Samsung 256GB 950 Pro M.2

[LaughingMan]

Hey guys,

It's my first post here so be gentle

 

I was thinking about getting a fast SSD for every day use - it is not supposed to be a boot drive. I already have SSD to boot from (Plextor M6S series 256GB), and I am pretty happy with the performance.

What I had in mind was primarily "gaming" drive to speed up loading up things (ex. new Deus Ex takes quite a long time to get out of the metro - I guess stations are pretty far away in Prague).
I did not decide on anything yet, but I saw Samsung 950 PRO m2 drive for, lets say, not to outrageous price. As my mobo does not have m2 connector I though about using m2 to PCIe 3.0 x4 card. But i do not think I have this either. There is however perfectly fine PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. I know PCIe is backward compatible, but are there any other issues I might run into when connecting this m2 drive through  m2 to PCIe 3.0 x4 card into PCIe 2.0 x16 slot xD.

 

Another thing that worries me a bit is that most of this m2 to PCIe cards look really crappy. They are cheap thou.

 

[SkilledRebuilds]

You have to consider... that some games outright don't load that much faster due to waiting on other-NON-Disk based instructions to be compiled/delivered.

You could be Memory Bandwidth/CPU Threaded starved (on loading screens) and a Uber-Disk won't do much for those situations.

 

Worst part, you can't actually get into the code to find out where the loading bottlenecks REALLY are...

 

[SkilledRebuilds]

You have to consider... that some games outright don't load that much faster due to waiting on other-NON-Disk based instructions to be compiled/delivered.

You could be Memory Bandwidth/CPU Threaded starved (on loading screens) and a Uber-Disk won't do much for those situations.

 

Worst part, you can't actually get into the code to find out where the loading bottlenecks REALLY are...

 

[Zyndo]

check out the intel 600p. just released. designed for good bang for the buck sequential read speeds. Not gonna be as good as a 950 pro, but going to be a heck of alot cheaper. Also, its speeds increase significantly as capacity increases... so keep that in mind.

[Captain_WD]

21 minutes ago, LaughingMan said:

~snip~

Hey there Welcome to the community! 

 

As @SkilledRebuilds pointed out, not all games will load that much faster, if at all. Also, you won't be seeing any FPS nor graphics improvements so I would consider if the price for ta new SSD dedicated to gaming is really worth it. Also, bottlenecking the speed of this particular SSD means that you will be getting even less boost in loading times. You could simply opt out for a regular SSD instead as @Zyndo suggested. 

 

Mind that there may be better upgrades for a gaming build for this budget.

 

Captain_WD. 

[Zyndo]

@Captain_WD the Intel 600p is not a regular SSD. its a NVME M.2 drive. Its simply one that doesn't cost an arm an a leg, and still provides fast reads.

 

Samsung 950 Pro, 256GB:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA12K4871041

 

Intel 600p, 512GB:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1UH4T13989&cm_re=intel_600p-_-20-167-412-_-Product

(this is the 512 version, so double the capacity, still less price, and speeds that are slower, but MUCH faster than any normal SSD)

 

Samsung 850 EVO, 500GB:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147373

(about the same price as an intel 600p, but not nearly as fast in read speeds)

 

 

Obviously the 950 pro is still the performance king of the hill here, but the 600p is a great alternative for speeds if you don't want to settle for normal SATA III speeds, or don't want the outrageous price of the 950 pro.

[AlphaPolack]

All valid points here. I have 2 512GB 950 Pro drives in my PC, 1 is a boot drive (os, office, cs6) and the other is for games (wow, steam)

 

Performance gain does vary, but with my primary game WoW the load bar literally comes up , flashes fully loaded and in world.. That is one game where your zone-in time scales based on the media it's stored on.

[Captain_WD]

15 hours ago, Zyndo said:

~snip~

Thanks for the info I'm aware of the new SSD and how it performance. 

 

My bad for making my previous post a bit misguiding. I wanted to explain that a regular SSD can also be a great alternative when it comes to gaming and OP shouldn't really notice big real-world differences in loading the games between running them from a high-performance M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD and a regular 2.5" SATAIII SSD.

 

Still great info to share, thank you! 

 

Captain_WD.