179 / £154.99 for the 1TB model and $309 / £283.99 for the 2TB. A 4TB capacity version will be launching at a later date.