Bootable PCI-E SSD's for legacy hardware?

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headala

Limp Gawd
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Jul 26, 2005
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I've read a few threads about this, but there's none that seem to answer the question: Which current-generation PCI-E SSD's are bootable on legacy hardware (specifically, X58 Rampage II Extreme)?

I only know of one guy who used the Kingston Predator on his X58, but I know it can't be the only one that's compatible. Does anyone have any experience or second-hand knowledge of this? Thanks for the help.

Background: I need to upgrade the storage on my R2E photo editing system. Video card is fine, CPU is i7 950 overclocked, RAM bandwidth is plentiful. Biggest bottleneck AFAIK is the first-gen SSD's I'm using (OCZ Vertex).
 
Your i7-950 ram is 25GB/s an E5-1620 v3 (cheap CPU <$250) is 68GB/s...

I'd go E5-1620 v3 w/XXgb RAM and a Intel NVME model/size based on your needs... it will be NOTICEABLY faster than the x58...
 
If you must keep x58 I'd go with SATA SSD for boot, and Fusion-IO SLC for your 'fast' drive.
 
ToddW2 said:
Your i7-950 ram is 25GB/s an E5-1620 v3 (cheap CPU <$250) is 68GB/s...

I'd go E5-1620 v3 w/XXgb RAM and a Intel NVME model/size based on your needs... it will be NOTICEABLY faster than the x58...
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate the advice, but I'm planning on a full upgrade next year, and planning on carrying over whatever PCI-E SSD I pick when I do. Your recommendation is tempting, though...

ToddW2 said:
If you must keep x58 I'd go with SATA SSD for boot, and Fusion-IO SLC for your 'fast' drive.
Click to expand...

Can you please tell me why you recommend this route? My mobo doesn't support the fastest SATA spec so I was thinking I would try to avoid that roadblock.
 
headala said:
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate the advice, but I'm planning on a full upgrade next year, and planning on carrying over whatever PCI-E SSD I pick when I do. Your recommendation is tempting, though...



Can you please tell me why you recommend this route? My mobo doesn't support the fastest SATA spec so I was thinking I would try to avoid that roadblock.
Click to expand...

As far as i know the simply solution if your not upgrading til next year is use a PCIe drive as a data/scratch and not as boot. The hassle is too much work,

Your best bet for easiness and affordability is getting a new SATA like 850 Pro or Extreme Pro and wait for XPoint if you are planning on upgrading next year. Save the dough and get XPoint because that will be a tangible difference and get the DIMM Xpoint because it will have 4 x lower latency than PCIe version!

Get a nice 1TB drive for large files and use it as a temp boot until you upgrade and get XPoint DIMMs. That will be an awesome system and that is my goal if i can afford it.

To be exact my goal is 256GB DIMM for OS and core programs and 512GB PCIe for programs, data, and scratch.

Check out the IDF slide on the various latencies. I question some of the figures though. I don't know how they get 100ns for DRAM. SDRAM didn't even have that high of a latency! I think they added a zero to each example on accident :/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency

http://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/intel_3d_xpoint_projections.png
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9470/asd14.PNG
http://www4.pcmag.com/media/images/475669-optaane-performanc.jpg?thumb=y

76k 4k IOPs!!! vs 10k o_O This is supposedly an early prototype so the DIMM version should have even better IOPS! If the slides are accurate it means that retail version of SSD should have greater than 76k IOPS and the DIMMS might even have 4x that!
 
SomeGuy133 said:
As far as i know the simply solution if your not upgrading til next year is use a PCIe drive as a data/scratch and not as boot. The hassle is too much work,

Your best bet for easiness and affordability is getting a new SATA like 850 Pro or Extreme Pro and wait for XPoint if you are planning on upgrading next year. Save the dough and get XPoint because that will be a tangible difference and get the DIMM Xpoint because it will have 4 x lower latency than PCIe version!

Get a nice 1TB drive for large files and use it as a temp boot until you upgrade and get XPoint DIMMs. That will be an awesome system and that is my goal if i can afford it.

To be exact my goal is 256GB DIMM for OS and core programs and 512GB PCIe for programs, data, and scratch.

Check out the IDF slide on the various latencies. I question some of the figures though. I don't know how they get 100ns for DRAM. SDRAM didn't even have that high of a latency! I think they added a zero to each example on accident :/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency

http://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/intel_3d_xpoint_projections.png
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9470/asd14.PNG
http://www4.pcmag.com/media/images/475669-optaane-performanc.jpg?thumb=y

76k 4k IOPs!!! vs 10k o_O This is supposedly an early prototype so the DIMM version should have even better IOPS! If the slides are accurate it means that retail version of SSD should have greater than 76k IOPS and the DIMMS might even have 4x that!
Click to expand...

Huh :rolleyes:

You do realize Intel isn't even shipping XEONS capable of handling 3d XPOINT DIMMS (RAM) anytime soon, and that 3d XPOINT is faster than SATA and PCIE can handle that's why they're potentially using it in RAM slots too.

You're not going to just go buy a "DIMM" of 256gb and throw it in and off you go like PCIE or SSD...

Also, going from 10,000 IOPs on a desktop to 75,000 will not be that noticeable to most people.
Going from 100 IOPs on a spinning disk to 2000 was insane but going from 2000 to 10,000 not so much.
 
headala said:
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate the advice, but I'm planning on a full upgrade next year, and planning on carrying over whatever PCI-E SSD I pick when I do. Your recommendation is tempting, though...



Can you please tell me why you recommend this route? My mobo doesn't support the fastest SATA spec so I was thinking I would try to avoid that roadblock.
Click to expand...

You said you were working on your "editing" computer, if that's the case then put the projects on PCIE device.

If you're upgrading next year I'd wait and and get the fastest at that time; what's out now will be replaced by something much faster next year and also more capacity for the $$$.
 
A year from now a large cheap SATA drive will still be useful as, well, a large cheap data drive... They might drop in price but probably not dramatically so. PCI-E and M.2 drives are more likely to drop in price quicker, regardless of what shape 3D Xpoint takes in the consumer space.

I doubt they'll be aiming DIMMs at that market, if they even really release any affordable consumer 3D Xpoint products by next year... I've recently bought two 1TB 850 EVO AND a 256GB SM952, so I'm not particularly tied to one or the other, each has it's uses and it's place IMO.

Whatever you get will be bottlenecked regardless on your current mobo, so just get whatever you think will be most useful now and later. I think what Todd suggests regarding just using it as a scratch drive for 'projects' makes sense.
 
ToddW2 said:
You're not going to just go buy a "DIMM" of 256gb and throw it in and off you go like PCIE or SSD...
Click to expand...

how so? Nothing fancy has to be done. There are already UltraDIMMS out for sale if you got the dough. I don't recall any review sites having a hard time making them work.

Also intel specifically stated several times consumer models of XPoint will be out 2016.

Plus i don't care if there is or isn't a consumer model or not. They claimed it would be cheaper than RAM and I have no problem paying that 2-3 dollars a GB for something that good.

oh yea i also did the math wrong for the DIMM version. It actually has 40x lower latency than the PCIe version. 250 nano seconds vs <10 micro seconds

With that in your system the real limitation will be shitty single thread performance.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
how so? Nothing fancy has to be done. There are already UltraDIMMS out for sale if you got the dough. I don't recall any review sites having a hard time making them work.

Also intel specifically stated several times consumer models of XPoint will be out 2016.

Plus i don't care if there is or isn't a consumer model or not. They claimed it would be cheaper than RAM and I have no problem paying that 2-3 dollars a GB for something that good.

oh yea i also did the math wrong for the DIMM version. It actually has 40x lower latency than the PCIe version. 250 nano seconds vs <10 micro seconds

With that in your system the real limitation will be shitty single thread performance.
Click to expand...

Let me make this even clear for oyu.

3D XPOINT = Coming in 2016
3D XPOINT for/in SATA & PCIE devices = Coming in 2016

3D XPOINT on a DIMM = THIS IS RAM NOT A HARD DRIVE
This RAM is made for Intel XEON CPUs that are not even released yet.

", we&#8217;ll see 3D XPoint-based SSDs that plug into SATA, SATA Express and PCIe slots. It will be a while before 3D XPoint becomes main system memory, and Intel won&#8217;t actually ship its 3D XPoint DIMM Xeon until 2017"

Main System Memory = RAM

So, again, you're not going to go buy a single DIMM and throw it in ANY PC you have right now and be flying with some 3d xpoint special DIMM magic sauce you keep talking about.

At best in 2016 you'll see SATA and PCIE 3D XPOINT devices.
 
ToddW2 said:
Let me make this even clear for oyu.

3D XPOINT = Coming in 2016
3D XPOINT for/in SATA & PCIE devices = Coming in 2016

3D XPOINT on a DIMM = THIS IS RAM NOT A HARD DRIVE
This RAM is made for Intel XEON CPUs that are not even released yet.

", we’ll see 3D XPoint-based SSDs that plug into SATA, SATA Express and PCIe slots. It will be a while before 3D XPoint becomes main system memory, and Intel won’t actually ship its 3D XPoint DIMM Xeon until 2017"

Main System Memory = RAM

So, again, you're not going to go buy a single DIMM and throw it in ANY PC you have right now and be flying with some 3d xpoint special DIMM magic sauce you keep talking about.

At best in 2016 you'll see SATA and PCIE 3D XPOINT devices.
Click to expand...

umm no. Why would XPoint be a RAM? That has never been stated and was actually stated that this is never to be used as a replacement for RAM. It is a hardrive in the RAM just like Sandisks ultradimm
 
headala said:
I've read a few threads about this, but there's none that seem to answer the question: Which current-generation PCI-E SSD's are bootable on legacy hardware (specifically, X58 Rampage II Extreme)?
Click to expand...
Plextor M6e I think should work. I'm using one in a C226-chipset system as a bootable drive.
 
You could always get a 6Gb SATA or 12Gb SAS PCIe card and hook up an SSD to that.

That would get around the issue of PCIe SSDs and you would have the fastest available SATA or SAS interface to boot. (pun intended)
 
cyclone3d said:
You could always get a 6Gb SATA or 12Gb SAS PCIe card and hook up an SSD to that.

That would get around the issue of PCIe SSDs and you would have the fastest available SATA or SAS interface to boot. (pun intended)
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking. An IBM m1015 in it mode is cheap, fast and just plain works.

If you are serious about performance and have money to spend you should be looking into NVMe.
 
bds1904 said:
That's what I was thinking. An IBM m1015 in it mode is cheap, fast and just plain works.

If you are serious about performance and have money to spend you should be looking into NVMe.
Click to expand...

I agree 10000% but his #1 priority should be to replace that x58 system ;) LOL!!!
 
ToddW2 said:
Let me make this even clear for oyu.

3D XPOINT = Coming in 2016
3D XPOINT for/in SATA & PCIE devices = Coming in 2016

3D XPOINT on a DIMM = THIS IS RAM NOT A HARD DRIVE
This RAM is made for Intel XEON CPUs that are not even released yet.
Click to expand...

No, it's not RAM. XPOINT is still significantly slower than RAM, so this would make no sense. It's simply using the DIMM format an bus to get a high-bandwidth low-latency path between the XPOINT memory and the CPU.

It'll require OS support to do it properly, where you can say "don't use this range of addresses for normal memory", then map in those addresses later with the knowledge that they're actually nonvolatile. It wouldn't take much to do this with Linux today (small kernel driver and tweaked boot args) but using Windows with it would require support from Microsoft I suspect.
 
Thanks for all the thoughts. I'll look into a 6Gb/s card with a SATA ssd. If I won't be booting off of it, which one would I need for that?
 
headala said:
Thanks for all the thoughts. I'll look into a 6Gb/s card with a SATA ssd. If I won't be booting off of it, which one would I need for that?
Click to expand...

You will want one that uses at least a PCIe x2. If you get one that only uses x1, the max it will do is 5Gb.

Doesn't really matter for the most part which one you get as any of the newer ones should be able to handle 6Gb no problem, especially since you are not wanting to boot from it.

Something like this would work fine.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Marvell-9235-SATA-6Gb-PCI-e-Controller-Card-PCI-express-to-4-Ports-SATA-III-3-0-/111297882976?hash=item19e9deeb60

Or if you want one that you can mount a 2.5" drive to, you could get something like this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-5-SATA-6Gbps-3-Ports-SATA-3-0-PCI-e-Hybrid-Card-SSD-HDD-RAID-Hyperdue/121407049220?_trksid=p2047675.c100009.m1982&_trkparms=aid%3D777000%26algo%3DABA.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D33058%26meid%3D36238466521c4f3f8d3aa2acd5ff644a%26pid%3D100009%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26mehot%3Dpp%26sd%3D111297882976
 
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I know, it's old topic. But just got newest upgrade.
As title says, I've got that (Plextor M6e) working on pretty old workstation, with Supermicro X8DTH-if (i5520 based) mobo. It boots, it works, and it's faster than sata3 :)

Probably, anything with own bios, will work properly.
 
Most drives should be ok (if not optimal in the case of NVMe, which is probably not an issue here). The key word here is "OPROM." OPROMs ("option ROMs") allow things like RAID controllers to be bootable by providing a compatibility layer.

So, just make sure the drive in question has an OPROM, and it'll likely work.
 
ToddW2 said:
If you must keep x58 I'd go with SATA SSD for boot, and Fusion-IO SLC for your 'fast' drive.
Click to expand...

that's exactly what I do! x58, sata ssd, boots into my fusion-io slc 160gb. haha, you nailed my setup.
 
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