Question Max out USB 3.1gen2 with ssd or m2?

[chico1st]

Hi I run a external ssd with Windows for one of my computing environments.

With usb3.1gen2 can an SSD or m2 drive max out the USB speed?

I was thinking of updating to an external m2 drive and it seems even an m2 wouldn't max out the USB bandwidth. Which is good. It means I would upgrade.

The rates maxes would saturate but from Tom's reviews even m2 drives are ~800MB/s and USB gen3.1g2 is rated 10Gb/s. (I have an Intel 660p m2 drive).

I was worried my analysis is missing something and it would totally max out with an SSD . Thoughts?

 

[popatim]

M2 drives are 800MB/s ???

The 970evo is 3500MB/s

I think you meant to say that real world Gen2 perfomance is about 800MB/s but I've seen reviews of Sandisk pushing 900MB/s

 

[chico1st]

Hmmm no I did mean 800MB/s for m2 :0
I was thinking of charts like this from the 660p Tom's review

Link

Bandwidth is way below 3500GB/s but...maybe I'm not using it right

 

[popatim]

You just misunderstand that particular benchmark is all. That one is how the drive fares using realworld apps in various scenarios and not something like a simple USB file transfer.

The 970 evo 1tb can read sequentially at 3500MB/s and write nearly as fast until the 41Gb of emulated SLC cache is exhausted and then it drops to about 1500 if I remember right.

Scroll down and look at the CrystalDiskmark results for a idea about maximum performance.

 

[chico1st]

Ahh i see, the 660p in crystal is 1.5GB/s. So I would just be barely saturating the USB3.1g2 bandwidth with my intel 660p. But also in normal circumstances even a 970evo would operate within the 10Gb/s USB bandwidth?
Do I have it straight now? So its still worth upgrading to an M2 external drive?