Samsung 512GB 850pro or 950Evo or Pro?

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Darkmatterx

Darkmatterx

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I'm using an Asus Z97m-Plus and want to swap out my current 3 year old (aprox) 256gb SSD with a new 512gb SSD. I was all ready to order an 850Pro when something about M.2 connectors and faster speeds caught my eye. I believe my motherboard has 1 M.2 connector and I would only have the 1 SSD and 1 3TB HDD so losing 2 SATA ports shouldn't be an issue. Any thoughts on the pro's and con's of the 850 Pro's vs the 950 Evo's or 950 Pro's? How much better are the 950 Evo's and Pro's?

Thanks!
 
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The Original Ralph
actually the PCIe is 3.0 x 16

taken from ASUS Z97m-plus spec page https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z97MPLUS/specifications/

1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 mode, gray)
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black)
2 x PCI

on my Z97M board, i'm running the 950 PRO in the PCIe 2.0 slot, and the 960 EVO in the PCIe 3.0 slot

in everyday operation, i didn't notice any loss in speed running the OS drive (the 950 PRO) in the PCIe 2.0 slot - iirc toms has a comparison review testing one of the samsungs in both 2.0 & 3.0 slots, and found in some tasks, they measured faster speeds in the 2.0 slot.
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dudmont

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Well, the 850 pro is more than fast enough to saturate the sata interface, so it's max transfer rates are limited. Whereas the m.2s aren't nearly as limited by their interface. In mixed load usage the m.2s aren't really much faster. 99% of users are never going to notice the difference. Certain professional users might, if they get long queue depths.
 
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mdd1963

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I think the pre-Z170 chipsets might have had limited bandwidth to their associated M.2 NVME slots, perhaps 10 Gb/Sec, vice the 32 Gb/sec the newer MBs have....? THis would partially limit peak sequential performance to about 1 GB/sec, vice the 2500-2800 MB/sec (3200 MB/sec for 960 EVO) the drives are capable of, but, still about twice as fast as a good SSD, even so....

Faster boot times, faster shutdowns, but, for those into games, game loading and game level load times are unaffected compared to a normal SSD, as storage is not the bottleneck during such operations.....

 
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Darkmatterx

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So what is the bottleneck? The CPU? I know Civ 6 has terrible load times, even when your at the beginning of a game. I have an i5 4690K 3.5GHz and 16 GB of higher end Corsair RAM. I have an aftermarket heatsink on the CPU so I really should try OC'ing it a bit and making sure the timings for the ram are as tight as they should be.
 
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mdd1963

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Some games are slow to load into memory, gpu ,etc....; NCIXTechtips did a study of a handful of gaming/level load times comparing SATA SSD to M.2 NVME drives, and there was zero reduction in times required using the latter. Don't know if that would/would not apply to your chosen game(s), however... (But it would suck to spend $240-$300 on a 512 GB variant, and have zero difference, too!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIXSSOzyLbs
 
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rgd1101

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You can read that on all the ssd review on tomshardware. real world performance for common task are virtually identical
 
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Darkmatterx

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Not a lot really. I have my OS on there and programs that I open a lot. I generally save work to the HDD. Although newer games take up a lot of space and some programs don't like it when you change the install directory which is why I wanted to go to a 512. I was more thinking Pro for speed improvements. Is there any way in windows to check to see how much I've written to my current drive over the past.... 3 years? (guess)
 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

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YOU MADE the right decision with the 850 SSD - i've got a Z97M-Plus mobo with an i7-4790 in another computer, and when i upgraded to a 950 Pro, i didn't see any noticeable difference in load times etc

btw, using the M.2 slot on your mobo kills off one or 2 Sata ports - check your owner's manual

the NVMe SSDs are best mounted in a M.2 to PCIe adaptor card

I moved mine over to the PCIe #2 slot, which is only 2.0 x 4, and didn't see any loss in load times. Where the NVMe SSDs do shine though is in read/write functions - i installed another 960 (512 GB) in the primary PCIe slot (3.0 x 4) and when rendering video files i first copy to the 960, then render over to a partion on the 950 SSD - that's when i noticed a difference in render times - files that normally took 40-45 minutes rendering, now take 25-30 minutes (approx)

hope that helps
 
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Darkmatterx

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So I would get 32GB/s with a PCIe M.2 expansion card?

Thanks

SSD Ready Says I write 33Gb a day but its only been running for 20 min. Actual writes in that time is 550 Mb mostly because I've been cleaning up my desktop of all the clutter so I'm moving stuff around. It says aprox life of SSD is 12 years. I think I can live with that. BTW this is an 840 EVO 256.
 
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The Original Ralph

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technical considerations are not my forte - i'm not that literate in technicals, like the actual vs the spec'd speed plus i've been away from computers for a couple of years (medical situation)

all i know is what i indicated, i didn't see any appreciable improvement in my render times until i incorporated a 2nd NVMe SSD (the 960) so i could read from one and write to the other. - otherwise i was restricted by the Sata SSD at one end of the chain, no matter which end i put the sata SSD on. In all other applications, booting, loading programs etc i saw very little improvement - some programs like UPS Worldship and Adobe Photoshop loaded a bit faster, but not enough to justify the price difference. I just bought a 1TB samsung 850 EVO SSD today for $279. The 960 EVO M.2 1 TB from the same vendor would have run $429.

if you do change your mind and go with a M.2 SSD, cause we all want to explore the possiblity of additional speed, go with the Asus HYPER expansion card - they designed it to leave a decent gap between the back side of the NVMe SSD and the pcb board for more air movement. The one killer on the NVMe SSDs is heat build up in the controller. IIRC, the samsung NVMe SSDs throttle speed at 72C. I tried the Lycom and the BT expansion cards, they had less than 1/8" gap behind the SSD stick
 
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The Original Ralph

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just occurred to me - i've got a video rendering right now, when it's thru in 20 or so minutes, the source file is 65 GB

i'll time how long it takes to transfer from the 960 to the 950, and report back here - hope that will help

okay, copied the 65.4 GB file from the 960 over to the 950, time to transfer was 2 min 10 seconds. Then i copied it to a 850 EVO (sata connection) and it copied in 3 min 33 seconds. Bear in mind 1) the 950 had only 864 MB free space after the copy so i don't know if that small "head" room choked the transfer some and b) per Samsung's Magician performance benchmark the 950 is down about 20% on it's speed, both read & write. - still that's roughly slightly > 1/3 faster
 
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Darkmatterx

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I just got my 850 EVO 500GB M.2 and my Asus Hyper M.2 X4 Mini and my BIOS and Win10 doesn't see it. I now see in the instructions this sentence. "External connectors: 1 x M.2 X4 Socket 3 with vertical M Key design, type 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280, 22110 storage devices support. (Supports PCIE SSD only)

Does this mean that the Hyper M.2 won't work with V-NAND SSD's? which the 850 EVO M.2 is.

Whats more my Z97M-Plus says it comes with an M.2 connector but it looks nothing like the thin connector the a SSD fits into. The manual says the adapter is sold separately... WTF is the point of putting one in if it doesn't come with what you need to use it?




 
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rgd1101

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1) Asus Hyper M.2 X4 Mini , if it said it only support pcie ssd, then yes, it will NOT work with 850 evo, as it is sata interface

2)what is wrong with the Z97M-Plus m.2 slot? look fine to me
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z97MPLUS/overview/
 
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Darkmatterx

Darkmatterx

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And yet this video shows someone putting a v-nand into the same thing I have and nobody says in the comments that the guy is wrong. I may need the "Kit" and connect the kit into the mini but I don't know if my GTX 1070 leaves room for it. Also I'm not sure if I can put the SSD in the M.2 slot due to the size of the graphics card. The location is really bad. It also looks like my current SSD is connected to the top of the M.2 as a SATA. I can't really see the side. I need both installed at first so I can clone the 1 SSD to the other so I'll have to install the old SSD somewhere else. There should be open ports.
 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

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newegg had the 256 GB 960 EVO for $120 shipped

AS far as your first question re will it handle 32 GBs - that is the nominal transfer rate but don't know what that translate into in real. For the heck of it the other day, after finishing rendering a 65.4 GB file, i transferred it from a 960 PRO 512 GB to a 950 PRO 256 GB drive, total transfer time was 2 mins, 10 secs.
Then i transferred same file to a 850 EVO SSD, transfer took 3 mins, 33 seconds. Keep in mind when i transferred the file to the 950 PRO 256 gb ssd, after the transfer there was only 864 mb of free space remaining, and i'm not sure if that limited "head room" limited it's write speed. But still, that's a little more than 1/3 faster
 
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dudmont

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As has been said, the 850(SATA SSD) is for all practical purposes just as fast as the 950(M.2 PCIE 3.0x4) drive. The only advantage the m.2s have is in major sequential reads/writes. And on your mobo, that advantage is nullified by the interface being PCIE 3.0x2 only(which drops the sequential speeds to about a third higher than the SATA interface). If you've bought a M.2 PCIE drive, then attach it to the mobo, it'll be nice, but probably not much of a speed advantage over the SSD you have in the system at present. Pretty much any SSD built in the last 5 years is, at least in small data movements is going to perform similarly. Optane will be a game changer on this subject, but it's not mainstream yet, and the interfaces needed to make it happen are just getting off the ground.
After re-reading your original post and several of the further ones, I'm convinced that you won't see any tangible performance boost from any storage upgrade that you can currently do. Suffering through loading times is part of life at the moment, for all of us.
 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

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actually the PCIe is 3.0 x 16

taken from ASUS Z97m-plus spec page https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z97MPLUS/specifications/

1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 mode, gray)
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black)
2 x PCI

on my Z97M board, i'm running the 950 PRO in the PCIe 2.0 slot, and the 960 EVO in the PCIe 3.0 slot

in everyday operation, i didn't notice any loss in speed running the OS drive (the 950 PRO) in the PCIe 2.0 slot - iirc toms has a comparison review testing one of the samsungs in both 2.0 & 3.0 slots, and found in some tasks, they measured faster speeds in the 2.0 slot.
 
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Darkmatterx

Darkmatterx

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I still don't know why in that video the guy can use a 900 series Vnand in a Hyper Mini but I can't seem to get it to show up on my computer. Also I can't use the PCIe3 slot because thats where my Nvidia 1070 goes. :) Right now its in the MB M.2 slot that is throttled to 10GB/s What speeds would I get if I can get that SSD to work in the Hyper mini in a PCIe2 4x mode slot?

Thanks
 
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