PCI-E 4.0 SSD

The cold cold truth of benchmark speeds versus real life speeds.


Yeah all this recent news has so many going "Oh I want PCI5..6...7!!!" but it doesn't work like that in the real world. We have all the raw bandwidth we need. What we really need is better file systems etc. that can better handle the tens of thousands of tiny micro files that modern software loves so much.

That PCI-6 drive with 20GBps+ of bandwidth will still drop to KBps when the going gets slightly tough.
 
Cool... So my computer boots at 1.8898023 seconds vs. 1.9, and my game loads nanoseconds faster. Don't get me wrong, I would like a drive like that to host my Proxmox VMs on. But even then... But I feel like my mirror vdev does just fine.
 
I want to understand this, according to the article, is it true that I can run PCI E 4.0 x4 Speed on a PCI E 3.0 motherboard using PCI E 3.0 x 8 lane?

What you should understand is that the bandwidth is the same, but that you'd need a hardware bridge to connect the two devices at that speed, i.e. to 'convert' an PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe drive to PCIe 3.0 x8.

and can you do Win 7 on these?

You should not be advertising that you wish to run an insecure OS.
 
when you said hardware bridge, you mean a PCI E adapter card that is not out yet?
 
Cool... So my computer boots at 1.8898023 seconds vs. 1.9, and my game loads nanoseconds faster. Don't get me wrong, I would like a drive like that to host my Proxmox VMs on. But even then... But I feel like my mirror vdev does just fine.

not true. If you are extracting HD or UHD video, or 50GB blu-ray video, that speed makes a huge difference. Boot up time should be 1/2 as well.

However, since I don't know that brand name chip, I won't trust it unless Intel uses it.
 
when you said hardware bridge, you mean a PCI E adapter card that is not out yet?

Essentially- it would have PCIe 4.0 x4 on one side and PCIe 3.0 x8 on the other. This might be useful for PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSDs if you want to pull >3.5GB/s of bandwidth, but for PCIe add-in cards, you'd need to deal with the logistics behind placing the card in the system.
 
so for people who have PCI E 3.0 motherboard, what option do we have? other than get a new PCI E 4.0 motherboard?
 
so for people who have PCI E 3.0 motherboard, what option do we have? other than get a new PCI E 4.0 motherboard?


I'd say don't worry about it. You'll not notice much difference. Spend your money on something more worthwhile. Or wait for the next gen PCI-e in 18 months...

Most of us with NVMe have been most shall we say...disappointed.
 
so for people who have PCI E 3.0 motherboard, what option do we have? other than get a new PCI E 4.0 motherboard?

A PCIe 4 device will work just fine in a PCIe 3 slot. It'll just be limited to PCIe 3 bandwidth. Likewise, a PCIe 3 device will be fine in a PCIe 4 slot. Backwards compatibility, all the way to v1.0, is one of the niceties of the standard.

That said, there's little reason to jump on PCIe 4 NVMe SSDs, especially if you already have a PCIe 3 unit (or even a good SATA one). You'd be hard-pressed to see any real-world difference.


https://www.tomshardware.com/news/what-we-know-about-pcie4,39063.html

I want to understand this, according to the article, is it true that I can run PCI E 4.0 x4 Speed on a PCI E 3.0 motherboard using PCI E 3.0 x 8 lane? and can you do Win 7 on these?

All that article is saying is that PCIe 4 x4 has the same bandwidth as PCIe 3 x8. Essentially, Each new generation of PCIe roughly doubles the bandwidth of each lane.

I've never seen any kind of bridge or other hardware device that can take a given number of PCIe lanes and double it for the previous-gen. I doubt there'd be any market for it, and it would be needlessly complex and expensive.
 
Most of us with NVMe have been most shall we say...disappointed.

In just how much current software is completely unable to take advantage of the bandwidth. I'd get a rise out of running Crystaldiskmark, and that's about it, unfortunately.
 
In just how much current software is completely unable to take advantage of the bandwidth. I'd get a rise out of running Crystaldiskmark, and that's about it, unfortunately.


The thing I forget is that a lot of folks here just live in Benchmark land.

You and I maybe run them to just check stuff is working but some folks...it's all they do.
 
Computers are tools to be used- yeah, I'll find the limits of the tools I have, but I won't keep doing it looking for some fraction of a fraction of a percent.

And with respect to SSDs, it's really not a good idea at all to begin with.
 
Depending on resolution, you could probably put them all on a 2TB 660p, which has decent performance for user workloads. Biggest issue is platform support really, but as a non-bootable device, I'm betting you could get away with it on HEDT with a little research.
I hear you. However, in the next 6-12 months I plan to scan all my slides and negative. I'm guesstimating that I have 20K slides, and I'm pretty sure I have about 5K B&W and 2K color. Even with culling, that's 3-4 TB right there. I do like the idea of that 2 TB 660p. All I can say is that SDD pricing has dropped lots and lots since I last bought one.

Side question: So what do I do with my big pile of 1 TB and 2 TB Hitachi 7200 rpm HDDs? o_O
 
A 5 bay DAS with 10TB of dump storage?

Range Day!

But that's what popped into my head. I have a few laying around as well, and no good use for them after building a decent NAS with 4x 6TB Ironwolfs as primary with RAID10 and 4x 8TB Barracudas as secondary RAIDZ1 storage. More storage is not something I need so I'm not entirely sure what to do with these.
 
As for the whole lanes thing: there are X570 boards, like the ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE, with a third/chipset PCIe slot with 8x PCIe 4.0 lanes. Naturally this is bandwidth-limited by the X570's 4x PCIe 4.0 upstream, however it means you can run 8x PCIe 3.0 devices in that slot and still get 8 lanes and full speed from them. (admittedly, this is not the same as changing 4x PCIe 4.0 into 8x PCIe 3.0, as it is using 8x of the multiplexed PCIe 4.0 lanes, but it is nevertheless valid)
 
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how come there isn't more co. making / selling these new high speed NVMe?

The platform that can make use of PCIe 4.0 will be used on will be released next week. Intel does not have a PCIe 4.0 platform. They will move to PCIe 5.0 sometime in 2020.
 
Yeah I was going to get one of these (a Drobo) to round up all my odd 4TB/2TB HDDs into. But in the end it was a tad pricey for what I really needed.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01LZPJ...olid=38EV7A8LBLO38&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
I've read in some forum that you should avoid Drobo, that they are very slow. But I'll admit that it's a nice way to "round up" my mixture of 1 and 2 TB drives.That all said, I could probably purchase a 10 TB drive for the cost of one of those Drobo units.
 
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I've read in some forum that you should avoid Drobo, that they are very slow. But I'll admit that it's a nice way to "round up" my mixture of 1 and 2 TB drives.That all said, I could probably purchase a 10 TB drive for the cost of one of those Drobo units.


Yeah in the end the cost outweighed the benefit to me. My RAID1 2x3TB NAS does what I need.
 
Ordered two 1TB Sabrent Rocket Gen4 x4 M.2 NVMe SSDs...

Boot RAID, here I come...!
 
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Holy hell, why? Outside of some benchmark BS, you've just over-complicated your setup and blown a bunch of cash for absolutely no real-world gain.


You just can't tell some folks. Experience is just there to be ignored nowadays.

I run a X99 setup and no point trying to improve boot times as POST/BIOS on X99 takes ages anyway. I managed to cut it in half by switching off the RAM training.
 
For everyone saying no need for more cores or faster NVMe arrays, 640k ought to be enough for anybody.

Looking forward to massive NVMe improvements instead of another 14++++++ style stagnant period of hardware improvements.
 
Looking forward to massive NVMe improvements instead of another 14++++++ style stagnant period of hardware improvements.

I expect a lot of stagnation in the future until something replaces silicon or we have a breakthrough in materials.
 
I expect a lot of stagnation in the future until something replaces silicon or we have a breakthrough in materials.

If the great nvme "flood" of 2019 doesn't completely mess up the supply chain I'd expect 2-4x the performance of what we have now in the next 1-3 years.

As for a use case, as 8k cameras / TVs could drive that.
 
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As for a use case, as 8k cameras / TVs could drive that.

That's the challenge- they don't come close.

The issue is not that faster is better, because in a vacuum why not, but that we're not using the bandwidth currently available and that the upgrade is extremely costly.

Cost / benefit being significantly negative is a good reason to wait.
 
That's the challenge- they don't come close.

The issue is not that faster is better, because in a vacuum why not, but that we're not using the bandwidth currently available and that the upgrade is extremely costly.

Cost / benefit being significantly negative is a good reason to wait.

Not while recording they don't, but if you could copy an hour of footage off at 1gb a second that would be pretty sweet.
 
Not while recording they don't, but if you could copy an hour of footage off at 1gb a second that would be pretty sweet.

For some reason I assumed that you meant solely recording / streaming and realize that that was a pretty limited view on my part now.
 
Ordered two 1TB Sabrent Rocket Gen4 x4 M.2 NVMe SSDs...

Boot RAID, here I come...!

Holy hell, why? Outside of some benchmark BS, you've just over-complicated your setup and blown a bunch of cash for absolutely no real-world gain.

You just can't tell some folks. Experience is just there to be ignored nowadays.

Haters gonna hate...?

AXUQZpQ.jpg
 
So at the moment, the only way you can utilize these drives is IF you have an AMD Motherboard?
 
The platform that can make use of PCIe 4.0 will be used on will be released next week. Intel does not have a PCIe 4.0 platform. They will move to PCIe 5.0 sometime in 2020.

Works for me, I think I'm good on my Z370 until 2021. Will be interesting to see where AMD and Intel are then.
 
Did you get the optional heatsinks?

I did not; these will be going on an ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Impact, the SO-DIMM.2 module they will occupy has built-in heat sinks...
 
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