Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
HMS Boromir
Jul 16, 2011

by Lowtax
More to the point, doesn't it also use 4xPCIe/NVMe?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

EdEddnEddy
Apr 5, 2012



Yea I think the 900 series is NVMe only while the 800 series is their SATA drives.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


Aaaaaaaand here I was mistakenly thinking Polaris supported sata.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


Potato Salad posted:

So, pending updates to the OP I'd like to field as a sanity check:

Recommended List:
-Move Intel 600p from pending to consumer nvme

-Add 960 PRO as likely datacenter nvme candidate

-Add 960 EVO as likely consumer nvme candidate

-Move OCZ RD400 from pending to consumer nvme (definitely not datacenter endurance at only 0.31 drive writes per day)

-Add Mulshkin Reactor as mainstream consumer sata

No-Fly List:
-Remove OCZ

Thoughts?

stevewm
May 10, 2005
When you add the RD-400 to the OP, I would definitely make a note that it runs REALLY hot if used in a M.2 slot.. I experienced this on 2 different mobos and the previous owner had the same issue. The thermal pad on the included PCI Ex. adapter is really needed IMHO. Any sustained activity of more than 10 seconds or so without the thermal pad setup on the adapter will see it hitting temps in excess of 75 C. With the pad/adapter it never exceeded 55 in my tests.

It may possibly be designed for that, but I'm not comfortable with it.

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy
Now we know why the Intel 750s have that gigantic heatsink

mmkay
Oct 21, 2010

Found something interesting from Microsoft about using NVDIMM-N:
https://channel9.msdn.com/events/Build/2016/P470
It's a bit old (back from April), but I don't believe I saw discussion about it.

Rastor
Jun 2, 2001

mmkay posted:

Found something interesting from Microsoft about using NVDIMM-N:
https://channel9.msdn.com/events/Build/2016/P470
It's a bit old (back from April), but I don't believe I saw discussion about it.

Probably most of us don't have access to such a setup (I know I don't). That's definitely an obvious application for 3D Xpoint if it can get close the latencies of DRAM modules.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


redeyes posted:

Now we know why the Intel 750s have that gigantic heatsink

You should see the monstrosities on the DC enterprise cards.

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.

Potato Salad posted:

You should see the monstrosities on the DC enterprise cards.

They get pretty flippin warm too even with the giant HS and expect something like 200LFM airflow going over them constantly.

Most enterprise NVMe drives I've seen are in the 15-25W power consumption range which is quite a bit more than SAS/SATA (more like 8-10W).

I should get a screenshot of the system I have with 10 NVRAM x8 drives running IOMeter over a x16 link via a switch, throughput hitting 14GB/sec. ~zoom~

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


What are y'all using to perform maintenance / imaging on m.2 NVMe drives? You'd have to have some kind of USB 3.1 device to actually use a four-lane NVMe device at full speed, but if all you're doing is maintenance / troubleshooting, 3.0 ought to be fine...

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy

Potato Salad posted:

What are y'all using to perform maintenance / imaging on m.2 NVMe drives? You'd have to have some kind of USB 3.1 device to actually use a four-lane NVMe device at full speed, but if all you're doing is maintenance / troubleshooting, 3.0 ought to be fine...

Macrium Reflect

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


More like "is there a physical adapter out there for usb 3.1 I'm not finding"

Col.Kiwi
Dec 28, 2004
And the grave digger puts on the forceps...
This one says it supports PCIe m.2 drives and is usb 3.1: https://www.amazon.ca/USB3-1-Adapter-Converter-External-Enclosure/dp/B00W76CTAY

I've never heard of the brand, not sure if it's any good or not. It's also an enclosure so if you're doing a bunch of drives in a row it's not exactly the best option. However the only thing I could find by a brand I'm familiar with (which was StarTech) specifically said SATA only.

BobHoward
Feb 13, 2012

The only thing white people deserve is a bullet to their empty skull

Early lines of the specs say PCIe but if you read further:

quote:

Please note that it supports SATA-based B Key SSD only. It does NOT support PCI-E based B key & any M key SSD.

It's far too cheap to be anything but a USB to SATA converter, tbh. USB to pcie is not currently high enough volume for the whole thing to sell for $20.

In general I kinda wonder how useful an enclosure which bridges NVME to USB mass storage class will be. It should be able to copy data fine, but it's probably safe to assume that any out of band commands like NVME SMART are going to be even less well supported than the SATA equivalents are on random USB SATA bridges. (Which is not very well supported at all.)

Rastor
Jun 2, 2001

An external NVMe adapter would have to be one of those Thunderbolt or USB type C PCIe bridges and those are still in the "expensive and buggy" phase.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


Less "External enclosure for masses" and more "Deploy / maintain systems that are tricky to manage in SCCM or are misbehaving"

Rastor
Jun 2, 2001

Like I dunno man, a PCIe card adapter and a desktop with the side panel left off I guess.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


That's current situation :saddowns:

It'll come with time and greater market penetration.

SlayVus
Jul 10, 2009
Grimey Drawer

Potato Salad posted:

That's current situation :saddowns:

It'll come with time and greater market penetration.

You could buy a thunderbolt pcie dock for like $200 then a pcie to m.2 for $20 then you just need thunderbolt on all the other devices.

Unlucky7
Jul 11, 2006

Fallen Rib
EDIT: Nevermind, I think I need to do some more research first...

Unlucky7 fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Sep 24, 2016

HMS Boromir
Jul 16, 2011

by Lowtax
Not an 850 EVO, but a similar comparison. There's a stark bottleneck in sequential read/write:


...but you'll still get a huge improvement in random read/write over a HDD:




In particular, I believe 4K random reads are the most important metric for general Windows application performance, and that's where the 3 GB/s limits you the least. Besides, you're presumably going to upgrade your 5 year old computer before you replace the SSD anyway, so you might as well pick up an 850 EVO.

EDIT: I guess you retracted your question, but hopefully this is still useful?

HMS Boromir fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Sep 24, 2016

Unlucky7
Jul 11, 2006

Fallen Rib

HMS Boromir posted:

Not an 850 EVO, but a similar comparison. There's a stark bottleneck in sequential read/write:


...but you'll still get a huge improvement in random read/write over a HDD:




In particular, I believe 4K random reads are the most important metric for general Windows application performance, and that's where the 3 GB/s limits you the least. Besides, you're presumably going to upgrade your 5 year old computer before you replace the SSD anyway, so you might as well pick up an 850 EVO.

EDIT: I guess you retracted your question, but hopefully this is still useful?

Sorry about that! For the sake of record, the question was that I had an older computer with the Sata 3Gb/s and I was wondering if the bottleneck is significant enough to factor in.

Thank you for the info! I will need to think on this.

Saukkis
May 16, 2003

Unless I'm on the inside curve pointing straight at oncoming traffic the high beams stay on and I laugh at your puny protest flashes.
I am Most Important Man. Most Important Man in the World.

Unlucky7 posted:

Sorry about that! For the sake of record, the question was that I had an older computer with the Sata 3Gb/s and I was wondering if the bottleneck is significant enough to factor in.

Thank you for the info! I will need to think on this.

I doubt there is anything to think about. I don't think there is a Sata 3Gb/s SSD that is as good as the standard choices, yet cheaper enough to be worth buying.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
Never buy based on the fact that your computer can't take advantage of the speed boost *now*. Sooner or later you'll end up with a laptop you can drop the SSD into or a new desktop. The standard SATA interface isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Konsek
Sep 4, 2006

Slippery Tilde
I was going to ask the exact same thing, so thank you HMS Boromir. My hard drive is old and slow so definitely needs replacing as a priority, but if I can put off replacing the motherboard for a while that'd be great because I think I'll have to replace the CPU at the same time for compatibility. But my current CPU is perfectly fine so I'd rather put that off.

Also, the release of these new Samsung 9XX SSDs doesn't change the 850 Evo being the go to for the average consumer right?

Unlucky7
Jul 11, 2006

Fallen Rib
I am also guessing even with the throttling, the SSD will still be faster than my current HHD?

If that is the case, then I may as well take the plunge.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


Even with small legacy bandwidth restriction, the SSD eliminates seek time and rotational latency. Each storage operation request is fulfilled faster. Yes.

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


And yeah, so far there are only NVMe 960 EVO and PROs...unless I missed something. If you're on SATA, stick to the SATA consumer list (and buy an 850 evo).

SlayVus
Jul 10, 2009
Grimey Drawer

Unlucky7 posted:

I am also guessing even with the throttling, the SSD will still be faster than my current HHD?

If that is the case, then I may as well take the plunge.

SATA 3 will provide like 550MB/s maximum speed on an SSD, SATA 2 is going to be like 260 MB/s. I believe the only hard drives that can do anywhere close to 200 MB/s are going to be of a large capacity that will cost a lot of money. $300 will get you a WD Black 6TB that can do 220+ MB/s sequential, but it has <1 MB/s random 4k speeds. For $300 you can get an 850 Evo 1TB that will do 480 MB/s sequential and ~37/112 Read/Write MB/s 4k random.

Unlucky7
Jul 11, 2006

Fallen Rib
I noticed that there were PCI Express cards that could provide Sata 3 slots. Is it not a bad idea to take advantage of that?

JnnyThndrs
May 29, 2001

HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS

Unlucky7 posted:

I noticed that there were PCI Express cards that could provide Sata 3 slots. Is it not a bad idea to take advantage of that?

I've used several brands of Sata III add-in card, (Marvell, Jmicron, Asmedia) and none of them run anywhere near as quickly as a native Intel Sata III port. Some of them are buggy, too. Better to use the chipset's native ports, even if they're slower on paper.

I use a cheapie BX100 drive in my media box that's only SATA II, and it's amazingly quicker than a spinning HD, even slightly bottlenecked.

AVeryLargeRadish
Aug 19, 2011

I LITERALLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO NOT BE A WEIRD SEXUAL CREEP ABOUT PREPUBESCENT ANIME GIRLS, READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE!!!

Unlucky7 posted:

I am also guessing even with the throttling, the SSD will still be faster than my current HHD?

If that is the case, then I may as well take the plunge.

The thing is that the random 4k performance is by far the most important metric and as you can see in the charts posted earlier a SSD will be 40-100 times faster in that type of work so yeah, even with the bottleneck a SSD will be vastly faster than any HDD.

Col.Kiwi
Dec 28, 2004
And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

AVeryLargeRadish posted:

The thing is that the random 4k performance is by far the most important metric and as you can see in the charts posted earlier a SSD will be 40-100 times faster in that type of work so yeah, even with the bottleneck a SSD will be vastly faster than any HDD.
Listen to this guy he is smart and is correct. An SSD is still so super worth it.

Chris Knight
Jun 5, 2002

me @ ur posts


Fun Shoe

Col.Kiwi posted:

Listen to this guy he is smart and is correct. An SSD is still so super worth it.
It really is. I first put an SSD in my 2007 MacBook Pro a few years ago, and even with a relatively ancient (compared to today) 64GB Kingston cheapie, the difference was immediately noticeable at the time. And it's only got better.

HMS Boromir
Jul 16, 2011

by Lowtax
So how has the 600p been shaking out? Reviews seem sparse and nobody's talking about it. Did anyone here buy one?

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.

HMS Boromir posted:

So how has the 600p been shaking out? Reviews seem sparse and nobody's talking about it. Did anyone here buy one?

I have one on a test setup at my work, it is no 950 (or one of the enterprise drive) but it is decent. I can run a benchmark on it if there is interest. Can't recall the numbers off the top of my head but they were the lowest of any gen3 nvme device I've tested, unsurprisingly.

Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?
Is there a noticeable difference to laptop users between an 850 EVO and a 950 PRO? Does Windows boot noticeably faster? Do 10's of GB of Skryim waifu warrior mods load faster?

Macropiper
Feb 11, 2007

Pillbug

Unlucky7 posted:

I noticed that there were PCI Express cards that could provide Sata 3 slots. Is it not a bad idea to take advantage of that?

I have had success booting off an Asmedia one in a 2008 Mac Pro, if you do use such a card, make sure it has two lanes of PCIe 2.0.
The exact card I am using is this: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDACL6G.S/

Many PCIe AHCI controllers I have seen have multiple SATA ports on a PCIe 1x card, this cannot supply enough bandwidth for even one SATA 3 device. With one drive, it seems to limit the read speed to a bit over 400MB/s, I have not tried with multiple drives at once.

Avoid Marvel AHCI controllers, they don't work correctly with NCQ at SATA 3 speeds, at least in Linux. Turning NCQ off may fix this, but why would you deliberately use a buggy AHCI controller?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Unlucky7
Jul 11, 2006

Fallen Rib
Finally got an 850 EVO. Once I got everything set up and turned on AHCI, starting up windows now works like a dream. Can't determine game speed loadup though: Most of my (Steam) games are off on a partition on my HDD, and the one game I had that was on my main disk partition (Witcher 3) stopped working after I copied it over to the SSD, and hasn't been working even though I redownloaded it. I am using GOG Galaxy though, and I am suspecting it is just that program being a piece of poo poo. I will get a copy of the game from GOG itself sometime today. I can say that WoW felt a bit snappier loading though.

I know everyone says to ignore the OS optimizations in Magician, but what is this RAPID mode thing? I can't use it since I am on Windows 10, and apparently they do not offer support for it, yet. Is it actually useful?

EDIT: Moved my Overwatch install to the SSD. Before, when I start up the game, maps take a while to load, and even when they did, character models are not loaded in yet. Now I load up before everyone else. I'd call this an improvement :)

Unlucky7 fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Oct 1, 2016

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply