M.2 980Pro speed issue

[Tim Service Point]

Hy to all.

I have a strange situation here. I have bought a samsung 980 pro m.2. Build a new pc around it end get 907 mb/s read and write.
 

Let me start with my specs :

mbo ; asus z490 rog maximus xii formula( bios 2301, latest version so far )

I5 11600K non clocked aio water cooler ( stays sub 60 degrees Celsius all the time )

32 gb ddr 4 3000mhz standard

asus 2080Ti dual

intel 660P 2T m.2 drive ( 90% full ,one partition )

samsung 980 pro m.2 500gb ( 3 partition : c: 100gb / f: 46gb / e: 316gb , total usage amount less than 20 % )

Running windows 11 ( But had the same issue with windows 10 )

add on pci to m.2 card from asus hyper m.2 ( it the same problem if the m.2 is direct on mbo )

So to explain, my drivers are up to date ( samsung 980 pro divers r not made at this point ) 
My bios is up to date , all of it is on auto setting except xmp ( did the test with auto setting, still the same )
All the PCIE settings on the motherboard have been tested to gen 3/2/1/ auto ( yes i know pcie 4.0 is what the drive needs, and i though i had bought a 4.0 motherboard but that was a kick in the butt, thanx ASUS for misleading info on that motherboard )
I started with windows 10 new installation, all works fine. Games run good, temps r good. Still i felt no noticeable difference with the new 980 pro drive. So i installed crystaldisc. en yep 906mb/s was nothing spectacular indeed. No i was not aware that this motherboard will not take pcie 4.0 on its m.2 drives but still i should get 3.0 speeds on it not +-0.5.
That is when i started to try stuff like: changing to only one m.2 in the system, taking a pciE m.2 card with only 1 m.2 in the system, changing bios settings all around, installing windows 11, trying to install a 970 driver( doesn't work )

At this point i started to loose grip with reality ( as a former PC tech guy in a well known store ) Was / am I really not capable of plugging in an m.2 drive ???
The extra info i can give is that the Intel 660P drive is running at a whopping 780mb/s yeah at least it read AND write.

In regard of the partitions I made, I just made them on the windows 11 installation so the tests on the windows 10 is as one single drive ( excluding the junk windows puts on it ). 

All the latest versions of software/drivers r installed and windows device manager is not showing any issues, and showing all my components.

The m.2 drives themself has been multiple time re-seated so unless i can always put them in wrong I can assume they are seated correctly. 

The windows drivers themself r up to date.
I even installed the intel rapid storage drivers ( one of the last things i did ) Still don't know what it does, but it doesn't make it better or worse so naah.

In the crystaldisc program you can select the type of  " test " in " MB ".... tried them all ! i found that the "16mb" was the fastest on them all... by margins nobody with a saint mind will consider to be valid , but im past that now ready to get institutionalized.  

I stared to document on windows 11 so i can show you no data from windows 10 , all i can give you is my word that it was the same.

On the samsung magician software you can see there is a driver error , BUT that is eliminated if you plug the m.2 direct to the motherboard and or delete the intel rapid storage driver.  ( at the moment of taking the photo it was / is in the m.2 expansion card and the intel storage driver was installed )

I have no viruses, and the real ( undocumented tests ) were done at clean stock installation, with just the minimum of programs. Now don't get me wrong the pc works "fine" as is, just not worth the money i put into the 980 pro ... for that speed and that money I want at least a 4T drive

Thanx for your input , I do hope people that r smarter than me can figure things out.. If i continue on my own i will honestly loose my mind!

[Chris Pratt]

Well, first off, your board only supports PCIe 3.0, but you bought a PCIe 4.0 drive. At the very best, you're only going to see half the rated speeds (~3500MB/s). Other than that, my best guess is that the lanes are bifurcated so you're only running at x2 or maybe even x1 instead of x4, probably because of the addon card, even if not plugged directly into that. I'd remove any additional PCIe devices except for the GPU, and then try.

 

EDIT: Just saw buried in your question that you were already aware of the PCIe 3.0 limitation. That's not really on Asus, though. It's a chipset limitation. No 400-series board supports 4.0. You need both 11th gen and a 500-series chipset.

[Tim Service Point]

Heey Chris,

Thanx for your reply. As you mentioned the pcie 4.0/3.0 issue i understand you say that, but on the box of the motherboard it stats 4.0 ready ! so its a bit confusing that its only on the pci x16 lane where the gpu is mounted. That part is only obvious if you pay close attention to the small letters in the detailed specs so i feel like asus can do a better job in informing the customer. That said it should work on 3.0 speed.

regarding the pciE expansion card, its been tested in al possible configurations. So no pcie cards except the gpu and direct to the motherboard has been tested with the same result. As for the bios settings i have tried them all in regard to the m.2 pci lanes allocations. Its on the X4 setting when it was on the motherboard and its in X16 with the expansion card. So i don't think its the obvious reason here. I do think the same that regardless of my pci settings it still wont fully utilize the potential here, i just cant figure out what setting is causing the issue here.

And in regard to the cpu .. well its an i5 11600K so in theory 4.0 compatible ( only if its on the gpu solo ) And the gpu is a 2080Ti so its 3.0 and works on 3.0 speed no issues there. 

[Tim Service Point]

So I need to adjust the claim of 4.0 compatible. Its not on the box ... But it is there, go figure !
The only "4.0" port it has uses it at 8x pciE lanes. A trick to be able to call it 4.0

I have to say thats a sleezy way to call it 4.0

But technically its correct.

So i installed windows 11 again for the 3the time, still no charm. No matter what I do it just caps at 907mb/s. This windows has the full 980 pro capacity and not divided in partitions ( I forgot if I already tried that combo ) So here are some bios settings that may be relevant to the possibilities from Chris. Not convinced they are the reason.

Thanx for the help

[Tim Service Point]

The only time i got +3000mb/s was achieved yesterday night. By putting the GPU in the lower pcie port, and the pcie expansion card in the top port.. I know why do I even try.

Still the only time the speed was really gen 3.0 .

So that concludes that there is a lane problem. Probably from the chipset to the CPU, or the chipset in general.

I do have 4 usb ports used , the 2.5G internet port and the WiFi connection is mounted. Lets call it normal use.

If the chipset is saturated because of that that would be just sad !


Does anybody have some more tips I can try ? 

Thanx for reading, Greets Tim ( from belguim )

[Tim Service Point]

So after a lot of emailing back and forth to asus... This was the fix : Bios reset ! So the reason why is apparently when you do a cmos reset , all the hardware connected to the motherboard gets "scanned". Therefor it configured itself to the right settings. I was skeptical because i normally know what im doing inside de bios, so was sure that non of my tweaking was to blame for this. And i was right, all the settings are placed back as they should ( wrote them dons so im 100% sure its the same settings from before, and jeppa still 2 fast SSD's. If you ask me why exact .. I cant give you the answer. But for all who are sure they doing the right thing and still something is not as it should, try a CMOS reset You never know right

[Astyanax]

The issue was you had PCIE ASPM enabled for that particular port, which the bios reset turned off

the 980 Pro's have both performance and reliability issues with this feature turned on

[SSD Sean]

10 hours ago, Astyanax said:

The issue was you had PCIE ASPM enabled for that particular port, which the bios reset turned off

the 980 Pro's have both performance and reliability issues with this feature turned on

Elaborate? Because I review SSDs and don’t see how this is an issue. I’ve used the 980 Pro with every firmware variant on 5 test platforms with and without ASPM.
 

OPs issue is simple. CPU lane speed and width allocation. Mobos are dumb. You can’t force how many lanes will get allocated to your x4 devices, you can only change speeds. Clear CMOS is the way to fix it as OP described. 

[Astyanax]

13 hours ago, SSD Sean said:

OPs issue is simple. CPU lane speed and width allocation. Mobos are dumb.

 

UEFI/BIOS rebuild the dmi and nvcache on hardware changes and asus don't change cvar casings or names between firmware revisions

it had nothing to do with lane count settings and everything to do with buggy ASPM reducing pcie clock gnerator and width.

 

UEFI has no module that "Scans" and "Sets" a child device to correct settings beyond that of the cpu bootstrap and memory training.

 

Your experience is irrelevant, there are considerably more 980 pro users that did(and still do) have the issue with ASPM on Zen, x99 and x299 platforms and you might have self mitigated the issue by setting your LSPM power setting to Off/

 

Quote

You can’t force how many lanes will get allocated to your x4 devices, you can only change speeds. Clear CMOS is the way to fix it as OP described. 

Yes you can, by enabling hidden menus with bios mods

 

but in the absence of those mods, not being able to change them to a reduced total in the first place means it had nothing to do with the lane config in the nvram.

These have predefined defaults that don't change because you didn't have a device in the slot previously.