Kingston Fury Renegade Vs. Samsung 990 PRO: Performance Comparison

Kingston Fury Renegade and Samsung 990 PROKingston’s Fury Renegade is an updated version of the KC3000. It uses the same high-end combination of a Phison E18 controller and 176-layer Micron NAND circuitry but offers slightly better performance. As such, the Fury Renegade is still the flagship Gen4 M.2 SSD from Kingston in 2023.

Similarly, the 990 PRO is still Samsung’s fastest consumer SSD in the second half of 2023, as neither of the two storage giants offers SSDs utilizing the faster PCIe Gen5 interface.

The 990 PRO is widely seen as the fastest SSD in the Gen4/NVMe category and usually commands a higher price than its Kingston competitor. But how do they actually differ in synthetic benchmarks and real-world scenarios?

Fury Renegade Vs. 990 PRO: Specifications

This is how the 2TB capacities of the Kingston Fury Renegade and Samsung 990 Pro compare on paper.  Full lineup specs are listed at the bottom of this page.

Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB
Samsung 990 PRO 2TB
Kingston FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 NVMe M.2 Internal Gaming SSD | Up to 7300 MB/s | Graphene Heat Spreader | 3D TLC NAND | Works with PS5 | SFYRD/2000G, Solid State Drive
SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen4, M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Hard Drive, Seq. Read Speeds Up to 7,450 MB/s for High End Computing, Gaming, and Heavy Duty Workstations, MZ-V9P2T0B/AM
Form Factor
M.2 2280
M.2 2280
Interface/Protocol
PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4
PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4
SSD Controller
Phison PS5018-E18
Proprietary Samsung (Pascal)
DRAM
2GB DDR4-2666
2GB LPDDR4-4266
NAND
176L TLC (Micron B47R)
176L TLC (Samsung V-NAND V7)
Sequential Read
7,300 MB/s
7,450 MB/s
Sequential Write
7,000 MB/s
6,900 MB/s
Random Read
1M IOPS
1.4M IOPS
Random Write
1M IOPS
1.55M IOPS
Endurance Rating
2,000 TBW
1,200 TBW
Warranty
5 Years
5 Years
Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB
Kingston FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 NVMe M.2 Internal Gaming SSD | Up to 7300 MB/s | Graphene Heat Spreader | 3D TLC NAND | Works with PS5 | SFYRD/2000G, Solid State Drive
Form Factor
M.2 2280
Interface/Protocol
PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4
SSD Controller
Phison PS5018-E18
DRAM
2GB DDR4-2666
NAND
176L TLC (Micron B47R)
Sequential Read
7,300 MB/s
Sequential Write
7,000 MB/s
Random Read
1M IOPS
Random Write
1M IOPS
Endurance Rating
2,000 TBW
Warranty
5 Years
Shopping Links
Samsung 990 PRO 2TB
SAMSUNG 990 PRO SSD NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen4, M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Hard Drive, Seq. Read Speeds Up to 7,450 MB/s for High End Computing, Gaming, and Heavy Duty Workstations, MZ-V9P2T0B/AM
Form Factor
M.2 2280
Interface/Protocol
PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4
SSD Controller
Proprietary Samsung (Pascal)
DRAM
2GB LPDDR4-4266
NAND
176L TLC (Samsung V-NAND V7)
Sequential Read
7,450 MB/s
Sequential Write
6,900 MB/s
Random Read
1.4M IOPS
Random Write
1.55M IOPS
Endurance Rating
1,200 TBW
Warranty
5 Years
Shopping Links

Last update on 2024-10-06 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

The Fury Renegade and 990 PRO seem to be evenly matched when you look at the specifications. Both use 176-layer TLC NAND along with a 2 GB DDR4 DRAM buffer, which places both drives in the high-end space.

Sequential performance also more or less max out the PCI-Express 4.0 interface in both cases, but the Samsung SSD pulls ahead in the random IOPS area (often a solid indicator of real-world performance).

While not performance-related, it should also be pointed out that the Kingston Fury Renegade offers a significantly better endurance rating than its Samsung counterpart.

Fury Renegade Vs. 990 PRO: Performance

In any event, specification tables are not the same thing as real-world performance. Here is our comparison data, based on our full reviews of the 2TB Samsung 990 PRO and the 2TB Kingston Fury Renegade.

AS SSD Sequential Performance

Fury Renegade Vs 990 PRO AS SSD chart

Sequential performance results from the AS SSD benchmark are lower than the specified maximums, as it measures using non-compressible data. That doesn’t stop the Kingston Fury Renegade from Samsung 990 PRO from being top performers compared to most other SSDs. The 990 PRO is nevertheless slightly faster.

CrystalDiskMark Sequential & Random Performance

Fury Renegade Vs 990 PRO CrystalDiskMark sequential performance chart

CrystalDiskMark results are typically closer to theoretical maximum performance. Here, the results are mixed, with the Fury Renegade being ahead by 2,4% in writes and the Samsung leading by 1,2% in sequential reads. Largely irrelevant differences in both cases.

Fury Renegade Vs 990 PRO CrystalDiskMark random performance chart

More significant differences can be spotted with 4K random data at minimum queue depth – an area that mirrors many real-world scenarios. The Samsung 990 PRO is ahead of its rival here, by 20.1% (read) and 19% (write), respectively.

Latency (Anvil’s Storage Utilities)

Fury Renegade Vs 990 PRO latency chart

Latency is important in most everyday workloads. Again, the Samsung 990 PRO is more responsive than the Kingston Fury Renegade by 22.5% and 15.4%, respectively, in read/write latency at 4K.

Fury Renegade Vs. 990 PRO: Real-World Performance

Fury Renegade Vs 990 PRO PCMark 10 App start-up chart

PCMark 10 includes an “App Start-up times” test using a variety of common office apps. The 990 PRO is faster than the Fury Renegade on average.

Fury Renegade Vs 990 PRO game level loading times chart

The 990 PRO’s slight lead over the Fury Renegade can also be seen in the standalone Final Fantasy Shadowbringer benchmark. This test combines loading times for five different game levels. Of course, a difference of 0.3 seconds across five different levels is not enough to be noticeable. In fact, even an external SSD in an M.2 enclosure can offer more than decent performance in this benchmark.

3DMark Storage Benchmark

Fury Renegade Vs 990 PRO 3DMark Storage Benchmark chart

The storage benchmark built into 3DMark uses a more comprehensive range of gaming tasks including level loading as well as installation, copying, and recording. Here, Samsung’s 990 PRO ends up being 22.8% faster than the Kingston Fury Renegade.

PlayStation 5 Read Speed Test

Fury Renegade Vs 990 PRO PlayStation 5 performance chart

Both the Samsung 990 PRO and Kingston Fury Renegade easily exceed Sony’s minimum specs for use as PS5 storage expansion drives, although you should opt for the variants equipped with a heatsink to fully comply with Sony’s recommendations.  The difference between the two SSDs is negligible in the PS5’s built-in read speed test. 

Conclusion

samsung 990 pro 2tb box

Although its maximum sequential performance isn’t always faster, the Samsung 990 PRO is ahead of the Kingston Fury Renegade on average. However, the differences are not necessarily noticeable as they are often measured in fractions of a second.

read more:

Samsung 990 PRO Series Specifications

Samsung 990 PRO
Specifications
1TB2TB4TB
Form FactorM.2 2280M.2 2280M.2 2280
Interface/
Protocol
PCIe 4.0 x4/
NVMe 2.0
PCIe 4.0 x4/
NVMe 2.0
PCIe 4.0 x4/
NVMe 2.0
ControllerPascalPascalPascal
DRAM1GB LPDDR42GB LPDDR44GB LPDDR4
Memory176-layer
3D TLC
176-layer
3D TLC
176-layer
3D TLC
Sequential Read7,450 MB/s7,450 MB/s7,450 MB/s
Sequential Write6,900 MB/s6,900 MB/s6,900 MB/s
Random Read1.2M IOPS1.4M IOPS1.4M IOPS
Random Write1.55M IOPS1.55M IOPS1.55M IOPS
Endurance600 TBW1,200 TBW2,400 TBW
Warranty5-Year5-Year5-Year

WD Black SN850X Series Specifications

Kingston
Fury Renegade
500GB1TB2TB4TB
Form FactorM.2 2280M.2 2280M.2 2280M.2 2280
Interface / ProtocolPCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4
ControllerPhison E18Phison E18Phison E18Phison E18
DRAM512 MB DDR4-26661 GB DDR4-26662 GB DDR4-26664 GB DDR4-2666
Memory176-Layer TLC176-Layer TLC176-Layer TLC176-Layer TLC
Sequential Read7,300 MB/s7,300 MB/s7,300 MB/s7,300 MB/s
Sequential Write3,900 MB/s6,000 MB/s7,000 MB/s7,000 MB/s
Random Read450K IOPS900K IOPS1M IOPS1M IOPS
Random Write900K IOPS1M IOPS1M IOPS1M IOPS
Endurance500 TBW1,000 TBW2,000 TBW4,000 TBW
Warranty5 Years5 Years5 Years5 Years
Latest Price*$148.99
Shopping LinksAmazon
Newegg
Jesper Berg
Jesper Berg

I got started with PC building in the 3dfx Voodoo era somewhere back in the 1990s, and have been writing for tech publications for a bit more than a decade. In other words old enough to have lost count of the times PC gaming has been pronounced dead.

2 Comments
  1. Why is there basically no difference in the PS5 test?

    • Hey Avyaan, TBH the built-in PS5 benchmark isn’t overly useful for predicting actual performance, but it’s the only one available… In reality, any high-end drive will do just nicely.

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