Cons of using the m.2 sata or pci-e

[SelenaGomez]

What are the pros and cons of buying a Samsung 960 m.2 or 950 m.2pro over the Samsung 850 pro? I know that the 960 pro is obviously much faster in many ways but not all ways I read. But can you list all the pros and cons or upgrading to a samsung 960 or 950 pro over the samsung 850 pro?

 

[UsandThem]

Almost every review of the 960 EVO and PRO and 950 PRO, includes the 850 PRO as a reference point. So you can see exactly what the performance differences are. And if you can't interpret the individual pages where they discuss and show the differences, you can skip to the end/final thoughts, and they tell you about the differences in "layman" terms.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10833/the-samsung-960-evo-1tb-review

http://www.storagereview.com/samsung_960_evo_m2_nvme_ssd_review

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-960-evo-nvme-ssd-review,4802.html

So in basic terms, the 960 PRO is the fastest followed by the 960 EVO. However, in very few of the benchmarks the 960 EVO or 950 PRO might be slightly faster, but on the whole the 960 PRO is the king.

The only question is if you actually do anything that work wise that would benefit from all that speed? The cons of the 960 PRO/EVO compared to the 850 PRO and 950 PRO? The price (more expensive than the 850 PRO) and warranty length.

Warranty Length (or TBW - Terabytes Written varies on size of the drive - Available on Samsung website):

960 PRO - 5 year
960 EVO - 3 year
950 PRO - 5 year
850 PRO - 10 year

 

[FFFF]

The cons of the 960 PRO/EVO compared to the 850 PRO and 950 PRO? The price (more expensive than the 850 PRO) and warranty length.

You forgot about the likely thermal throttling occurring on M.2 NVMe SSD when not using a decent heatsink.

 

[UsandThem]

You forgot about the likely thermal throttling occurring on M.2 NVMe SSD when not using a decent heatsink.

It's not needed for normal desktop use. And the 960 EVO/PRO are even better on writes before they throttle. The hottest temp my 960 EVO achieved during benchmarking was 58c, well under the throttle ceiling.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-960-pro-ssd-review,4774.html

The Samsung 950 Pro 512GB flagship SSD would enter the thermal throttle state after 63 seconds of reading data and 65 seconds of writing data. The drive would read 158GB of data and write 93GB of data during that time. You would need to transfer more than three Blu-Ray ISO files from the drive to another high-speed storage product to reach the throttle threshold. Going the other way, you would need to write two full-size Blu-Ray ISO files to the drive to kick into the thermal protection mode.

Samsung increased the thermal performance with the 960 Pro, which can now read for 95 seconds and write for 147 seconds before throttling. Samsung's new Dynamic Thermal Guard technology employs a combination of an improved management algorithm and a novel sticker to combat any thermal throttling issues. The new sticker has a copper film embedded in between the layers, so it acts as a heatsink for the entire drive. The sticker reduces the SSDs temperature, and it even works in restricted airflow environments, like laptops.

Now if we were talking about the OCZ RD400, Plextor M8PeGN, or the Patriot Hellfire, that's a different story.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Interestingly, despite the shorter warranties, the 1TB 960 Evo has a higher TBW endurance rating than the comparable 850 Pro drive and the 960 Pro trounces that.

300TBW for the 512GB-2TB 850 Pro
400TBW for the 1TB 960 Evo
800TBW for the 1TB 960 Pro
1200TBW for the 2TB 960 Pro

They must be really confident about that new V-NAND.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Isn't the 850 an SATA M.2 with the same performance limit as any SATA SSD? Or is it better?

But -- correct me if wrong -- you can work NVMe into the motherboard slot and share bandwidth with SATA-Express_1. At least -- on my Z170 ASUS motherboard. I wouldn't know exactly how it works with X99 and/or U.2.

This is all freakin' new to me . . . .

As for the cooling. The KryoM.2 with passive heatsink doesn't cost that much. For about half that price, you can get a cheap Gnome-Tech M.2 cooler, but you may need to find an independent source for those blue mushy rubbery thermal pads. So -- there's an extra cost for the $15 saving.

But I see our colleague XabanakFanatik is posting here -- and he's done much more in investigation of the cooling solutions.

If you work the KryoM.2's deployment into the layout of your case interior and maybe side-panel fan or fans, you could almost put the PCIEx4 M.2 cards in their own wind-tunnel. Given the temperatures I've seen in my rig, I cannot imagine why someone would want to use the water-cooled version of the Kryo. But -- whatever floats your boat . . . Hah! Get it? H2O!

I'm getting ready to add the second KryoM.2 + Sammy 960EVO 250GB to my remaining PCIE_x16_2 slot. I'm just trying to think of a reason why I wouldn't want it there in the first place, but I saw the stats on the difference between a GTX 1070 in x16 versus x8. A 1% difference.

 

[SelenaGomez]

I read that booting into windows is much slower using the 960 or 950 over the 850 for some reason i dont remember.

 

[SelenaGomez]

I guess basically what i am asking for is some opinions on is it worth it for me. I know nobody can really answer that but me but im looking for insite anyways. I play games alot and use the computer alot but not for any big tasks and video editing etc etc. Is he 960 evo really worth $250-ish dollars more? basically a little more than double the price.

I know the 960 is much faster than the 850 but thats on benchmarks. Is it noticeable at all in real world use? loading games, installing big games and programs, transfering files from desktop to portable drives, unzipping multiple GB movie files etc. Is it really worth it?

Also , I should mention that i have the Asus z170- A motherboard and currently using the samsung 830 pro and have no issues at all and always working at top performance after 5 years. Just feel like its time for a faster upgrade.

In reviews the 960 evo seems to be much slower with random 4k transfer read and write and IOPS than the 850 evo

 

[UsandThem]

I guess basically what i am asking for is some opinions on is it worth it for me. I know nobody can really answer that but me but im looking for insite anyways. I play games alot and use the computer alot but not for any big tasks and video editing etc etc.

Nope

I know the 960 is much faster than the 850 but thats on benchmarks. Is it noticeable at all in real world use? loading games, installing big games and programs, transfering files from desktop to portable drives, unzipping multiple GB movie files etc. Is it really worth it?

Loading some games is slightly quicker. Some games load in the same amount of time as an 850 EVO or MX300. If you transfer files to a portable drive, you are limited to that's drive speed, and to USB 2.0/3.0/3.1 speed. Installing programs is overall quicker, but SATA SSDs like the 850 EVO and MX300 are pretty quick in themselves. Again, not worth it in your case.

Also , I should mention that i have the Asus z170- A motherboard and currently using the samsung 830 pro and have no issues at all and always working at top performance after 5 years. Just feel like its time for a faster upgrade.

For a practical purchase, buy an 850 EVO or Crucial MX300 if you have the upgrade itch. Both are a good deal faster than your 830 EVO. Or spend the extra money and buy a 960 EVO. Many people don't factor in "need" when making component purchases, and are driven by "want".

In reviews the 960 evo seems to be much slower with random 4k transfer read and write and IOPS than the 850 evo

As shown in every review I linked to earlier, not at. In fact, it is about 3 times faster than SATA drives. But from the computer uses you listed above, it really doesn't make any difference for your use.

I read that booting into windows is much slower using the 960 or 950 over the 850 for some reason i dont remember.

It takes Windows about 5 seconds to load with a 950/960, and about 8 seconds for a drive like the 850 EVO or MX300.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

I can attest to an overall snappier experience with a 960 Pro vs an 850 Evo. Apps open faster (some that seemed instantaneous before like Chrome now seem like they open before I finish clicking the mouse) I run programs like Visual Studio, Unity, and some other stuff that really benefit from the speed. Loading a scene, compiling a program, reloading files, etc. Seems all faster.

I cant attest for the 960 Evo yet since I haven't done anything with it yet. All the testing I've done show it to be faster than the 850 Evo in every measurable way. Im not sure where you saw a 960 Evo with slower 4k since the QD1 is 25-100% faster and the QD 32 is 2.3-4x faster on the 960 Evo. (Unless you were seeing a 250GB score, that drive isn't quite in the same ballpark as the 1TB)

I won't be buying a SATA drive again as I feel like its EOL - we've been bouncing off the limits of bandwidth and the limits of the AHCI protocol for several years now. Its infuriating that adoption of newer technologies has been so slow by manufacturers, so prices are a little nuts.

While I dont think you have a good use case for a 960, I think you could still notice the extra speed and snappiness in day-to-day stuff. I do, because I dual boot Windows on my 960 Pro and my 850 Evo, so the drive performance is isolated and very obvious.

I also think youll have to make your mind up for yourself. The only advice I really want to give is: always buy at least the smallest drive that has all channels in use, or rather has the maximum performance, if you can afford it. The 500GB 850 Evo is that drive. The 1TB 960 Evo is that drive. And the 1TB 960 Pro is that drive. If you buy anything smaller you're throwing away performance.

 

[ashetos]

There are 2 theoretical disadvantages than I cannot validate cause they don't really test them in reviews.
1. For the m.2 form factor, writing hundreds of gigabytes can be slow due to throttling.
2. For the pci-e protocol, running on battery mode can be slower than SATA due to power saving features.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

There are 2 theoretical disadvantages than I cannot validate cause they don't really test them in reviews.
1. For the m.2 form factor, writing hundreds of gigabytes can be slow due to throttling.
2. For the pci-e protocol, running on battery mode can be slower than SATA due to power saving features.

There's been plenty of testing on the first topic. You can find information about it if you look. Look at our thread here. There's at least one thermal review linked and lots of discussion about various coolers. The review is of a 950 Pro, and if you keep in mind the 960 series is much cooler (performs for around 50-75% longer before throttling) and other drives like the M8PE and RD400 are much hotter, you can kind of figure out what drives you need to worry about and what cooling solutions are appropriate.

Edit: More testing here and here.

As for 2, I also have not seen any testing outside of a desktop environment to see what performance is like with power saving features enabled. It could be interesting as I generally see worse performance in laptops on NVME drives and I wasn't sure why.

 

[UsandThem]

As for 2, I also have not seen any testing outside of a desktop environment to see what performance is like with power saving features enabled. It could be interesting as I generally see worse performance in laptops on NVME drives and I wasn't sure why.

I think even with the power setting set to 'battery saver', NVMe drives simply use more power than their SATA counterparts at idle and load. If I were going to install a NVMe drive in a laptop (which I personally wouldn't do), it would have to be a 960 EVO or PRO. Drives like the OCZ RD400, Patriot Hellfire, and Plextor M8Pe just are too hot and use significantly more power. A person would almost certainly see throttling in a laptop from those drives due to lack of cooling.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11104/the-patriot-hellfire-m2-480gb-review-phison-nvme-tested/9

The Patriot Hellfire has by far the worst power management, and is barely able to get below 1 W even in the deepest low-power state. If NVMe power saving is not used, the Hellfire never drops below 2 watts

I can attest to an overall snappier experience with a 960 Pro vs an 850 Evo. Apps open faster (some that seemed instantaneous before like Chrome now seem like they open before I finish clicking the mouse) I run programs like Visual Studio, Unity, and some other stuff that really benefit from the speed. Loading a scene, compiling a program, reloading files, etc. Seems all faster.

I think this describes the difference between a NVMe and SATA drive pretty well. With a fast SATA SSD, most normal usage in Windows is "almost instantaneous". With a NVMe SSD, it is instantaneous. I am happy with my 960 EVO, and I feel it was a good investment on my part.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

As I keep saying too many times, I've experimented with NVMe M.2 SSD-caching for SATA SSDs and HDDs. Keep in mind that I was working more with Win 7 than Win 10 until early this month, and I can see that the newer OS has a snappier feel to it and may actually use less RAM. The experience I refer to here occurred under Win 7. I had stored my Steam games on a Barracuda spinner -- a 5,400RPM 2.5" laptop spinner!

My PrimoCache configuration including about 5GB RAM for RAM-cache, and half of a 250GB 960 EVO NVMe. Once the EVO's caching volume began to fill, I could really, really notice a difference during game-play, and it was almost scary. There was no comparison between that configuration and simply caching the spinner to RAM.

The paradox: with version 2.7 of Primo, you cannot measure the effect of the SSD-caching with conventional benchtests, but only the RAM-cache. It uses a stealthy caching strategy, filling the cache when the system is at idle so as not to hog clock-cycles and bandwidth. Version 3.0 will change that.

If I didn't believe what I saw, I wouldn't be moving cautiously toward adding a cache volume to my 960 Pro, which already contains the two OS system volumes. But I've tried it briefly so far. I just want to make sure the system is rock-solid stable, blue event logs, perfect sleep and hibernation, etc.

And that's where we are. Perfect. This will just be the cherry on top of the ice-cream soda.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think this describes the difference between a NVMe and SATA drive pretty well. With a fast SATA SSD, most normal usage in Windows is "almost instantaneous". With a NVMe SSD, it is instantaneous. I am happy with my 960 EVO, and I feel it was a good investment on my part.

I wish I could say that. Maybe my mind is being swayed by the benchmarks, but not only does my Adata SX8000 M.2 NVMe 128GB SSD benchmark slower than my PNY CS1111 2.5" SATA SSD, it feels slightly slower too.

Not a lot of difference either way, though.

When I upgraded my Z170 BCLK OCed G4400 rigs, from Crucial M500 240GB drives, to 128GB Samsung SM951 drives, now that was a definite improvement, from "fast" to "instant".

 

[lopri]

Add to what has been said above, M.2 takes up motherboard's real estate or you have to use a PCIe adapter which has its own drawbacks. (e.g. having to configure boot setting, heat by an adjacent video card, slower booting, etc.) SATA still offers an adequate performance with a near-universal compatibility and flexibility.

 

[UsandThem]

I wish I could say that. Maybe my mind is being swayed by the benchmarks, but not only does my Adata SX8000 M.2 NVMe 128GB SSD benchmark slower than my PNY CS1111 2.5" SATA SSD, it feels slightly slower too.

Not a lot of difference either way, though.

Doesn't the SX8000 use the same controller as the Intel 600p?

There isn't a day I am thankful Newegg raised their prices above MSRP on the 600p, which caused me not to order it. Shortly after that the reviews started coming out, and we all found out what dog it was (at least compared to other NVMe drives).

Then it made sense why Intel didn't send those drives out to be reviewed before launch.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I read that booting into windows is much slower using the 960 or 950 over the 850 for some reason i dont remember.

True but not true.

When you press the power button, the motherboard and BIOS identify and activate all your devices, then tells Windows to start booting. Then Windows boots. It's a many-step process.

PCI SSDs add a few seconds to the first part (the BIOS initialization) - most PCI devices add a second or two, even simple ones like NICs. So does having more RAM. I've even had delays caused by cranky thumb drives and other USB devices. To say nothing of what happens when one of your devices starts to fail.

If you have certain combinations of drives and motherboards, the delay can be longer - I've seen ~10 seconds myself, but heard complaints of up to 30.

The second part (the actual Windows boot process) is crazy-fast with an SSD, and faster with a PCI drive, but not necessarily enough to make up the initial difference. So it might take an extra few seconds to get from pressing the power button to a usable Windows desktop.

But a faster PCI SSD will also save you time during normal use, though. So it basically comes down to that ten seconds or less during boot, to save time later with faster file transfers, application launching, etc. Most people will make that tradeoff. There's also the issue of how often you actually reboot. Most people use sleep mode instead - so it could be weeks or months between bootups. So it's just not that big a deal, imho.

TL; DR: any wingnut can grab a stopwatch and time something, but if they don't actually know what it is they're timing, their rantings are probably not helpful info.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Add to what has been said above, M.2 takes up motherboard's real estate or you have to use a PCIe adapter which has its own drawbacks. (e.g. having to configure boot setting, heat by an adjacent video card, slower booting, etc.) SATA still offers an adequate performance with a near-universal compatibility and flexibility.

Well, the entire theme of building a perfect PC and not necessarily picking top-tier models and parts, addresses the trade-offs and constraints within which you attempt to optimize.

For instance, with the Z170 chipset, you get 16 PCIe lanes allocated between two slots and connected to the CPU. You also get 20 "configurable" PCIe lanes going to the chipset, with a connection through DMI to CPU equivalent to x4 PCIe lanes.

I can put a second PCIe x4 card in my number 2 PCIE x16/x8 slot, and I only lose ~1% performance in my graphics card. So if one NVMe is in the bottom "long" PCIe slot, you can have two, given that constraint. They should both operate at full-bore bandwidth.

For the bottom x4-to-DMI slot, you need to give up SATA ports 5 and 6 (starting from 1). So now, your SATA "budget" is four ports. Even so, you can put a PCIe SATA controller into an x1 motherboard slot, but it, too, will go through the chipset DMI. So it will share bandwidth with the relevant NVMe PCIe x4.

So you might see variations in the NVMe performance for that bottom slot, with the alternative of taking a tiny hit with graphics performance. And when you do the latter, you have lost the option of having 2x SLI in the system.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Doesn't the SX8000 use the same controller as the Intel 600p?

I believe I've read something to that effect.

I'm starting to think that that particular NVMe controller is a bit... sluggish? At least, that's how my 256GB Intel 600p and the 128GB Adata SX8000. Thing is, the SX8000 is supposed to have SLC caching, and using Micron's 3D MLC NAND.

If it's got SLC caching, then why does the 1GB CDM test, only benchmark 112MB/sec seq. writes??? Is the SLC cache smaller than 1GB? Sounds pretty useless.

 

[UsandThem]

I believe I've read something to that effect.

I'm starting to think that that particular NVMe controller is a bit... sluggish? At least, that's how my 256GB Intel 600p and the 128GB Adata SX8000. Thing is, the SX8000 is supposed to have SLC caching, and using Micron's 3D MLC NAND.

If it's got SLC caching, then why does the 1GB CDM test, only benchmark 112MB/sec seq. writes??? Is the SLC cache smaller than 1GB? Sounds pretty useless.

The 128 GB version of the 600p has a 4 GB SLC cache, so the ADATA should be similar. However, the reviews of the 600p use the 512 GB version which has 17 GB of SLC cache, and it even drops down to, and sometimes even below, SATA performance levels.

So the ADATA drive probably suffers the same performance issues.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

The 128 GB version of the 600p has a 4 GB SLC cache, so the ADATA should be similar. However, the reviews of the 600p use the 512 GB version which has 17 GB of SLC cache, and it even drops down to, and sometimes even below, SATA performance levels.

So the ADATA drive probably suffers the same performance issues.

The 600p is even slower in benchmarks than a comparably sized 850 Evo, short of very short duration sequential reads (Anything longer and it drops below 850 Evo performance, too). I don't know how Intel thought it was a good business decision to release the drive, all things considered.

I understand even less the people that still want one or think it's worth buying after I've pointed out all the shortcomings (of which there are many) compared to a fast/quality SATA drive.

 

[UsandThem]

I don't know how Intel thought it was a good business decision to release the drive, all things considered.

Maybe they brought the team responsible for giving us the i740 video card out of retirement.

In all honesty, they probably thought most -non-enthusiast people wouldn't understand the differences, and simply see the words "Intel" and "NVMe" and buy it.

Heck, I like to think I have a solid understanding of computer hardware, and I almost got caught up in the pre-release hype of the 600p.

 

[UsandThem]

I believe I've read something to that effect.

I'm starting to think that that particular NVMe controller is a bit... sluggish? At least, that's how my 256GB Intel 600p and the 128GB Adata SX8000. Thing is, the SX8000 is supposed to have SLC caching, and using Micron's 3D MLC NAND.

If it's got SLC caching, then why does the 1GB CDM test, only benchmark 112MB/sec seq. writes??? Is the SLC cache smaller than 1GB? Sounds pretty useless.

Anandtech actually has a new article/review of an engineering sample (basically the drive Micron cancelled) that uses that controller, and is similar to the SX8000 according to Billy Tallis.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11130...sm2260-nvme-controller-with-3d-mlc-nand-512gb

 

[VirtualLarry]

Anandtech actually has a new article/review of an engineering sample (basically the drive Micron cancelled) that uses that controller, and is similar to the SX8000 according to Billy Tallis.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11130...sm2260-nvme-controller-with-3d-mlc-nand-512gb

However, when it goes through periodic phases of lower performance, it is stuttering hard and will often go for an entire second without completing any I/O. This is clearly poorly-managed garbage collection, possibly exacerbated by thermal throttling and definitely suffering from insufficient spare area.

With more overprovisioning, the severe stuttering is all but eliminated and the normal performance range jumps to around 24k IOPS with periods where it drops to around 6k IOPS.

Yeah, my 600p "pauses", and my SX8000 isn't super-snappy. (Though, it hasn't really "paused" on me yet.)