inevitable 950 pro vs. intel 750 thread...

[Zarathustra[H]]

You don't mention what processor you're using, with X79 you need to have an Ivy Bridge E and not a Sandy Bridge E to have PCIe 3.0 support. Sandy only had PCIe 2.0.

That is incorrect. I have a Sandy Bridge-E and it is working perfectly at gen3 speeds.

The garden variety Sandy only had gen2 support if I recall, (but I could be wrong) but the -E version supports gen 3. If I recall, the marketing literature at launch didn't call it gen3, as it was pre-standard gen3, but it works as gen 3 none the less.

Some GeForce 600 series cards had difficulty with Sandy under x79 in gen 3, but other than that it is fully functional. I use gen 3 on mine both for my two 980ti's and for my Intel 750 SSD.

 

[acquacow]

<3 x99... lots of pci-e lanes =)

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

That is incorrect. I have a Sandy Bridge-E and it is working perfectly at gen3 speeds.

The garden variety Sandy only had gen2 support if I recall, (but I could be wrong) but the -E version supports gen 3. If I recall, the marketing literature at launch didn't call it gen3, as it was pre-standard gen3, but it works as gen 3 none the less.

Some GeForce 600 series cards had difficulty with Sandy under x79 in gen 3, but other than that it is fully functional. I use gen 3 on mine both for my two 980ti's and for my Intel 750 SSD.

So to clarify, yes, the Intel spec page says Sandy Bridge-E is PCIe 2.0 but they only say this because the PCIe implementation on Sandy Bridge-E predated the official PCIe 3.0 specification, and there was no PCIe 3.0 expansion hardware to test/validate it on at the time of launch, so they can't claim it to be PCIe 3.0. It does how ever unofficially work, and this was mentioned in most of the early Sandy Bridge-E launch reviews, but wasnt confirmed until actual PCIe 3.0 GPU's were launched. Here is an article from Anandtech on the subject.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

<3 x99... lots of pci-e lanes =)

Yeah, Sandy-E had 40 lanes as well, and I love it.

I found it disappointing that with ivy and haswell-e chips they lowered the amount of lanes on the lower models to 28

I personally don't need gobs of cores. 4 to 6 fast cores are great for me. I'll take all the PCIe lanes I can get though. With this decision from intel I can only get the max number of PCIe lanes on a CPU with more cores than I need.

This is one of the reasons I haven't upgraded from my i7-3930K yet. That, and 5 years later it still performs well, and overclocks higher than the newer ivy and haswell chips. (though due to their advances in IPC, the performance is about the same.)

I'm thinking I'll hold on to the current Sandy-E x79 whip until Zen comes out, read some reviews about Zen and then decide what to do.

 

[ND40oz]

So to clarify, yes, the Intel spec page says Sandy Bridge-E is PCIe 2.0 but they only say this because the PCIe implementation on Sandy Bridge-E predated the official PCIe 3.0 specification, and there was no PCIe 3.0 expansion hardware to test/validate it on at the time of launch, so they can't claim it to be PCIe 3.0. It does how ever unofficially work, and this was mentioned in most of the early Sandy Bridge-E launch reviews, but wasnt confirmed until actual PCIe 3.0 GPU's were launched. Here is an article from Anandtech on the subject.

And you need a board with a bios that allows it to unofficially work, I guess P9X79 WS is one of those boards. I should probably update the bios on my GA-X79S-UP5 and see if I can get it working.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

And you need a board with a bios that allows it to unofficially work, I guess P9X79 WS is one of those boards. I should probably update the bios on my GA-X79S-UP5 and see if I can get it working.

If you use an Nvidia GPU it could also be the drivers keeping you back. There is a registry patch that allows Nvidia drivers to use gen 3 on Sandy-E Amd GPU's do it automatically though.

 

[ND40oz]

If you use an Nvidia GPU it could also be the drivers keeping you back. There is a registry patch that allows Nvidia drivers to use gen 3 on Sandy-E Amd GPU's do it automatically though.

Yeah, I have a pair of GTX 670s in mine right now, the LSI 9285-8i is only PCIe 2.0, so that won't see a difference anyway. Like you said, no good reason to upgrade yet, I've bought a 4670k and a few nucs since this build, but for my main workstation, it still chugs along.

 

[albertfu]

No worries, asking people about their setups and sharing their opinions is - IMHO - why forums like these exist, and now with the new forums that notify us if we get quoted, it's actually easier to notice when it happens!

So here's the deal. Yes, the 750 uses full PCIe 3.0 4x on my motherboard. You just have to make sure you have "gen3" enabled in the BIOS. Once you do this, it will work just as well and as fast in your p9x79 as it will in any newer board.

That being said, it won't make a huge difference.

These new PCIe SSD's all have very high and impressive sounding specs, but the truth is regardless of which one you choose, be it the Samsung 950, or the Intel 750 or something else, the circumstances under which you'll actually see their max speeds are very very rare, and usually limited to intense server-type workloads (think databases, multiple virtualized operating systems on the same disk, etc. etc. that drive up the Queue Depth pretty high.

You will likely not even see the max throughput values even in a disk benchmark like Crystal Disk Mark or anything like that. They will likely post throughput numbers higher than a high end SATA SSD disk, but nowhere near the max specs, and in real life use you will barely tell the difference, if at all. Your system won't boot faster, your games/applications/levels won't load any quicker, you might transfer/copy large files slightly faster, but it will be marginal.

PCIe / M.2 SSD's are really what amount to dyno queens. They look great on paper, but in real terms, especially in desktop workloads, they'll perform about the same as a high end SATA SSD, like a Samsung 850 Pro.

I knew all this before buying my 750, but I needed an SSD size bump anyway, and I still had to try it for myself, the temptation was too strong. I justified it with the fact that I often run multiple virtual machines on my desktop at the same time, and it might help. It's a good SSD, but if someone where to break into my system and swap it with an SATA based Samsung 850 pro and not tell me, I probably wouldn't notice.

This isn't because of the P9x79, this is the way it is on ALL systems, even the newest high end boards. It doesn't matter if it's the Intel 750 via PCIe or the Samsung 950 via m.2.

Also, you will be giving some things up if you go this route. For instance, with the 750 installed, you will no longer have a disk activity LED on the front of your case. It doesn't work. If you are attached to looking at this light to see fi the computer is actually doing something, you may want to consider another alternative it bugged the hell out of me at first, but I got over it.

So I guess my take is, if you get a good deal on one, they are great SSD's, and they will work just as well on your P9x79 as they will on newer systems, just don't expect to be instantly getting over 2GB/s throughput. Unless you are doing high queue depth work loads, this just isn't going to happen.

If you don't get a good deal on one, I'd just get a good SATA SSD, and save the money for some other part that will make more of a practical difference. PCIe/M.2 SSD's just aren't practically significant as it stands today. They are more show-off item,s for people who want the latest tech, than they are actual performance boosters at this point.

Thank you for your answer !

These X79 boards didn't stop to amaze me considering their age.
2 PCIE 3.0 x4 slots on P9X79 WS just guarantee fastest peripherals other than graphic cards. USB 3.1, Thunderbolt 3, NVMe SSD, 10GbE, name it and there is plenty of bandwidth for them (4GBps bi-directional !).

I heard about issue with HDD activity LED before when searching keywords like "X79 intel 750", it won't bug me since i have to turn my head to see this LED so i check it quite rarely

The real issue is like you said, one must perform a clean install of Windows to be able to boot from NVMe SSD, i usually just do a ghost (with 4k alignment) when switching between SATA SSDs.

I will wait for more NVMe SSD to come to market and try one that is not intel 750 (may can't boot from it). My need doesn't justify this buy but yeah, what's wrong to try all possibilities on this good old board !

 

[albertfu]

For PCIE 3.0 support on Sandy-E, I never tried nVidia cards on Sandy-E but all AMD cards work with PCIE 3.0 out of box

 

[acquacow]

Yeah, Sandy-E had 40 lanes as well, and I love it.

I found it disappointing that with ivy and haswell-e chips they lowered the amount of lanes on the lower models to 28

I personally don't need gobs of cores. 4 to 6 fast cores are great for me. I'll take all the PCIe lanes I can get though. With this decision from intel I can only get the max number of PCIe lanes on a CPU with more cores than I need.

This is one of the reasons I haven't upgraded from my i7-3930K yet. That, and 5 years later it still performs well, and overclocks higher than the newer ivy and haswell chips. (though due to their advances in IPC, the performance is about the same.)

I'm thinking I'll hold on to the current Sandy-E x79 whip until Zen comes out, read some reviews about Zen and then decide what to do.

Yup, I'm only upgrading at this point for power savings/less heat in the office.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Yup, I'm only upgrading at this point for power savings/less heat in the office.

Yeah, that will in all likelihood be my justification when I look at Zen end of this year as well. It's been nice having a 5Ghz Sandy-E space heater in my office this winter, but in the summer its brutal, the fans are loud and the AC needed to cool the room is louder.

I just hope Zen lives up to the hype in performance, does well in power and has enough PCIe lanes for me. I won't be happy if I have to scale back from the 40 lanes my 3930k has.

Based on my calculations - however - if Zen has 40% higher IPC than Kaveri, it will need to overclock above 5Ghz for it to keep up with one of my 3930k cores at my current 4.8Ghz... Question is if that is in the cards.

 

[tangoseal]

Well I can confirm that the Intel 750 does NOT work with the Rampage IV and 3930K. I have to sell this shit now because it wont work. I have to get a Z170 and I5 or I7 6000 series to make this damn card work. What a pain in the ass.

9 out 10 power off and on's, sometimes more and the card might actually power up in the slot and be detected. I returned 2 cards in a row to Microcenter thinking that the cards might be bad. Got a 3rd card today and same fucking thing.

X79 + Intel 750 = total FAIL! I have the latest bios and guess what Asus ... thanks for keeping it updated ... latest bios is from F'ing 2014. Probably why.

 

[ND40oz]

I'm wondering if you're running into the 3930k's half baked PCIe 3.0/2.0 issue. Intel specifically states you need 3.0 for boot support, with PCIe 2.0, it only offers secondary drive support.

SSD 750 PCI-E & X79.

Looks like they want you to use Z97, X99 and up if you want their support though.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Well I can confirm that the Intel 750 does NOT work with the Rampage IV and 3930K. I have to sell this shit now because it wont work. I have to get a Z170 and I5 or I7 6000 series to make this damn card work. What a pain in the ass.

9 out 10 power off and on's, sometimes more and the card might actually power up in the slot and be detected. I returned 2 cards in a row to Microcenter thinking that the cards might be bad. Got a 3rd card today and same fucking thing.

X79 + Intel 750 = total FAIL! I have the latest bios and guess what Asus ... thanks for keeping it updated ... latest bios is from F'ing 2014. Probably why.

I guess it either depends on your motherboard then, or ther e is something else wrong with your rig. Have you confirmed that other cards work properly in that slot?

I've never had an ounce of instability with mine on my Asus P9x79 WS with an i7-3930k. Apart from the lack of HDD led and the annoyance of having to deal with UEFI booting (it might be easy to do a fresh install in UEFI, but converting from a traditional boot sector to UEFI was a royal pain in the butt, especially with my Linux/Windows dual boot setup).


Also, turns out what I wrote above about not being able to max out sequential speeds was incorrect. It's been a while, I didn't remember. Turns out I can (at least while reading)

I guess what I might be remembering is the difference between the Q32T sequential figures and the regular regular sequential figured (I assume this is QD32 vs QD1?)

usually anything over QD4 or so is irrelevant for Desktop use.

 

[tangoseal]

I guess it either depends on your motherboard then, or ther e is something else wrong with your rig. Have you confirmed that other cards work properly in that slot?

I've never had an ounce of instability with mine on my Asus P9x79 WS with an i7-3930k. Apart from the lack of HDD led and the annoyance of having to deal with UEFI booting (it might be easy to do a fresh install in UEFI, but converting from a traditional boot sector to UEFI was a royal pain in the butt, especially with my Linux/Windows dual boot setup).


Also, turns out what I wrote above about not being able to max out sequential speeds was incorrect. It's been a while, I didn't remember. Turns out I can (at least while reading)

I guess what I might be remembering is the difference between the Q32T sequential figures and the regular regular sequential figured (I assume this is QD32 vs QD1?)

usually anything over QD4 or so is irrelevant for Desktop use.

I read in theblast few hours people having success with Rampage IV gene 4801 bios. My Ramp 4 has 4901 latest. I will downflash to 4801.

I am noticing the card leds not activating until after the system.looks for boot devices. Its like other than the GPU the PCIe bus ia not activating until after the system.looks for sata boot drives but is too.late. Im so frustrated . All my other cards in all slots work fine.

Also I have 32 pcie lanes and am loaded as following:

Gpu 16 lanes
Sound card 1 lane
Intel 10gb fiber lan card 8 lanes

So I have 7 lanes available and the system appears to be having trouble seeing or powering up the card. I really really want this card to work.

Maybe I dont understand the Compatibility module settings in bios can anyone please help me with this card on x79. 3930K os so Fing fast its a downgrade or side grade to go to a skylake. I dont want to spend all that money.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I read in theblast few hours people having success with Rampage IV gene 4801 bios. My Ramp 4 has 4901 latest. I will downflash to 4801.

I am noticing the card leds not activating until after the system.looks for boot devices. Its like other than the GPU the PCIe bus ia not activating until after the system.looks for sata boot drives but is too.late. Im so frustrated . All my other cards in all slots work fine.

Also I have 32 pcie lanes and am loaded as following:

Gpu 16 lanes
Sound card 1 lane
Intel 10gb fiber lan card 8 lanes

So I have 7 lanes available and the system appears to be having trouble seeing or powering up the card. I really really want this card to work.

Maybe I dont understand the Compatibility module settings in bios can anyone please help me with this card on x79. 3930K os so Fing fast its a downgrade or side grade to go to a skylake. I dont want to spend all that money.

Here's what I would do.

The compatibility module can be confusing, but my understanding of it is that it only has to do with booting, not with drive access.

I would forget booting for a moment until you test if it's actually working right.

Boot up in your existing Windows install. Install Intels NVMe drivers from their webpage for the 750, and see if the drive is accessible and functions. If that works, then move on to the compatibility module and booting. I can checkn what bios settings I use for the CSM when I get home. I recall it being counter-intuitive and annoying to get it to boot, but works well once you get over that hump.

 

[tangoseal]

Here's what I would do.

The compatibility module can be confusing, but my understanding of it is that it only has to do with booting, not with drive access.

I would forget booting for a moment until you test if it's actually working right.

Boot up in your existing Windows install. Install Intels NVMe drivers from their webpage for the 750, and see if the drive is accessible and functions. If that works, then move on to the compatibility module and booting. I can checkn what bios settings I use for the CSM when I get home. I recall it being counter-intuitive and annoying to get it to boot, but works well once you get over that hump.

its not, this mobo wont detect card .

 

[acquacow]

Yeah, that will in all likelihood be my justification when I look at Zen end of this year as well. It's been nice having a 5Ghz Sandy-E space heater in my office this winter, but in the summer its brutal, the fans are loud and the AC needed to cool the room is louder.

I just hope Zen lives up to the hype in performance, does well in power and has enough PCIe lanes for me. I won't be happy if I have to scale back from the 40 lanes my 3930k has.

Based on my calculations - however - if Zen has 40% higher IPC than Kaveri, it will need to overclock above 5Ghz for it to keep up with one of my 3930k cores at my current 4.8Ghz... Question is if that is in the cards.

I went from CFL-backlit LCD panels to LED backlit...
i7-980 to 5930k
GTX-680 to 980Ti
Spinning disks to SSDs

My average wattage dropped from ~450w down to 250w

Much savings, such cooler office.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

its not, this mobo wont detect card .

That is unfortunate. If you don't see the drive under these circumstances, tinkering with the compatibility module won't help. Did you try downgrading the BIOS like you suggested above?

 

[tangoseal]

That is unfortunate. If you don't see the drive under these circumstances, tinkering with the compatibility module won't help. Did you try downgrading the BIOS like you suggested above?

Yeah nothing. Its about 1-2% of the time it will detect and allow me to boot the others times nothing. It is 100% fail if I install any other card except the GPU. But I can install 4 cards just fine and all work perfect except the 750.

Frustrated... Im putting my Rampage IV and 3930K up for sale. I just need to make an ad for it.

 

[albertfu]

I guess it either depends on your motherboard then, or ther e is something else wrong with your rig. Have you confirmed that other cards work properly in that slot?

I've never had an ounce of instability with mine on my Asus P9x79 WS with an i7-3930k. Apart from the lack of HDD led and the annoyance of having to deal with UEFI booting (it might be easy to do a fresh install in UEFI, but converting from a traditional boot sector to UEFI was a royal pain in the butt, especially with my Linux/Windows dual boot setup).


Also, turns out what I wrote above about not being able to max out sequential speeds was incorrect. It's been a while, I didn't remember. Turns out I can (at least while reading)

I guess what I might be remembering is the difference between the Q32T sequential figures and the regular regular sequential figured (I assume this is QD32 vs QD1?)

usually anything over QD4 or so is irrelevant for Desktop use.

2123MBps

So it's definitely working on PCIE 3.0 !