Question m.2 drive isn't as fast as it should be

Horrgakx

Distinguished
Sep 12, 2007
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18,680
Hi everyone, I've just upgraded my PC (full spec below), one of the components is a Samsung SSD 860 EVO m.2 1Tb. I've screenshotted a benchmark result below - the benchmark shows the m.2 drive and also a standard SATA drive for comparison - they are exactly the same.
I thought these m.2 drives were meant to be substantially faster than SSD. Is there anything I can look at settings wise to change it?

Drive-benchmark.png
 
Ah right, so I've mis-understood what it can do for me and bought the wrong drive.... :/

Not so much. Like I said, NVMe looks great on paper but isn't terribly faster than a good SATA drive in booting, opening programs, loading levels, etc. I have both a 960 Evo and an 860 Evo and there is a whopping one second load difference in a 10 second game level load. Not worth nearly twice the price for a given capacity. I bought the 960 first, but in hindsight I should have just gotten a 1TB 860 Evo instead.
 

Notorious^

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Feb 17, 2019
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There is speed differences between the EVO and the Pro. I'm running the 970 Pro NVMe. I can tell a difference between the Pro and Evo but not much. Also, be sure you go over to the Samsung website and download the updated driver for it. Windows installed an outdated driver when i installed windows.

Once i download the updated driver from the Samsung website i could tell a big difference.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
There is speed differences between the EVO and the Pro. I'm running the 970 Pro NVMe. I can tell a difference between the Pro and Evo but not much. Also, be sure you go over to the Samsung website and download the updated driver for it. Windows installed an outdated driver when i installed windows.

Once i download the updated driver from the Samsung website i could tell a big difference.

And here we're talking about a whole different protocol.

The OP's 860 EVO drive is a SATA III. It just happens to be the m.2 format vs the typical 2.5" format.
It is the same drive, just in a different package.

Your 970 EVO vs 970 PRO is a whole different thing.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
It has alot to do with the ide/atapi controllers
From the OP's numbers in the initial post, he is seeing almost exactly the same performance with an 860 EVO m.2 and an 850 2.5" format.
That is absolutely normal, and the way it should be.

They are both SATA III drives, just in different connection types.
You can play with drivers and controllers all you want. That will not make it magically faster.