Never ending wait for NVMe

[larryccf]

steve - that was the website you gave a link to in the UK



i went to it, did a search for samsung nvme sm951 - that price was for the 256GB NVMe SM951 but the price on the 512 GB is equally tempting at $374. They're quoting 4.57 british pound for next day delivery, but suspect that's for UK delivery - i've emailed them asking for delivery quote to a virginia, usa zipcode
http://www.scan.co.uk/search.aspx?q=samsung+nvme+sm951

just heard back from them on shipping to virginia, USA quote - 41.67 british pounds - suspect they're quoting next day delivery which i can live without, so i asked for quote via the most economical way

we'll see

 

[steve wilson]

just heard back from them on shipping to virginia, USA quote - 41.67 british pounds - suspect they're quoting next day delivery which i can live without, so i asked for quote via the most economical way

we'll see

Surely you can find it somewhere in the USA? I'd give it a couple of weeks mate and save yourself the hassle/money.

 

[larryccf]

going to wait and see what pricing shows up here but $209 for the 256 GB unit is outstanding and i doubt i'll see it matched here in the US in the near future

 

[Redstorm]

Just had an online chat to RAM City:

Looking like mid next month hopefully. No sooner.

Well, our supplier has been notified that the SM951 will ship soon so that's at least a light at the end of the tunnel

The waiting continues.

 

[Deders]

Scan had the 128GB and 256GB NVMe models available to by. Still waiting on the 512GB.

 

[Nebor]

Isn't the performance difference between the AHCI and NVMe SM951 pretty small? What's the big advantage to NVMe?

 

[larryccf]

the actual speed difference isn't that great - the 256 gb variant that i've looking at, the write speed for the NVMe version is 1260 MB/s and iirc the AHCI version is 1200 MB/s, not a major amount.

Best explanation i could find was in the anandtech review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9396/samsung-sm951-nvme-256gb-pcie-ssd-review

"....The firmware development is likely the reason why the SM951-AHCI was the first one to market because Samsung already had the basic AHCI firmware from its XP941 and SATA drives, whereas the SM951-NVMe needed more development from scratch given how different and more efficient the NVMe command set is. ..."

I do a lot of video file rendering, and was amazed at the speed increase with a xp941 vs the samsung 840 EVO i had been using. Considering the jump to 1550 MB/s the 512 GB version demonstrates has me looking at it - i just don't want to drop the extra coin, plus it would mean buying a 2nd 512 gb ssd for a clone target (i clone weekly).

JohnnyLucky has dropped a couple of hints over on tom'shardware about those waiting for the NVMe version are in for a pleasant surprise next month - i assume or hope samsung is going to release a retail version, which would be nice, ie having the boot drivers with it hopefully making it more like a legacy OS setup

 

[BFG10K]

Not sure why anyone is waiting for these. Unless all you do is copy files all day, you won't see a lick of difference in the real-world compared to SATA SSDs.

If you already have an SSD, most of your operations aren't even bottlenecked by I/O speed anymore.

 

[Deders]

It's still the biggest bottleneck on the system. Most modern SSD's can do about 30MB/s with single queue depth 4k random reads. These NVMe drives will double that performance. It will be more of a performance leap than say going from Sata II to Sata III.

it's also the reduced latency we're excited about, but then i'm someone who can spend hours testing all the minor latency controls for Ram (after Cas and Ras, TRFC has the biggest impact)

 

[larryccf]

Not sure why anyone is waiting for these. Unless all you do is copy files all day, you won't see a lick of difference in the real-world compared to SATA SSDs.

If you already have an SSD, most of your operations aren't even bottlenecked by I/O speed anymore.

I'm running an xp941 - first gen PCI 2.0 x4, i've benchmarked read speed at 1180 MB/s, write 870 MB/s, which is spot on for the specs all the reviewers have shown.

The biggest advantage to me is in rendering video files - when i'm rendering, cpu usage is showing 99-100%. My rendering times for a given file went down from 65-75 minutes (34 GB) to 28-35 minutes.

2nd area of benefit, opening heavy programs like adobe photoshop - dropped from 30-35 seconds to 5-7 seconds. Other programs like UPS worldship, Quickbooks - same reduced loading times.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Not sure why anyone is waiting for these. Unless all you do is copy files all day, you won't see a lick of difference in the real-world compared to SATA SSDs.

If you already have an SSD, most of your operations aren't even bottlenecked by I/O speed anymore.

Thanks. That's kind of what I was wondering. (For someone that browses forums, and listens to internet radio, and does a spot of DC now and then.)

 

[Sabrewings]

I'm running an xp941 - first gen PCI 2.0 x4, i've benchmarked read speed at 1180 MB/s, write 870 MB/s, which is spot on for the specs all the reviewers have shown.

The biggest advantage to me is in rendering video files - when i'm rendering, cpu usage is showing 99-100%. My rendering times for a given file went down from 65-75 minutes (34 GB) to 28-35 minutes.

2nd area of benefit, opening heavy programs like adobe photoshop - dropped from 30-35 seconds to 5-7 seconds. Other programs like UPS worldship, Quickbooks - same reduced loading times.

Similar experience for me with my Kingston Predator HyperX. Read at 1400MB/s and write at 1000MB/s. Video editting is much faster than off a traditional SATA drive, even RAID 0 SATA SSDs. Windows boot times are ridiculously fast, and games and other programs load instantaneously. The difference between this and a normal SATA SSD was like going from HDD to SSD in the first place all over again.

It's the future, though I don't understand waiting for NVMe. There are perfectly fine PCIe drives out there now.

 

[larryccf]

it just flips me out that posters all over the web keep reporting no real usage benefits, speed wise, over a sata SSD - obviously they haven't run one, just repeating what they read somewhere else

 

[BFG10K]

it just flips me out that posters all over the web keep reporting no real usage benefits, speed wise, over a sata SSD - obviously they haven't run one, just repeating what they read somewhere else

I have hard numbers to back my claims when testing RAM disks - far faster than any of these devices.

Can you please tell me which of your games load “instantly” on PCIe but didn’t on the SATA SSD? Here are my tests:

Looking at the “RAM” column, you’re looking at a best case scenario of ~13 seconds because I/O is no longer the bottleneck. 13 seconds is not “instant”. GPU device drivers start to have far more effect on game load times, which has nothing to do with I/O.

I tested around 50 games and those shown were the only ones that had any meaningful difference; the rest got barely any improvement, even from a RAM disk. If you think your PCIe drive is going to load things faster than a RAM disk, you’re dreaming.

Likewise, we’re told boot times are allegedly faster. What’s particularly ironic is in reality these drives can lengthen boot times because POST takes longer, so this expensive device actually makes you wait longer to get into your system:

I’d be particularly pissed off if I'd just purchased an expensive 750 and was seeing those results. In fact there was another thread a little while ago with someone doing just that.

Would you care to point out where those “instant boot times” are on the PCIe drives? I can’t see them anywhere above, even with the second test which multi-tasks four startup applications at once.

With the other two drives, they’re 3 seconds faster than the next fastest SATA drive. So you paid 80c/GB to shave off 3 seconds? Cool story, bro.

Numerous other benchmarks show the PCIe drives being no faster than even an X25-M in the real-world: http://techreport.com/review/28050/intel-750-series-solid-state-drive-reviewed/5

The claim that these drives in the real world are just like going from HDD to SSD is absolutely laughable. The situation is akin to when overclockers claim "it feels faster" when twiddling with RAM settings that don’t make a lick of difference in the real world. Same thing back in the day when people were trying to push expensive quad-cores over dual-cores (“it feels smoother!&#8221

Again, real-world results don’t back those pretty synthetics. Sure, corner cases are primarily bound by I/O (e.g. copying files all day, certain content creation) , but the vast majority of the real-world won’t show any meaningful difference.

More evidence:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/750_SSD_1.2_TB/11.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/750_SSD_1.2_TB/12.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/750_SSD_1.2_TB/13.html

 

[Nebor]

Jeez, I feel dumb for getting talked into cancelling my 1TB Samsung Evo 850 in favor of a 512gb SM951 now. I'd have rather had the extra space for such a small difference in performance.

 

[BFG10K]

Jeez, I feel dumb for getting talked into cancelling my 1TB Samsung Evo 850 in favor of a 512gb SM951 now. I'd have rather had the extra space for such a small difference in performance.

Yep, when it comes to SSDs, capacity is the most important metric, assuming the drive is good quality.

You need to have a pretty specific niche to need extra performance, and you'll know if you do. But a typical enthusiast expecting a massive performance gain just by going PCIe over SATA is in for a rude shock.

Also the money you save can go towards buying bigger drives in the future, far smarter than overspending on something which provides no benefit right now.

 

[bradly1101]

I have hard numbers to back my claims when testing RAM disks - far faster than any of these devices.

Can you please tell me which of your games load “instantly” on PCIe but didn’t on the SATA SSD? Here are my tests:

Is that on your 4790K system? Does it support enough PCIe lanes, or is that 750 hanging off the PCH? Most of us are going from SATA to CPU-fed 750's and 941/51's on x79/99. Games don't load instantly for me, but the bigger ones with lots of mods load noticeably faster. Everything but those games and DX0 Optics seems to jump off that drive. You'll miss the actual loading of most programs if you leave window animation on because it's slower.

Even a little faster is worth it to some people, especially when there's limited time at the PC.

 

[BFG10K]

Is that on your 4790K system? Does it support enough PCIe lanes, or is that 750 hanging off the PCH? Most of us are going from SATA to CPU-fed 750's and 941/51's on x79/99. Games don't load instantly for me, but the bigger ones with lots of mods load noticeably faster. Everything but those games and DX0 Optics seems to jump off that drive. You'll miss the actual loading of most programs if you leave window animation on because it's slower.

I did the game load times (my image is watermarked), Tech-Report did the rest. Here's their system: http://techreport.com/review/28050/intel-750-series-solid-state-drive-reviewed/6

As for my PCIe lanes, that's completely irrelevant to RAM. Again, a RAM disk will demolish any PCIe device for I/O performance. So if a RAM disk isn't showing a performance difference, there's no way a slower PCIe drive will.

Even a little faster is worth it to some people, especially when there's limited time at the PC.

Most of these differences are imperceptible in the real-world, akin to benchmarking noise. But you'll get a real-world benefit from buying a bigger (and cheaper) SATA SSD. You'll easily notice the extra space and the extra cash in your wallet.

 

[phillyman36]

Question. My Os is on a Samsung 850 Pro. Would I see any benefit by putting Intel 750 pcie ssd(or A kingston m.2 ssd or Samsung 951m.2 ssd) as a secondary drive and using Handbrake or MakeMKV for converting my blu ray collection?

 

[Nebor]

I went from an old crucial m4, 2600k, 8gb PC to an sm951, 5930k, 16gb and I don't really notice any difference in loading windows, playing games, etc.

 

[Deders]

I went from an old crucial m4, 2600k, 8gb PC to an sm951, 5930k, 16gb and I don't really notice any difference in loading windows, playing games, etc.

Is that the NVMe or AHCI model? How long have you had it?

 

[StrangerGuy]

I did the game load times (my image is watermarked), Tech-Report did the rest. Here's their system: http://techreport.com/review/28050/intel-750-series-solid-state-drive-reviewed/6

As for my PCIe lanes, that's completely irrelevant to RAM. Again, a RAM disk will demolish any PCIe device for I/O performance. So if a RAM disk isn't showing a performance difference, there's no way a slower PCIe drive will.


Most of these differences are imperceptible in the real-world, akin to benchmarking noise. But you'll get a real-world benefit from buying a bigger (and cheaper) SATA SSD. You'll easily notice the extra space and the extra cash in your wallet.

I don't deny the objectivity of synthetic benchmarks, but I think any so called day-and-night differences between SATA3 and PCIE are just placebo.

 

[Deders]

I don't deny the objectivity of synthetic benchmarks, but I think any so called day-and-night differences between SATA3 and PCIE are just placebo.

Would you say the same for Sata 2 vs Sata 3?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Would you say the same for Sata 2 vs Sata 3?

For the most part, yes. I installed some Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB SSDs, in some A4-6300 APU (3.7/3.9Ghz) rigs, with 8GB of RAM, and installed Linux Mint 17.2.

The SSDs are SATA6G, but the FM2+ mobo is an MSI with an A55M chipset, which is only SATA2.

TBH, I can't really tell the difference. They are so snappy all-around. Did initial updates in only a few minutes. Went flying by.

 

[Deders]

For the most part, yes. I installed some Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB SSDs, in some A4-6300 APU (3.7/3.9Ghz) rigs, with 8GB of RAM, and installed Linux Mint 17.2.

The SSDs are SATA6G, but the FM2+ mobo is an MSI with an A55M chipset, which is only SATA2.

TBH, I can't really tell the difference. They are so snappy all-around. Did initial updates in only a few minutes. Went flying by.

So by that same logic would it be fair to say that for the most part there won't be a noticeable difference between sata 2 and PCIe drives?

Also are you aware of the difference between an AHCI PCIe drive and a NVMe PCIe drive?

Sorry if the question seems patronising, I'm just curious.