NVMe M.2 DRAM DRAMLESS

[Sam not Sung]

Hi, new to the forum so I hope this post is in the right category.

Simple question, I think.

I do a lot of work in Blender 3D, large files, and lot of rendering animations.

Also, quite a bit of audio recording (24 and 32bit/196kHZ) for the animations. 

The question: Do I want a NVMe M.2 Pcie that has on board Dram, or does it really matter? 

The drive will also be a boot drive.

Are Samsung pro the only drives that have Dram?

[Action_Johnson]

Most of the higher end NVMe drives have DRAM. Sabrent Rocket, Samsung Pro, WD Black, etc...
 

I have a WD Black PCIE 4.0 SSD in my home computer as the boot drive, it's pretty awesome how fast it is. Doesn't quite get to 7GB/s since it's the C:\ drive, but if it was my D:\ drive, it probably would. Windows boots instantly, takes more time for my motherboard to POST beep than it does loading windows. 

 

For a working drive, unless you're transferring data NVMe to NVMe, the speed benefits of PCIE 4.0 over SATA 3 are pretty minimal in day-to-day use to be realistic. 

 

I'm a photographer, so I work in huge numbers too (just backed up about 500GB worth of jobs today actually).

 

My work computer for example has a WD Black PCI-E 3.0 drive, and even though it's about half as fast as my home computer, it's still nuts how fast it transfers data to Samsung T7 drives, and that's a use-case where I do see a large time benefit over SATA. Otherwise loading up programs, rendering previews, exporting out files, that's more dependent on my CPU, RAM speed and capacity, and to a lesser extent my video card, vs Hard Disk. 

[ForwardVoltage]

17 hours ago, Sam not Sung said:

Hi, new to the forum so I hope this post is in the right category.

Simple question, I think.

I do a lot of work in Blender 3D, large files, and lot of rendering animations.

Also, quite a bit of audio recording (24 and 32bit/196kHZ) for the animations. 

The question: Do I want a NVMe M.2 Pcie that has on board Dram, or does it really matter? 

The drive will also be a boot drive.

Are Samsung pro the only drives that have Dram?

Don't use PCPP for your source of drive "specifications" other than form factor and storage interface since like Action_Johnson alluded to, PCPP is incomplete and sometimes just wrong for SSDs. I would head over to Tom's Hardware, Techpowerup, Tweaktown, etc. for drive reviews (or ask here)...

On which drive to pick, it depends on how much money you have to spend and at what capacity (since sweet spot of bandwidth via nand or controller optimizations are different). For your uses, I would absolutely go with an NVMe drive. Which market are you in? It also would be more advantageous to use least a two drive setup (or three with boot, scratch, export storage) if this is a profession more than a hobby. 

[OrdinaryPhil]

22 hours ago, Sam not Sung said:

Hi, new to the forum so I hope this post is in the right category.

Simple question, I think.

I do a lot of work in Blender 3D, large files, and lot of rendering animations.

Also, quite a bit of audio recording (24 and 32bit/196kHZ) for the animations. 

The question: Do I want a NVMe M.2 Pcie that has on board Dram, or does it really matter? 

The drive will also be a boot drive.

Are Samsung pro the only drives that have Dram?

No.

Samsung, SK Hynix, and WD Black drives all follow use 1GB of DRAM per 1TB of storage. This scales up and down with drive size.

Cheaper brands like Sabrent, Seagate, and others sometimes include DRAM, and sometimes don't. It varies by model and they rarely provide the 1GB:1TB ratio. Often times you'll see 256MB of DRAM on larger drives from these companies.

 

Also, Samsung, SK Hynix, and WD Black drives all use in-house firmware for their controllers, which results in far better performance.

This actually leave out the #1 performer in storage. Intel. Intel SSDs are in a class all their own (not the 600 series QLC garbage). The 760p series outperforms the Samsung Pro series in like tests. But they are more expensive by quite a bit so... And that's not taking into account the AIB storage options.

[mikezilla2]

dos anyone have a Chart of Dram amounts per brand/drive for sata SSDs and M.2 nvme SSDs ?

 

thats what i would like to konw 

 

thanks

[ForwardVoltage]

No, it's not widely known or even disclosed....More rather than E12 --> E12S had it halved is about it. Could talk about how some drives use DRAM for other means other than optimizing the address table primarily...

[Action_Johnson]

In the real world, if you used a 980 Pro, or WD Black SN850, you'd be at about the best you can get today. 

[mikezilla2]

the reason i want to know is im looking to pick one up to put in my PS3  and i figure the more Dram the better   -  also having a good internal controller will help with that too ......