Is there a difference between M.2 and Ultra M.2?

[lachdanan]

It seems like ultra m.2 is ASrock's invention, but they claim m.2 is using PCIe x2? Is it better to have m.2 or ultra m.2?

Also are there boards with 2 m.2 slots?

Are SSDs that use PCIe slot vs M.2 any different? Intel 750 uses PCIe, but Samsung 950 pro uses M.2. Are these identical? It's confusing to me because I thought they were different.


Thanks a lot.

 

[zaniix]

It seems like ultra m.2 is ASrock's invention, but they claim m.2 is using PCIe x2? Is it better to have m.2 or ultra m.2?

Also are there boards with 2 m.2 slots?

Are SSDs that use PCIe slot vs M.2 any different? Intel 750 uses PCIe, but Samsung 950 pro uses M.2. Are these identical? It's confusing to me because I thought they were different.


Thanks a lot.

Ultra M.2 is marketing, I think some older M.2 slots were x2 and thew newer ones are x4

Yes there are boards with 2 M.2 slots, at least on the Z170 chipset , maybe others too


M.2 is a connector just like PCIe, the SSDs are either AHCI like your normal SATA SSD or they are nVME which is either M.2, U.2 or PCIe for its connector

To make it even more confusing some M.2 cards are sold on a PCIe boards.

nVME is faster than AHCI, but the only M.2 you can get that is nVME is the Samsung SM951 which is not a consumer part. Good news Samsung will soon have an nVME M.2 SSD that is a consumer drive and should be priced reasonably.

As for the Intel 750, I have read that it isnt the best choice for a boot drive. better drivers are needed. Take that with a grain of salt, but fact is it is expensive in comparison to other options.

lastly OS matters, you really do not want to go through the trouble of booting windows 7 on an M.2 drive. 8.1 should be okay and windows 10 as well.

Bleeding edge causes headaches.

 

[evilsofa]

Asrock developed Ultra m.2 to boost bandwidth, but there is a catch: on the Z97 platform, there are 16 PCI-E 3.0 lanes available, so for video cards you get to configure as one card at 16x, 2 cards at 8x + 8x, or finally in 8x + 4x + 4x. When you use Ultra m.2 with one video card, the card will get 8x; when you run two video cards in SLI/Crossfire, they will get 8x + 4x instead of 8x + 8x. And if you also want to run a PCI-E audio card or NIC with SLI/Crossfire, you may be out of lanes.

When you're looking into using m.2 or u.2 PCI-E SSDs, you really need to do your research regarding what the motherboards you are looking at do to the PCI-E slots when you use those drives. It's a valid reason to look into Skylake Z170 boards instead of cheaper older chipsets if you're going that way.