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Fastest SATAIII M.2 Drive?

Synomenon

Synomenon

Lifer
So I've come into the possession of an Alienware 17 R2.

It has a 2.5" drive bay for a SATAIII 2.5" drive and another four SATAIII M.2 slots in a separate bay.

I have a Samsung 512GB 850 Pro. to put in the 2.5" bay. I was going to use a M.2 drive as the primary / OS drive, but I do not see any SATAIII M.2 drives that are faster than my 2.5" Samsung 850 Pro..

Anyone know of a SATAIII M.2 drive that's faster than a 2.5" 512GB 850 Pro.?
 
No. For client workloads, no such SSD exists. The 850 Pro pretty much maxes out SATA.
 
Thanks. That's what I thought. I've been searching and haven't seen any SATAIII M.2 drives that match the 850 Pro.'s performance.
 
I'm confused. Why are you calling it a SATA III M.2 drive? I was under the impression that M.2 has little/nothing to do with SATA.
 
Synomenon said:
Thanks. That's what I thought. I've been searching and haven't seen any SATAIII M.2 drives that match the 850 Pro.'s performance.
Click to expand...
There are not SATA 6Gbps drives that match its performance, for most client workloads, even write-heavy ones, in 2.5", much less M.2. The Sandisk Extreme Pro is comparable, and can best it in some workloads. It seems to be more tweaked for workstation/server type loads, with lots of simultaneous mixed reading and writing.

The Sandisk X300 likely performs almost as well, and is available in M.2, but honestly, the value there is pretty poor. The 850 Pro is overkill, already, I guarantee you, so just get big enough M.2 SATA SSDs at a reasonable price, and go with that. The real-world performance differences are negligible, amongst most of today's SSDs.
 
mikeymikec said:
I'm confused. Why are you calling it a SATA III M.2 drive? I was under the impression that M.2 has little/nothing to do with SATA.
Click to expand...

M.2 is just an interface, it can connect to either PCIe (gen. 2 x2 or x4, gen. 3 x2 or x4) or SATA III - or both (although not simultaneously, of course.


And no, OP, there is currently no SATA SSD faster than the 850 PRO. There might never be, given that SSDs have maxed out SATA for quite a while in some metrics. Then again, depending on your workload, the 850 PRO isn't really noticeably faster (measurably? Sure. But not noticeably) in client workloads than, say, an MX100. But if you already have it, of course I won't advise you not to buy it 😉
 
I'll just grab some 850 EVO M.2 SSDs then and RAID them / use them to backup the 850 Pro. and use them as scratchdisks for various applications.

I'll use the 850 Pro. as my primary drive.
 
I'll just grab some 850 EVO M.2 SSDs then and RAID them / use them to backup the 850 Pro. and use them as scratchdisks for various applications.

I'll use the 850 Pro. as my primary drive.
 
The XP941 doesn't matter in this. It's a PCIe M.2 SSD. I was asking about SATAIII M.2 SSDs. I know two 850 Pros. are even faster if RAIDed or are you talking about two of the SATAIII M.2 850 EVOs?
 
Cerb said:
The Sandisk X300 likely performs almost as well, and is available in M.2, but honestly, the value there is pretty poor. The 850 Pro is overkill, already, I guarantee you, so just get big enough M.2 SATA SSDs at a reasonable price, and go with that. The real-world performance differences are negligible, amongst most of today's SSDs.
Click to expand...

The SanDisk X300 is based on the Ultra II platform with TLC NAND, not on the Extreme Pro.
 
Hellhammer said:
The SanDisk X300 is based on the Ultra II platform with TLC NAND, not on the Extreme Pro.
Click to expand...
OK, good to know. That thing's awfully expensive for being an Ultra II underneath 🙂. Is there an OEM model from them based on the same hardware?
 
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