A high-power pulsed pump method is proposed to obtain a high-energy output with an improved signaltonoise ratio (SNR) during pulse amplification. Based on numerical analysis, the ytterbium-doped fiber amplifiers are compared under different pumping conditions. At the same signal gain, the output using the high-power pulsed pump shows great SNR improvement and reduced output signal distortion, compared with a continuous-wave pump and a low-power pulsed pump. By adjusting the pump parameters, the amplifier can achieve the optimal output SNR without sacrificing the signal gain. We believe that the high-power pulsed pump scheme is very suitable for the high-energy nanosecond pulse amplification, which has a high SNR requirement.