Review PCIe 4.0 Storage Exclusive: Testing Phison's PS5016-E16 NVMe Controller

[Admin]

Will 5 GB/s of throughput have a real impact on common desktop workloads, like gaming? Let's see.

PCIe 4.0 Storage Exclusive: Testing Phison's PS5016-E16 NVMe Controller : Read more

 

[AlistairAB]

Those results were not very good, not enough to justify PCIe 4.0. I'm very happy with my SX8200 Pro SSDs as you can see barely any real OR synthetic differences. Looking forward to the E19 SSD next year then

 

[djayjp]

I don't understand the purpose of this test. Seems there are two variables (the new interface and the drive itself)?

 

[seanwebster]

I don't understand the purpose of this test. Seems there are two variables (the new interface and the drive itself)?

The purpose? We got an early sample of an upcoming SSD controller that is going to be at the heart of SSDs that are coming out later this year. It's a preview on the upcoming tech. The purpose is to show how future SSDs will compare to current gen as it stands in development. It just happens that even with the faster interface low queue depth random performance is still about the same, so we don't see much improvement in applications that rely on that metric. High QD random and all sequential applications will see decent gains more than anything thanks to the new interface. For more gains, the underlying media needs to be changed for faster, as we see with Intel's Optane, or applications need to be coded to better take advantage of all of NVMe's goodness.

 

[srbabs]

On the 4th and 5th slides of power consumption, the units are labeled as watts, my guess it is supposed to be miliwatt. Could some one check it out?

 

[USAFRet]

Those results were not very good, not enough to justify PCIe 4.0. I'm very happy with my SX8200 Pro SSDs as you can see barely any real OR synthetic differences. Looking forward to the E19 SSD next year then

Is it worth "upgrading" from what you have now?
No.

But it will just be the (slightly faster) protocol for your next system.

 

[seanwebster]

On the 4th and 5th slides of power consumption, the units are labeled as watts, my guess it is supposed to be miliwatt. Could some one check it out?

Yeah, those are supposed to read milliwatts. I recently changed it from Watts to Milliwatts for better visual comprehension. I thought I had fixed that testual label tho...looking back I did, just in a different file! I'll get that fixed. Thanks for noticing!

 

[daglesj]

Will still grind to a halt when copying system folders full of thousands of micro files. This is where we need to improve performance not just raw bandwidth.

 

[BulkZerker]

Those results were not very good, not enough to justify PCIe 4.0. I'm very happy with my SX8200 Pro SSDs as you can see barely any real OR synthetic differences. Looking forward to the E19 SSD next year then

I don't understand the purpose of this test. Seems there are two variables (the new interface and the drive itself)?

Well I'm beginning to wonder what version of Windows was being used during testing. That information is not disclosed in the review as of me posting.

 

[seanwebster]

Well I'm beginning to wonder what version of Windows was being used during testing. That information is not disclosed in the review as of me posting.

The latest: Win 10 Pro 64-bit - RS6

 

[epobirs]

I couldn't help wondering if the device that created the PCIe 4.0 interface for the test was introducing its own issues. That aside, it looks like there will need to be advances elsewhere in consumer PC design before the performance potential can be realized. Boot time haven't shifted much in quite a while, despite huge gains in SSD capability. It doesn't seem like getting the OS into RAM is the issue at this point but rather how long it takes the OS to sort itself out. Might there be opportunities for improvement in the hardware that stores and loads the firmware, for example?