NVMe slower than SATA

[WiiMAN]

Hi. Maybe I just don't know what I'm doing or something but different drive speed tests have

shown my Samsung 980 Pro NVMe M.2 to be slower than my Samsung 950 EVO SATA

Is there something I had to do to get its full performance?

C: is SATA and M: is NVMe

 

CPU: RYZEN 5 5600X

Motherboard: MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk

GPU: Radeon VEGA 56

RAM: 4 x 8 Corsair Vengance LPX (XMP enabled)

OS: Windows 10 19043.1237

BIOS version A.70

[Latvian Video]

2 minutes ago, WiiMAN said:

Hi. Maybe I just don't know what I'm doing or something but different drive speed tests have

shown my Samsung 980 Pro NVMe M.2 to be slower than my Samsung 950 EVO SATA

Is there something I had to do to get its full performance?

C: is SATA and M: is NVMe

 

CPU: RYZEN 5 5600X

Motherboard: MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk

GPU: Radeon VEGA 56

RAM: 4 x 8 Corsair Vengance LPX (XMP enabled)

OS: Windows 10 19043.1237

BIOS version A.70

What kind of sata do you have? Isnt sata limited to 6Gb/s? (600MB/s)

[porina]

You have some sort of ram cache on the SATA drive. It isn't the disks native performance. Those speeds on the SATA drive are not only beyond what SATA can do, it is beyond what PCIe 4.0 4x can do.

[WiiMAN]

1 minute ago, porina said:

You have some sort of ram cache on the SATA drive. It isn't the disks native performance. Those speeds on the SATA drive are not only beyond what SATA can do, it is beyond what PCIe 4.0 4x can do.

Well I’m not sure how that could’ve happened. I thought it was just showing the results in some other scale. Maybe Samsung Magician did something? Still not sure what’s with the NVMe performance tho

[AbydosOne]

8 minutes ago, WiiMAN said:

Well I’m not sure how that could’ve happened. I thought it was just showing the results in some other scale. Maybe Samsung Magician did something? Still not sure what’s with the NVMe performance tho

Turn off RAPID mode in Samsung Magician.

[WiiMAN]

1 minute ago, AbydosOne said:

Turn off RAPID mode in Samsung Magician.

That would make the SATA slower, right?

 

Also I probably should've mentioned, I'll be installing a brand new Windows on the NVMe to update to Windows 11. Which is why I'm asking if this behavior is normal or if there's something I need to verify before installing the new OS

 

My bad...

[BondiBlue]

Those speeds you're seeing from your SATA drive are literally impossible for the drive to achieve by itself. You've got a RAM cache enabled (I think Samsung calls it RAPID mode), and that's causing the result to be artificially high. Your NVMe SSD is already performing very well. 

[Chris Pratt]

The SATA drive isn't actually being written to that fast. There's a RAM cache in play, so the data is being written into RAM, which, yeah, is going to be much faster than a 980 Pro, and then spooled to the drive in the background at *much* slower speeds. If you turn off the RAM cache, yes, the writes will *appear* slower. They'll really be just as fast as they always were. However, it will no longer be misreporting drive speed (i.e. you'll see how fast the drive actually is), and you also will have better data persistence. If the computer is abruptly restarted before any data that's been cache in RAM has finished spooling the drive, it's gone. Whereas, when you see the transfer complete without the RAM cache, it's all going to actually be on the drive.

 

[tkitch]

top or bottom M.2 Slot?

[WiiMAN]

Just now, tkitch said:

top or bottom M.2 Slot?

Top

[WiiMAN]

4 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

Those speeds you're seeing from your SATA drive are literally impossible for the drive to achieve by itself. You've got a RAM cache enabled (I think Samsung calls it RAPID mode), and that's causing the result to be artificially high. Your NVMe SSD is already performing very well. 

So the reported speed is accurate and all should be fine?

[BondiBlue]

Just now, WiiMAN said:

So the reported speed is accurate and all should be fine?

The speed you see right now from your SATA drive is not accurate at all. That drive cannot transfer data at speeds higher than 600MB/s (theoretical) in any scenario. What you're seeing is a RAM cache, as has been explained. 

[WiiMAN]

Just now, BondiBlue said:

The speed you see right now from your SATA drive is not accurate at all. That drive cannot transfer data at speeds higher than 600MB/s (theoretical) in any scenario. What you're seeing is a RAM cache, as has been explained. 

Yeah the SATA is being boosted. But the NVMe is performing as expected? No need to adjust anything?

[BondiBlue]

1 minute ago, WiiMAN said:

Yeah the SATA is being boosted. But the NVMe is performing as expected? No need to adjust anything?

Yes, it looks fine to me. It's many times faster than the actual speeds of your SATA drive. 

[WiiMAN]

Just now, BondiBlue said:

Yes, it looks fine to me. It's many times faster than the actual speeds of your SATA drive. 

Thanks a ton for the info

[BondiBlue]

Just now, WiiMAN said:

Thanks a ton for the info

Yep, no worries.

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 minutes ago, WiiMAN said:

That would make the SATA slower, right?

 

Also I probably should've mentioned, I'll be installing a brand new Windows on the NVMe to update to Windows 11. Which is why I'm asking if this behavior is normal or if there's something I need to verify before installing the new OS

 

My bad...

Won't affect performance for almost all apps, as windows does this already.

 

Rapid caching just makes it fake the cache, so programs like crystal disk mark that tell the system to not use the cache still use it. This can lead to data loss, so leave it off.

[WiiMAN]

12 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Won't affect performance for almost all apps, as windows does this already.

 

Rapid caching just makes it fake the cache, so programs like crystal disk mark that tell the system to not use the cache still use it. This can lead to data loss, so leave it off.

Roger!