Samsung SSD 950 PRO M.2 READ SPEED PROBLEM

Janillo · Oct 1, 2016

I have a windows 7 x64 system with an ASUS P8Z68-V/GEN3 motherboard. I installed a samsung SSD 950 PRO into the second PCIE 3.0 x16 slot (the first one is used by the graphics card) by using the following M.2 PCIe adapter:

http://www.lycom.com.tw/DT-120.htm

I installed the NVMe driver and the system recognized the drive. I cloned my windows 7 to the SSD drive, I changed the boot order in the BIOS, and all seemed to work fine. However, when I first boot the system, it didn't look like so fast as I was expecting. When I checked the drive performance with the Samsung Magician, that is what I got:

Reading speed: 722 Mb/s (3-4 times lower than expected)
Writting speed: 1542 Mb/s (just the one expected)

Why do I get this results? Perfect in writting but very low in reading. What is missing?

I checked on the motherboard specifications that this expansion slot is not bandwidth shared:

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8Z68VGEN3/specifications/

Anyone can help?
Thanks

Palorim12 · Oct 3, 2016

Your system is way too old to be using the 950 PRO.

Open up Magician. In the middle, you should see something like Link Speed and Bandwitdh. Can you take a screen shot of that and post it here?

waltercarroll · Oct 3, 2016

The problem is you are running an older motherboard chipset that doesn't take full advantage of the PCI express lanes. You need a motherboard that has the PCIe Gen 3 X4 M.2 that will utilize the X4 on the PCIe lanes. For example, the Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7-EU. This has the Z170 chipset and supports the Skylake CPU. Also, if you are going with SLI the most you an support two video cards running at 8x. And the final piece is that you need to ensure to run Windows 7. You can use the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe drive(s) and the boot drive. Windows 7 takes full advantage of the faster PCI channels.

Janillo · Oct 4, 2016

Thank you for your answers. I don't know how to upload images, sorry

In the Magician it says :

Link Speed Cur: 4Gbps, Max : 8Gbps
Link Width Cur: x4, Max :x4
Bandwidth Cur: 16Gbps, Max; 32Gbps

The PCIe I'm using is gen3.0 x16 as you can see by these data. This bandwidth should be enough to achieve maximum speed, right?

Good news are that with CrystalDiskMark I get
Reading speed: 1699 Mb/s
Writting speed: 1538 Mb/s

Better results but still not as high as expected. Are you sure it is because of the chipset?
This is the maximum I can get with the actual hardware or could the windows OS have anything to do as well?
Thanks again!

Palorim12 · Oct 4, 2016

Janillo :

See how it says your current Link Speed is 4Gbps and your Link Width is x4. Its literally multiplication. 8Gbps x 4 = 16Gbps, which is around 1600Mbps, give or take. Which is the speed Crystal Disk Mark is saying you're getting.

Janillo · Oct 4, 2016

Palorim,

I guess I'm missing something... My link is up to 16Gb/s and the speed I'm getting is ten times lower 1.6Gb/s=1600Mb/s, not same...

Palorim12 · Oct 4, 2016

Janillo :

This is how i always saw it:

SATA I - 1.5Gbps = ~150MB/s
SATA II - 3Gbps = ~300MB/s
SATA III - 6Gbps = ~550MB/s
SATA Express - 10Gbps = ~1000MB/s
You - 16gbps = ~1600MB/s

Janillo · Oct 4, 2016

Thank you Palorim!

So the difference comes from bits vs bytes x8 factor, right? That easy!

Do you think upgrading to windows 8 or windows 10 will improve my results? Is it worthy to do it? Or just wait for a computer upgrade, let's say in a year, and install a new motherboard with m.2 ports?

Thanks in advance

Palorim12 · Oct 5, 2016

Janillo :

I think the bottleneck is your motherboard, not OS.

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Samsung SSD 950 PRO M.2 READ SPEED PROBLEM

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