SSD sata vs SSD m2

[robblok]

I recently upgraded a computer in my gym room for VR. At first i thought i could just use a normal SSD 256gb sata connection. But as VR is real demanding i noticed long load times. I decided to get an 500 GB SSD m2 and plugged it in the mainboard. The speed difference was amazing. It seems that even between SSD there is still a lot of difference speed wise.

 

Of course this is not only between M2 and Sata but individual drives too but I am wagering that in general M2 is faster due to the connection. I noticed a real speed change, but this was of course with VR and VR is demanding. I mean VR games are often 20GB and take a lot of loading. 

 

I certainly like the M2 drives a lot I got one in every one of my 3 computers at home. 

[Vacuum]

If you want speed, try a PCLe SSD.

Edited October 21, 2018 by Vacuum

[robblok]

7 minutes ago, Vacuum said:

If you want speed, try a PCLe SSD.

Both use M2 as a port.. a M2 port can be PCI or sata

[Pib]

Yeap, all M-2 ports on computers and M-2 SSDs are not created equal.  You could plug a M-2 drive into your computer and it would not be any faster a 2.5 inch SSD.  Other things to consider does the SSD and M-2 port use NVMe transfer protocol.  These two Youtube videos do a pretty good job of covering the things a person needs to fully understand when getting ready to buy a M-2 SSD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 21, 2018 by Pib

[robblok]

13 hours ago, Pib said:

Yeap, all M-2 ports on computers and M-2 SSDs are not created equal.  You could plug a M-2 drive into your computer and it would not be any faster a 2.5 inch SSD.  Other things to consider does the SSD and M-2 port use NVMe transfer protocol.  These two Youtube videos do a pretty good job of covering the things a person needs to fully understand when getting ready to buy a M-2 SSD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great posts, as I had the new motherboards they did work with NVME and i did get the real fast speeds and it was noticeable. I had the Samsung EVO 970 these are fast and good M.2 drives plus most newer motherboards have the fast protocol. 

 

I am not sure i would have noticed it much if I was not using VR but VR is just real demanding. 

[ETatBKK]

just a point of experiment, you may consider putting TWO EVO 970 in RAID, that optimise the read and write buses; if this setup give you another % of loading time for your VR.  I use this x2 Pro 960 RAID for CAD / design applications and see slightly read time write time advantage.

 

also come with the Samsung M.2, the Samsung Magician allows a RAPID mode in Windows 10, that gains real-world speed improvement.  oh . . . you may need a higher RAM capacity for it.

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/magician/

 

cheers

 

 

EDIT :

Samsung Magician was designed for SSD sata interface.

Edited October 22, 2018 by ETatBKK

[mtls2005]

A newer MB might have two (2) M.2 slots, one might be PCIe 3.0 x2 while the other might be PCIe 3.0 x4. Obviously, the latter will get the highest performance.

 

I guess you'd need two M.2 x4 slots for the best performance in a dual app like RAID? Or maybe a PCIe x8 or x16 adapter which can accept two M.2 drives?

 

You also need the latest firmware for the drive and MB. Took me a while to get up to 3,000 MB/s (which is the expected performance), but got it sorted.

 

Samsung 960 Evo NVMe PCIe M.2

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2018
 

  Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3082.583 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :  1318.922 MB/s

  

 

 

 

 

 

[robblok]

28 minutes ago, mtls2005 said:

A newer MB might have two (2) M.2 slots, one might be PCIe 3.0 x2 while the other might be PCIe 3.0 x4. Obviously, the latter will get the highest performance.

 

I guess you'd need two M.2 x4 slots for the best performance in a dual app like RAID? Or maybe a PCIe x8 or x16 adapter which can accept two M.2 drives?

 

You also need the latest firmware for the drive and MB. Took me a while to get up to 3,000 MB/s (which is the expected performance), but got it sorted.

 

Samsung 960 Evo NVMe PCIe M.2

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2018
 

  Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  3082.583 MB/s
  Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :  1318.922 MB/s

 

Updating bios firmware is something i know how to do (and have done). Is there a tool to update firmware on SSD drives from Samsung too ?

[robblok]

1 hour ago, robblok said:

Updating bios firmware is something i know how to do (and have done). Is there a tool to update firmware on SSD drives from Samsung too ?

I found it myself and updated it.. did not realize that SSD had their own firmware needs too. Will check the other PC's too

[robblok]

I got the read write data .. is a samsung SSD 970 EV 2TB. It was faster now as before the firmware update. 

[mtls2005]

To my untrained eye, that looks like it's in a M.2 NVMe PCIe x4 slot, and maybe configured for max. performance? That drive looks to be specced to: Sequential Read Speed

Up to 3,500 MB/s * Performance may vary based on system hardware & configuration

 

Mine is specced to 3,200 MB/s max. I had it in an x2 slot so was previously getting ~ 1,700 MB/s - I didn't realize they were different threads/lanes/speeds until trouble-shooting.

 

Samsung Magician can be used to check/upgrade any SSD firmware, AFAIK?

[robblok]

41 minutes ago, mtls2005 said:

To my untrained eye, that looks like it's in a M.2 NVMe PCIe x4 slot, and maybe configured for max. performance? That drive looks to be specced to: Sequential Read Speed

Up to 3,500 MB/s * Performance may vary based on system hardware & configuration

 

Mine is specced to 3,200 MB/s max. I had it in an x2 slot so was previously getting ~ 1,700 MB/s - I didn't realize they were different threads/lanes/speeds until trouble-shooting.

 

Samsung Magician can be used to check/upgrade any SSD firmware, AFAIK?

Yes samsung Magician can be used for updating the SSD, that is what i used. I think it is indeed a PCIe x4 slot and configured for max performance.

I knew there were different speeds and am quite happy with the performance. I really like a fast computer.

[SpaceKadet]

Yes, the speed difference between SATA SSD and M.2 NVMe can be quite substantial.

The reason is that the SSD connected to the SATA interface can only use the max bandwidth for that interface, which for SATA 3 is 600MB/s. If you look around you will see that there aren't any SATA connected SSDs with higher throughput.

The M.2 on the other hand connects directly to the 4 lanes of your processor's PCIe bus, with the theoretical max bandwidth of 4GB/s. I.e. over 6 times faster.

Since I've started using M.2 NVMe drives I never looked back. Now I'm using a relatively small (250GB) NVMe drive for system, 500GB SATA SSD for games, and normal spinners for the rest of data where speed is not important. As far as spinners go, Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200rpm is a speed demon in the spinner category and hard to beat in price/performance.

[Pib]

6 hours ago, robblok said:

I found it myself and updated it.. did not realize that SSD had their own firmware needs too. Will check the other PC's too

Just for others listening in I expect you mean you used Samsung Magician software to do the update as Magician does a variety of Samsung SSD maintenance/monitoringactivity and one of those automatically checking for new SSD firmware every time you open Magician.... and if it shows there is an update it's pretty much just a click of a few icons within Magician and the SSD firmware is updated.

 

Edit:  whoops...my bad....replied too soon....just noticed in reading more posts in this thread you mentioned in a later post you did use Magician.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Pib

[robblok]

14 hours ago, Pib said:

Just for others listening in I expect you mean you used Samsung Magician software to do the update as Magician does a variety of Samsung SSD maintenance/monitoringactivity and one of those automatically checking for new SSD firmware every time you open Magician.... and if it shows there is an update it's pretty much just a click of a few icons within Magician and the SSD firmware is updated.

 

Edit:  whoops...my bad....replied too soon....just noticed in reading more posts in this thread you mentioned in a later post you did use Magician.

Yes  did use it,  thought i had a samsung ssd in each of my computers.. but one had a plexor in, still have to update that one will have to find the software. I must say the samsung seems to be the better one in making its software easy to find.

 

I am used to updating firmware in my NAS drive, Motherboards, router, and sometimes keyboard and mouse or headset.. just never thought about the SSD too. 

[Pepper9187]

On 10/22/2018 at 11:34 AM, ETatBKK said:

just a point of experiment, you may consider putting TWO EVO 970 in RAID, that optimise the read and write buses; if this setup give you another % of loading time for your VR.  I use this x2 Pro 960 RAID for CAD / design applications and see slightly read time write time advantage.

 

also come with the Samsung M.2, the Samsung Magician allows a RAPID mode in Windows 10, that gains real-world speed improvement.  oh . . . you may need a higher RAM capacity for it.

https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/magician/

 

cheers

 

 

EDIT :

Samsung Magician was designed for SSD sata interface.

 

mmmm wouldn't recommend raid 0 m.2 drives, the benefits in real life are not measurable unless you are transferring / reading large files, otherwise it's gona have pretty much the same performances as a single drive.

 

If you want to be a badass ???? you can still use one of these ASUS 4x nvme raid 0 card if you got the money (proper CPU / mobo) https://www.asus.com/Motherboard-Accessory/HYPER-M-2-X16-CARD/specifications/