Samsung X941 the fastest SSD yet.

sblantipodi said:
I'm sorry, I talked about PCI Express but I wanted to mean Sata Express.
IMHO the future should be M.2 or Sata Express.

M.2 for small drives that don't need a lot of power or heat dissipation and Sata Express for the others.
Really no point to continue to produce PCIe 4x drives.
Click to expand...

No offense but this is a stupid idea akin to saying "I don't need an ATX motherboard, so only mini-ITX boards should be produced."

M.2 SSDs are getting pretty decent but they are still limited by that form factor and it is still inconvenient for the desktop in general.
 
wirk said:
Of course P3700 is for milking rich guys.
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All P3x00 SSDs are catered to make money off enterprises since they are marketed as Data Center solutions. From how I understand the lineup through previews/reviews/articles:

P3700 = fast read and write
P3600 = fast read, moderate write
P3500 = moderate read and write
 
dandragonrage said:
No offense but this is a stupid idea akin to saying "I don't need an ATX motherboard, so only mini-ITX boards should be produced."

M.2 SSDs are getting pretty decent but they are still limited by that form factor and it is still inconvenient for the desktop in general.
Click to expand...

this is the reason why they invented Sata Express so you don't get the point.
 
By the way, M.2 is an implementation of SATA Express, and there is no difference between an M.2 x4 PCIe drive and a x4 PCIe card, just that the conventional card can have a higher power envelope - which does not mean that every PCIe drive has to use up to 25W.

The SATA type M.2 drives should never have made it into the standard, just like the compatibility between the SATA Express type connector to standard SATA is not really needed. The SSD vendors throw so many different types of drives into the market that there is nobody who would want a drive that is compatible to SATA and PCIe at the same time.
 
SATA Express is kinda stupid and pointless. Not gonna fit many of those 10-foot-wide connectors on a motherboard.
 
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dandragonrage said:
SATA Express is kinda stupid and pointless. Not gonna fit many of those 10-foot-wide connectors on a motherboard.
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Oh, stop being so dramatic...the cable spec isn't even finalized yet, iirc. Besides, maybe we should go back to the even larger IDE connectors, since we all seemed to do just fine with them way back when SATA wasn't even invented?

I'd take a MoBo with 2-4 SATAe ports and a couple NVMe SSDs connected over a MoBo with 6-8 SATA ports and a couple SATA-III SSDs connected any day. :p
 
Ideally I think that SATA should be discontinued in favor of PCIE.

SATA is fast enough for spinning disks and all, but adding extra layers of protocols in only adds latency, overhead, and additional power usage. Since SATA controllers use PCIE anyway, it will be more efficient to simply cut SATA out and use PCIE directly, even for spinning disks.

I think they're wrong to design a cable with SATA and PCIE in one. It's pointless and huge.

Could I settle for 2-4 SATA Express + 4+ SATA? Sure. But why should I?

Downside of PCIE directly - 1 lane of PCI-E is way overkill for 1 spinning disk and consumers have limited PCI-E lanes total. This ought to change, I think.
 
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dandragonrage said:
M.2 SSDs are getting pretty decent but they are still limited by that form factor and it is still inconvenient for the desktop in general.
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I expect that we'll soon see x16 card with multiple M.2 slots on it. 8 x2 slots would basically provide a next-gen HBA.
 
dandragonrage said:
Ideally I think that SATA should be discontinued in favor of PCIE.

SATA is fast enough for spinning disks and all, but adding extra layers of protocols in only adds latency, overhead, and additional power usage. Since SATA controllers use PCIE anyway, it will be more efficient to simply cut SATA out and use PCIE directly, even for spinning disks.

I think they're wrong to design a cable with SATA and PCIE in one. It's pointless and huge.

Could I settle for 2-4 SATA Express + 4+ SATA? Sure. But why should I?
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Power consumption of SATAe is speculated to be much lower than SATA-IV (if it existed), so where else can the storage data bus interface evolve to while increasing data transfer speeds well above the current theoretical max of SATA-III and keep power consumption figures relatively low? We could go pure PCIe, but then that poses the problem of maintaining hot-swapping with rapid replacement for workstations and data centers, which is a critical must-have feature, and enterprise customers lead the way in overall sales volume. Having multiple industry standards for storage connectors will only keep pricing inflated (like we are experiencing right now with having SSDs offered in IDE, SATA, mSATA, M.2, SATAe, PCIe, and even USB 3.0 flash drive-style).

With 4, 8, and 16 TB 2.5" SSDs coming in the next couple/few years (and only getting bigger after that), the traditional spindle HDD market is going to go the way of the Dodo bird in probably a decade from now,...which means that the currently beloved SATA port will eventually cease to exist (maybe except for ODDs, but I'm assuming those will eventually transition over like they did from IDE, as well).

So, what's the best future standardized single interface that can cater to all of the following?
- 1.8 and 2.5 inch form factors
- hot swap capability
- non SSD drives, such as ODDs and tape backups
- offer blistering sustained and burst data transfer speeds compared to SATA
- offer the same or lower power consumption compared to SATA

I firmly believe that answer is SATAe.
 
DejaWiz said:
All P3x00 SSDs are catered to make money off enterprises since they are marketed as Data Center solutions. From how I understand the lineup through previews/reviews/articles:
P3700 = fast read and write
P3600 = fast read, moderate write
P3500 = moderate read and write
Click to expand...

You are right. Apart of targeting enterprises, Intel is also milking money from its lead as first implementor of PCIe 3.0x4 SSDs. P3700 has nonsense price but P3600/3500 are 'just' very expensive and so I still have a plan for buying P3600/400GB. After all that does not look so expensive since I already splurged on Xeon E5-1680v3 which is another example of Intel monoply pricing.
 
omniscence said:
By the way, M.2 is an implementation of SATA Express, and there is no difference between an M.2 x4 PCIe drive and a x4 PCIe card, just that the conventional card can have a higher power envelope - which does not mean that every PCIe drive has to use up to 25W. The SATA type M.2 drives should never have made it into the standard, just like the compatibility between the SATA Express type connector to standard SATA is not really needed. The SSD vendors throw so many different types of drives into the market that there is nobody who would want a drive that is compatible to SATA and PCIe at the same time.
Click to expand...

One has to remember that SATA is legacy from mechanical drives time. PCIe with NVMe is recent, developed to matched opportunities of the SSD. But due to the SATA dominance SSDs stille have to be made with SATA which limits their potential. Thus there is gradual movement to PCIe, it is evident that M.2 will move completely to the PCIe 3.0x4. M.2 over SATA is just temporary cheap solution.
 
Anyone know which secure erase utility is safe to use on the XP941? My ASUS ROG motherboard has a built in secure erase utility in its UEFI, but even that I'm afraid to try on my XP941.
 
I've read that too, but from what I've read it's only with certain secure erase utilities. I haven't read about anyone using the UEFI built in ROG secure erase with the XP941.
 
Let someone else who can afford to buy another XP941 perform that experiment.
 
UPDATE to a dead thread :)

Im running an XP941 in an Asus Rampage V extreme as my Win 8.1 boot drive.

The startup time on this thing, including all the little Windows startup programs (Steam / Teamspeak 3 / AIDA64 / etc) is freaking amazing. I don't use the drive for ANYTHING else except hosting my Windows installation. All other game and programs I have offloaded to other Raid0 setups in my system.

The teething process was not trouble free. Getting Windows 8.1 to install from DVD to the XP941 required some googling and forum reading. Trick is, you have to run the install DVD from something called UEFI mode, more on that here:
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthrea...xtreme-M-2-Setup-And-Windows-Installation-FAQ

Also, this thing is TWITCHY when it comes to failed boots as a result of trying to find a stable overlock. I went through 4 x full Windows installations in less than 48 hours because the wrong kind of failed boot will corrupt / wreck the MBR on the XP941, and the recovery options from the Win DVD are NOT available not his thing. (its always reports "drive locked". Its a known issue). Supposedly recovery options from a Win 8.1 installation on a USB drive are available, but I didnt have one of those handy.

I don't know if the XP941 is available for fully main stream use yet. On the one hand, it IS fast. Real fast. And it doesn't take up a SATA port on your mobo. But when experimenting with CPU overlocks and multipliers, you get the wrong kind of hung/failed boot, you can easily wreck your windows installing, requiring a full re-install (Unless you have Win 8.1 on a USB drive, then maybe the repair options are working).
 
If you have trouble with booting while overclocking, make sure you have the PCIe bus speed clamped !
 
Phuncz said:
If you have trouble with booting while overclocking, make sure you have the PCIe bus speed clamped !
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How do I do that?

The CPU has an unlocked multiplier, so when over clocking all I do is up the multi and the vCore. I don't touch bus speed so I assume they are still at the stock (100) setting?
 
Hmm if you haven't touched the base-clock the PCIe bus frequency should stay at the default 100MHz. But nevertheless try with it set manually to 100, I've seen strange stuff like this happen before.
 
Phuncz said:
Hmm if you haven't touched the base-clock the PCIe bus frequency should stay at the default 100MHz. But nevertheless try with it set manually to 100, I've seen strange stuff like this happen before.
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Ya i never OC with FSB freq's (or whatever they are called now). I only work with CPUs that have an unlocked multi to keep things simple enough for me.

But the XP941 holding a Win 8.1 install is a sensitive creature that can get mad and become un-bootable pretty easily during a hung boot, forcing you to reinstall Windows 8.1 from a DVD all for scratch. Im getting pretty tired of that process, which is why I quit at a stable 4.0 OC on the 5960x.

Id like 4.2-4.4 for Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen (if its every actually released) but Im so tired of doing full Windows installs, followed by Steam, WinRar, Office, Origin, UPlay, etc that I quit at 4.0ghz
 
Bit of a thread necro. Sky do you still have the 941/corrupt boot problems?

I've got a 951 inbound and worried about running into the same issues.
 
Vega said:
Bit of a thread necro. Sky do you still have the 941/corrupt boot problems?
I've got a 951 inbound and worried about running into the same issues.
Click to expand...

where did you bought the 951?
do you notice any difference in performance between a normal SSD and this in real world usage?
 
Vega said:
Bit of a thread necro. Sky do you still have the 941/corrupt boot problems?

I've got a 951 inbound and worried about running into the same issues.
Click to expand...

Nope:

Haven't had a corrupted boot in a long time (since the early over clocking days). Been working fine.

I think they are already selling SM951s in China / Hong Kong. I believe thats where that guy got his (at least a user reported getting his in China on the ROG forums, might the same user). RamCity.au says they should be getting them in the summer.
 
I noticed a difference going from 2 x Crucial 512GBs in Raid0 to the 512GB XP941. Well, what I mean is, I noticed a difference other than going from a 1TB boot drive to a 512GB one :)

Windows 8.1 absolutely boots up faster with the XP941 vs the previous SSD Raid0 setup. However, there is no other difference (other than the lost space!). I cant really install games to the XP 941 (I'm primality a gamer) as the limited 512MB gets chipped away already pretty quick with the Win installation and all the other little crap programs that go with it. And as far as regular Windows use, opening web pages, watching stuff on youtube, watching movies stored on other drives, there really is no difference between having the OS on the XP941 and back when I had it on the 2 x normal SSDs in Raid 0.

I suppose, if it ever actually comes out, I will install Star Citizen to my XP (or SM951 by that time) but no other games just because of space constraints.

Since the SM951 is supposed to be much faster at read speeds than the XP941, I image any user will notice the faster boot time.
 
Boot times for SSDs in RAID will automatically be slower - not because the drives start up slower, but because the RAID controller needs to allow an additional 5 to 10 seconds for human intervention on top of the 5 to 10 seconds that the computer's BIOS must allow for human intervention.
 
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