Can anyone explain why I'm getting these results for my 1tb WDSN550?

[CWellB]

Hi everyone, I just ran crystal disk mark to test out my 1tb WD SN550 drive. I don't understand the results I got and I am hoping someone can provide some insight, I was expecting significantly lower numbers and I don't understand what to make of this. All opinions much appreciated!

 

MB: Asus b550 rog strix

 

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[minibois]

I am not sure what WD calls it, but basically the test ran on the DRAM of the drive, not the traditional storage NAND, which is much slower.

For example with Samsung drive, you can turn off this feature in their software and it's called RAPID mode, but again; not sure what WD calls it.

[Senzelian]

19 minutes ago, minibois said:

DRAM of the drive

You probably meant the system memory.

The DRAM of the drive is likely not large enough for the 1GiB file size that CDM tests the speed with. I think HMB only allocates 128MB with most controllers. 

The PCI-e 3.0 x4 bus would also not be able to provide the necessary bandwith to achieve such speeds.

 

Edit:
These speeds are achieved with a RAM-cache. Sometimes also called RAM-disk or RAM-drive.

As mentioned Samsung calls their version of that "Rapid mode".

 

I assume you installed some sort of software that enabled that feature.

[Mateyyy]

It's using your system's memory, since the SN550 doesn't have a DRAM cache of its own, hence the speeds faster than what the PCIe 3.0 (or even 4.0) x4 bus allows.

[minibois]

8 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

You probably meant the system memory.

whoops, I sure did.

I had just written something about SSD DRAM cache, so the term was sort of stuck in my head

 

It would be quite impressive if a 4GB/s interface produced over 11GB/s in a test  

[Senzelian]

1 minute ago, minibois said:

whoops, I sure did.

I had just written something about SSD DRAM cache, so the term was sort of stuck in my head

 

It would be quite impressive if a 4GB/s interface produced over 11GB/s in a test  

I saw that post. I got my eyes everywhere! 

 

I'm sure if you fold the old traces over a couple of times, you get 11GB/s out of it. That's how that works, right?  

[CWellB]

16 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

You probably meant the system memory.

The DRAM of the drive is likely not large enough for the 1GiB file size that CDM tests the speed with. I think HMB only allocates 128MB with most controllers. 

The PCI-e 3.0 x4 bus would also not be able to provide the necessary bandwith to achieve such speeds.

 

Edit:
These speeds are achieved with a RAM-cache. Sometimes also called RAM-disk or RAM-drive.

As mentioned Samsung calls their version of that "Rapid mode".

 

I assume you installed some sort of software that enabled that feature.

I never installed anything intentionally, knowingly. Could it be part of the motherboard software? I did not install any Western Digital software at any point. Thanks for this information I had no idea.

[Senzelian]

4 minutes ago, CWellB said:

I never installed anything intentionally, knowingly. Could it be part of the motherboard software? I did not install any Western Digital software at any point. Thanks for this information I had no idea.

Could be part of any software really. The software doesn't need to be supplied from the drive-manufacturer.

What did you install so far? Anything specific that's related to hardware?

[CWellB]

5 hours ago, Senzelian said:

Could be part of any software really. The software doesn't need to be supplied from the drive-manufacturer.

What did you install so far? Anything specific that's related to hardware?

I think I found it, Asus Ram Cache III. I think the set of software for my motherboard included it during install. Is this worth using? It seems it has by default allocated 2gb of my DRAM towards this ram cache.

[Senzelian]

4 hours ago, CWellB said:

I think I found it, Asus Ram Cache III. I think the set of software for my motherboard included it during install. Is this worth using? It seems it has by default allocated 2gb of my DRAM towards this ram cache.

Depends.

 

Personally I wouldn't use it. The SSD is quite fast already and in most cases you won't notice the difference.

But if you have the additional space on your RAM available, then you could of course just leave it. Doesn't hurt anything.