PCI-E SSDs

[Pudgie]

After reading the reviews on the GSkill Phoenix Blade PCI-E SSD off Guru3D, Hexus & reading the Gskill forums on this product it is the real deal but it is a little more cumbersome to use as opposed to the others (treat it as a RAID array if using it for boot drive duty or storage....will need to load GSkill RAID drivers at F6 prompt during Win OS install if boot drive duty or load drivers in Win Disk Management & reboot if using for storage after Win recognizes the drive is present & you DEFINATELY want it in AHCI mode....) & is REALLY OVERKILL when I was checking the performance results over the other PCI-E & SATA SSD's also tested (which included the Plextor M6e @ 256Gb capacity in both M.2 & PCI-E flavors). In the SATA category the Samsung 840 EVO & 850 EVO were the big dogs of the bunch consistently performing right up against the SATA bus ceiling of 500Gb\s read/write performance limit.

Since the Plextor M6e 256 Gb PCI-E SSD tested to consistently hit the 700Gb\s-800Gb\s read\write speeds in both the M.2 & PCI-E variants (the ceiling for M.2 spec SSD's @ PCI-E 2.x specs...not limited by the current PCI-E bus lane speeds of 985Gb\s @ 3.x PCI-E spec...as they interface directly into the PCI-E bus) & consistently scored very high when compared to this Phoenix Blade, this has really moved me towards the Plextor M6e BK edition PCI-E SSD (really the M.2 vers on a PCI-E black PCB adapter board w/ good looking heat shield & red anodized aluminum heatsink attached to the SSD module itself by the heat shield.....real pretty to look at   ) to start out with.
No drivers are needed w/ this SSD to be used for either storage or boot duty & can run on legacy BIOS or UEFI BIOS & also has the ability to use the 12v SATA power connector if needed and has a SDD LED connector so that you can use the existing HDD activity light on your case. Very appealing I must say..........................

The only issue is whether I want to get the 256Gb version or up it to the 512Gb version for any future program expansion plans as I am getting this SSD exclusively for boot duty to run my OS & programs off it & will most likely continue to use 1 of my existing OCZ Vertex4 256Gb SSD's for page file duty\storage & the 2nd 1 for strictly storage across the X79 SATA III bus.

Well this is where I'm at right now.....most likely will be pulling the plug on ordering this soon & will be installing this w/ a fresh clean install of Win 7 SP1 on it (I cloned my WD Cavier Black 500Gb HDD boot drive onto my OCZ Vertex4 256Gb SSD 2 1/2 yrs ago using free vers of TODO EaseUS....all went OK & was contiguous but the system reserved partition was a lot larger than what I wanted it to be) so I hope Win 7 sets up the std 1024 contiguous spacing for SSD service upon install................

I'll post more on this when I get it.

 

[Pudgie]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249054

This is OTW to my carport door.........should be here by Saturday..................... ....

 

[Pudgie]

Update:

Every time I get into trying some product on my box I learn other things that I wasn't looking for.......................... .....

 

After reading up on Plextor's web site concerning this M6e BK PCI-E SSD as being both legacy BIOS & UEFI compatible, I Bing'd on the topics "Legacy Opt Rom", "legacy BIOS" & "UEFI" & learned just what all this was & what they provide in the process of computer startup or POST & how the various devices are "seen" & processed during this part of computer operation..................

Then I pulled out my RIVG's manual again & went back over the mobo set up..................

I now realized that my mobo has the UEFI interface (always thought of this as a fancy BIOS that you could use your mouse in......NOT!) & I don't have the mobo set up to take advantage of it as all the devices that I have connected to it (& the Plextor PX-512M6e Black Edition PCI-E 2.0 x2 SSD I have coming as well) are UEFI-compliant devices.

Man, I missed this for over 2 1/2 yrs!..........

Went in the Boot section & set all up to look for the UEFI driver on the devices (originally set up to look for both w/ priority set for legacy BIOS....assuming for compatibility purposes), saved & rebooted....................

Now I see just what it really means to fast boot!

 

This box now POST so fast that it's scary as now after the CPU, mem & vid card initialize the rest of my devices now initialize at the same time instead of 1 after the other............cut out a good 15-20 seconds of POST time & this is w/ me setting a 5 sec delay time to allow me to hit the Del button in time to get into the UEFI before Win7 starts up!

Gonna go & set up the wife's box now.........I'll get a kick out of her when she starts up her box after I do this....................

 

 

[Pudgie]

Here is the 1st consumer-grade NVMe SSD to market on a PCI-E platform..........
Also comes as a 2.5" x 15mm drive w/ adapter cable to plug into a M.2 slot..........

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167300

Has native NVMe support in Win 8.1 & up......there is a hotfix out for Win 7 SP1 to give it native NVMe support but you will also have to do some registry setup when you install it. Will work on most Z97 & x99 mobos to date.

Mobo manuf's will also need to issue a BIOS update for older mobo NVMe compatibility. Have checked the Asus site on my mobo.....no updated BIOS issued yet.

According to the reviews & write-ups the NVMe spec is the spec that truly will fully optimize SSD performance.................. ..

Rumor is that Samsung has a NVMe vers of it's XP941 M.2 SSD developed but no one has seen it yet.

Will continue w/ my current installation but as soon as Asus posts a BIOS update to give my RIVG NVMe compatibility I'm gonna get 1 of these to test it out.............

FYI.......................... ....................

 

[eagl]

They're really fast but only the small ones are really affordable.  That means your data will still be on another larger/slower drive. 

I prefer a less expensive but large single SSD for everything.  I currently have 2 Samsung 840 evos and 1 Samsung 850 evo, and they're fast enough that for general use I'm not waiting for the HD anymore, ever.  2 are 1TB and 1 is 750GB yet they cost about as much as a "pro" series 256 or 500gb model of the premium brands, so I'm not relying on secondary storage devices for the data I use daily.

If you're going to go pci-e SSD, bite the bullet and go big or you'll still be stuck with slower storage for your data and then you'll have the added admin hassle of managing multiple drives too.

[Pudgie]

Update:

The SSD arrived today (SSD made it to Farmington early Sat morning but didn't distribute to routes. UPS instead transferred it to the USPS Monday morning too late for distribution so I got it today) & I have installed it in my box.

I pulled my SATA III boot drive & storage drive to ensure that Win 7 would find it. I had to set up the mobo UEFI to Legacy OPT Rom so that it could see the SSD (SSD came w/ partition in MBR) & Win 7 would configure it into GPT partitions (made 3 partitions, 1 for EFI driver files, 1 reserved for Microsoft stuff (MSR) & 1 for the rest (476Gb of the 512Gb)) then installed Win 7 on the 3rd partition....all went clean. Once OS was installed I went back in mobo UEFI & changed UEFI to look for UEFI devices.....all went w/o issue.

All I'm gonna say at this point is this......This Plextor PX512M6e Black Edition PCI-E SSD is definitely faster than the 2 SATA III OCZ Vertex4 256Gb SSD's that I have & these SSD's were no slouch performance-wise.

Am currently loading all programs back on & will be back in the game by the weekend..................

Its looking good so far........................!

 

[Pudgie]

Update:

Finally got the OS fully updated (ran to date a total of 236 updates), most of my apps\games installed & have checked\set up Windows to optimize this SSD over & above what Win 7 hadn't already done itself as I had done when I installed the OCZ Vertex4 SSD's some 2 1/2+ yrs ago.

I can see why these SSD's are touted for their performance but the main improvement that I have noted w/ this Plextor BK PCI-E SSD over my OCZ Vertex4 SATA III SSD that I can see up front is in latency & bandwidth. This has more to do w/ comms directly over the PCI-E bus vs the SATA bus IMHO. The Plextor is noticeably faster in response time vs the OCZ's then the read\write speed advantage over the 2 PCI-E lanes makes up the rest. I ran both this Plextor & OCZ SSD thru AS SSD Benchmarking software & the results of both SSD's showed this to be true. The Plextor reads\writes much more data\s in sequential tests, reads faster but writes slightly slower in random 4K1T tests, reads faster but writes slightly slower in random 4K64T tests, reads much faster but writes slightly slower in access time tests for an aggregate score advantage of 62 (I tried to post the benchmarking results but the free image host that I was using wouldn't upload them as AS saves the results in HTML format & postimage.com won't upload HTML content). The slower random write speeds also have to do w/ the extra provisioning that the SSD controller has to process when writing across the 476 Gb partition on the Plextor SSD vs the 238 Gb partition on the OCZ SSD so this is something that I will overlook as 1.) the random write speed difference is very small between the 2...less than 10 Mb\s & the sequential write speed advantage of the Plextor would hide this & 2.) I know that most of what we as consumers would notice is the access time & read performance of any drive over write performance of the same drive in most ordinary consumer usage & this PCI-E SSD consistently accesses & reads faster than the SATA III SSD's that I have & I can easily see this difference while in use so this thing is the real deal in my assessment.

Now w/ all this being said, this PCI-E SSD (or any PCI-E SSD) would NOT be attractive for normal consumer use due to the cost per Gb & the performance advantage that this Plextor has is not enough for a "normal" consumer to want to spend this kind of money for....but in fairness these SSD's are not aimed at the mainstream market....they are specifically aimed for the consumers who are more "prosumers" in usage (video editing & playback, CAD, movie editing & playback, servers & in some of the most modern games where the game(s) is coded to use more reads/writes of data to\from mem & drive) & professional gamers....the main target that Plextor's advertising of this SSD that I have is aimed at so keep this in proper perspective.

Ain't trying to sell it, just posting the results of my testing & usage of this product to share w/ all.   

I got this SSD to 1.) test its performance capabilities, 2.) test the prospect of by-passing the SATA bus & X79 chipset completely (outside of USB connectivity) & run all storage devices as direct as was possible on the PCI-E bus system on my mobo (have 40 lanes of PCI-E bus to use & since I'm not gonna do any Crossfire\SLI vid card setups that leaves a BUNCH of untapped PCI-E lanes to use) & that the PCI-E bus is MUCH faster & has MUCH more usable bandwidth than SATA III I hoped to see some up front performance improvement & lengthen the usable time frame of my mobo, 3.) I have the extra disposable cash on hand to afford it at this time & 4.) this SSD looks good & matches my case theme (CM Storm Scout 1st gen black w/ red accents). Yep I'm 1 of those users..........

 

In all I am pleased w/ this PCI-E SSD & its performance....so much so that I will not be looking to go back to using any SATA drive as a boot drive going forward. Once I get all buttoned up on this Plextor SSD I will perform a secure erase of my OCZ Vertex4 boot drive & use it as storage along w/ my other OCZ Vertex4 being used as storage\page file duty.

In the future I will definitely be looking to get 1 of the new Intel 750 sers  NVMe PCI-E SSD's & test it.........this will depend on whether\when Asus will put out an updated UFEI to bring NVMe compatibility to this RIVG mobo as only the Intel X99 & Z97 series mobos will be NVMe-compliant at this time. There is already a hotfix out for Win 7 SP1 to give it native NVMe support (Win 8.1 has native NVMe support already) so the wait is on Asus...................or a new platform upgrade.

We'll see which happens 1st............

Now its getting time to set up my HOTAS maps for AH........forgot to check to see if I had saved my CH maps & AH settings\sounds folder to my ghost SSD before I pulled the SATA boot drive to install this PCI-E SSD.........found out that I hadn't done that so I'm trying to figure out a method to get these files from my SATA boot drive w/o having to pull my PCI-E boot drive out as both have the exact same OS vers & ID on them......................... .........

Enjoy!

 
 

[Skuzzy]

Just a FYI.  Video editors today, need at least 2TB of space to work in for HD content.  This is the number most video professionals use today.

The only real gains in performance for the video editor is during the encoding stage and the gains are not that great as most of the time is spent in the encoding process itself.

Read performance of Sony Vegas Pro or any of the other high end editors is really not an issue as they really only need to read small amounts of the data at any given time.  If the source files are not compressed, you might get a small boost, but it would be negligible.  Compressed sources would be better served with a really fast GPU which would be used to encode/decode the stream.

Then there is the cost/benefit issue which is what most all the professionals argue about.  When you think about spending upwards to $7,000.00 for 2TB, you have to be really certain you are going to get a measurable benefit from it.  Most of the editors balk, as they do not want the management to plunk down that kind of change and only see a 5% improvement in production.

The 5% is about right, considering most of the time spent editing involves cutting and splicing clips together, which is not really hard drive intensive to begin with.

[Pudgie]

Thanks for the reply, Skuzzy!

I'll keep all this in mind as I'm still a novice when it comes to software & understanding what the coding will need concerning hardware to optimize its usage............Mainly focused on Windows OS's...................

Spent far more time working w/ gaming softwares & learning what types of hardware & how best to match it\set it up within the Windows OS for total system performance optimization of a particular game software..............such as AH & others..............

I was trying to relate the use of this PCI-E SSD w/ softwares & applications that would make more use of it's strengths & thus be more appealing & straight forward if someone was reading this posting of mine concerning this piece of hardware....................

So from your post I can discern now that video editing\playback\encoding softwares generally would need a LOT more disk capacity relative to disk performance to operate smoothly & since the Plextor M6e PCI-E SSD has only 512 Gb total capacity it would not be a good choice to use w/ that type of software & since I don't do any video editing, playback or encoding...especially w/ a computer...is most likely the reason why I didn't already know that so I appreciate the info..........

Duly noted.......................

 
 

[Chalenge]

So, same conclusion.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The difference between a PCI-E card and a good SATA6 SSD is so small in everyday tasks that it doesn't make sense to buy a PCI-E based card, at least moneywise.

Only if you get a good deal like I did with the 800+240Gb combo there's even marginal sense. I got a terabyte worth of SSD storage for less than a 1TB SATA SSD would have cost.

[Pudgie]

If this article is any indication......the process of Intel switching over to PCI-E-based storage instead of SATA-based storage in consumer based mobos is already in progress..................... ..

http://vr-zone.com/articles/sata-express-intel-9-series-chipsets/63503.html

It doesn't appear to be an "if" scenario but more like a "when" one......................

Apple has already made the conversion in it's Mac Pro line of computers.

We'll see how long it will take for AMD to get in line...................

FYI.......................... .................

 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Here's a recent review of M.2 PCI-E cards. Surprisingly they even beat the Intel 750 in some tests: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/PCIe-SSD-Roundup-Samsung-SM951-NVMe-vs-AHCI-XP941-SSD-750-and-More

[Pudgie]

Update:

I have got all set up & operating now & I am very happy w/ the Plextor PXM6e BK PCI-E SSD's performance.

I just now enabled the Plextor Turbo Cache (sets up a virtual cache in system mem for this PCI-E SSD to decrease the amount of reads/writes to the SSD & since system mem is faster it speeds up the SSD's "performance") & ran AH & I noticed a BIG improvement in game performance.....not in FPS as 60 FPS is 60 FPS but the SMOOTHNESS of the game running was very noticeably improved.

I have noticed that everything else has improved quite noticeably in performance since I have enabled PlexTool Turbo Cache.

I ran the PlexTool's sequential read\write diagnostics test on this PCI-E SSD w/ Turbo Cache enabled & this is the results:

Read Speeds--6853.7 Mb\s
Write Speeds--6798.0 Mb\s

That is approx. 10 times the sequential read\write speeds of the SSD alone...........good stuff.

This SSD caching really does give a marked improvement in system performance.
I saw that some SATA III SSD manuf's are including caching software for their products as well...............

All I can say is that it works & works well!

 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Update:

I have got all set up & operating now & I am very happy w/ the Plextor PXM6e BK PCI-E SSD's performance.

I just now enabled the Plextor Turbo Cache (sets up a virtual cache in system mem for this PCI-E SSD to decrease the amount of reads/writes to the SSD & since system mem is faster it speeds up the SSD's "performance") & ran AH & I noticed a BIG improvement in game performance.....not in FPS as 60 FPS is 60 FPS but the SMOOTHNESS of the game running was very noticeably improved.

I have noticed that everything else has improved quite noticeably in performance since I have enabled PlexTool Turbo Cache.

I ran the PlexTool's sequential read\write diagnostics test on this PCI-E SSD w/ Turbo Cache enabled & this is the results:

Read Speeds--6853.7 Mb\s
Write Speeds--6798.0 Mb\s

That is approx. 10 times the sequential read\write speeds of the SSD alone...........good stuff.

This SSD caching really does give a marked improvement in system performance.
I saw that some SATA III SSD manuf's are including caching software for their products as well...............

All I can say is that it works & works well!

 

Just FYI the 'turbo cacbe' is usually a ram cache which explains the speed.