Question NVME lower performance when full... what about half full?

[NAC]

So most of the benchmarks for NVME M.2 drives indicate a performance empty and full. Does performance degrade linear between the two? Or perhaps it degrades a lot immediately as data is added and then slowly until full (or the reverse - it plateaus for a while, and then quickly degrades once something like 90% full). And do all controllers behave in the same way?

 

[KentState]

Different drives handle it differently and it also depends on how quickly you are filling it. This is all dependent on how much QLC/TLC/MLC/SLC is available and the how the manufacture decides to reserve the faster memory. I believe some will even treat the TLC portion as SLC until the extra space is needed.

 

[NAC]

I see. So there is no simple answer. After reading your answer, I re-read the review below linked to below. It looks like the first graph illustrates that for the ADATA SX8200 1tb there are big drops in performance at about 180 gigs or 620 gigs written.

Comparing Two 1TB NVMe Drives with Same NAND, Same Controller: XPG SX8200 Pro vs HP EX950

www.anandtech.com

Ok, in that case I'm better off just choosing a Phison e12 drive, since I expect my drive to be about half full or more.

 

[Billy Tallis]

since I expect my drive to be about half full or more.

Keep in mind that having your drive be half-full is very different from having your drive be halfway through the process of filling up. If you stop filling the drive when it's half full and let it use idle time to finish cleaning up the SLC cache, then the everyday write performance you can expect to see will be much higher than the instantaneous write performance during a full-speed full-drive sequential write pass.

 

[Campy]

I see. So there is no simple answer. After reading your answer, I re-read the review below linked to below. It looks like the first graph illustrates that for the ADATA SX8200 1tb there are big drops in performance at about 180 gigs or 620 gigs written.

Comparing Two 1TB NVMe Drives with Same NAND, Same Controller: XPG SX8200 Pro vs HP EX950

www.anandtech.com

Ok, in that case I'm better off just choosing a Phison e12 drive, since I expect my drive to be about half full or more.

That's when filling the whole drive in one go, very different from normal everyday usage. Also, that's write speed.

 

[NAC]

Hmm... So I'm confused again. Here will be my use case, maybe someone can opine if a SM2262EN or Phison e12 drive will be better for me:

• Main concern is photo and video editing: DaVinci Resolve, Gimp, Faststone, Silkypix. Most intense use is splicing two/three 4k strips together as camera A and B (and C), perhaps as big as 100 gigs each when recording long theater productions.
• I'll get a 2tb drive.
• Will be my C drive, about 300 gigs of programs.
• Will be a thumbnail / cache drive for above programs (or can move this to a SanDisk Ultra II SATA SSD drive if better).
• Will have about 500-1000 gigs of content at a time. I'll rotate out older less used content every year or so.
• So I doubt I'll get above 75% full.

 

[KentState]

Can your motherboard handle two drives? I personally would get a 1TB drive for the more static content: c drive, programs, thumbnails. Then get a second larger one for the content.

 

[NAC]

This will be an upgrade with a new MB. I will get one which supports two M.2 drives. I was hoping to save money and just get one at first. I wonder what will be impacted the least if I put onto a SATA SSD? Or maybe I'll get a 500 gig and a 2tb NVMe drive.

 

[ArisVer]

Check this page out for the Intel 660p drive. The graph in the middle of the page will give you an idea of how it works. Different brands may work differently though and I believe more expensive drives may have dedicated cache.

The Intel SSD 660p SSD Review: QLC NAND Arrives For Consumer SSDs

www.anandtech.com