Review Solidigm P41 Plus SSD Review: Born in the Purple

[Admin]

We put the Solidgim P41 Plus SSD through our extensive test suite to see if it's a worthy contender.

Solidigm P41 Plus SSD Review: Born in the Purple : Read more

 

[Co BIY]

Any reason it is called the P41 other than to create confusion with it's high performance stablemate from SK Hynix ?

It doesn't use the same controller, flash or even brand name.

I knew they were different and it was still confusing.

Well done review. It was very clear about the background and provenance of the company and the tech.

 

[twotwotwo]

Like the other commenter: imagine the meeting that led to the naming. 680p probably would make sense to consumers, because people know the 670p's positioning and it's a satisfactory followup to that. And if they're going to combine branding, they should just do that and call it Hynix P41. I'm not sure if "P41 Plus" communicates that it's the value option well enough, but also, I pay too much attention to SSDs to have a good intuition for how normal people will see it. (Maybe use previous gen's brand, P31 Max/SE/???)

But seems great that this exists--8 cents a gig at 2TB with performance that's plenty for many people's use cases.

 

[PiranhaTech]

This is making me wonder if a QLC drive with a cache makes sense for a video game drive for a secondary (I still would prefer TLC for the OS drive right now). The cache might be large enough to hold the majority of a a few video games. Apparently the cache can be as large as 280GB in one report.

I saw one benchmark for a mid-tier SSD, and what got me to get it was "here's the loading time. If you pay $50 more, you save... 2 seconds off your loading time" since it was a secondary SSD.

 

[USAFRet]

This is making me wonder if a QLC drive with a cache makes sense for a video game drive for a secondary (I still would prefer TLC for the OS drive right now). The cache might be large enough to hold the majority of a a few video games. Apparently the cache can be as large as 280GB in one report.

I saw one benchmark for a mid-tier SSD, and what got me to get it was "here's the loading time. If you pay $50 more, you save... 2 seconds off your loading time" since it was a secondary SSD.

99% of people can't tell the difference between PCIe 3.0 and 4.0.
Even though the sequential numbers for 4.0 are twice that of the 3.0.

We are deep into diminishing returns here.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YoRKQy-UO4

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKLA7w9eeA

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ9LyNXpsOo

 

[jackt]

interesting efficiency ! I wish samsung 880 and skhyncs p31 were in the tests.
Anyway i think people are waiting for samsung 890 and pcie5 ssds...

 

[PiranhaTech]

99% of people can't tell the difference between PCIe 3.0 and 4.0.
Even though the sequential numbers for 4.0 are twice that of the 3.0.

We are deep into diminishing returns here.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YoRKQy-UO4

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKLA7w9eeA

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ9LyNXpsOo

The other factor is if your PC has a lot of RAM, Windows might have parts of the game in RAM already. Windows I think will preload things based on the time of day.

 

[Co BIY]

When operating a PCIe 4.0 DRAM-less SSD on a 3.0 PCIe connection do they underperform more than expected because of the transfers required to system RAM?

Does this change the recommendations for installing on a PCIe 3.0 limited system?


I just purchased a Solidigm P41 Plus SSD 2TB from NewEgg for $109. I wish it came in a 4TB.

I think the price promise of QLC is finally here.

 

[USAFRet]

When operating a PCIe 4.0 DRAM-less SSD on a 3.0 PCIe connection do they underperform more than expected because of the transfers required to system RAM?

Does this change the recommendations for installing on a PCIe 3.0 limited system?


I just purchased a Solidigm P41 Plus SSD 2TB from NewEgg for $109. I wish it came in a 4TB.

I think the price promise of QLC is finally here.

The slowest device in the chain dictates performance.

A PCIe 4.0 drive, in a PCIe 3.0 port, can only run at PCIe 3.0 speed.
DRAM or not.

The very fastest PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 drive in a PCIe 3.0 port....you get 3.0 speed.
Period.

 

[PiranhaTech]

When operating a PCIe 4.0 DRAM-less SSD on a 3.0 PCIe connection do they underperform more than expected because of the transfers required to system RAM?

Does this change the recommendations for installing on a PCIe 3.0 limited system?

I just purchased a Solidigm P41 Plus SSD 2TB from NewEgg for $109. I wish it came in a 4TB.

I think the price promise of QLC is finally here.

Will be running at PCIe 3.0, but you should consider one thing: 4k read. The PCIe 4.0 SSD might have faster 4k read, and often 4k read on a PCIe 4.0 drive won't be able to saturate PCIe 3.0. The faster drive can still have an impact.

One of the best tools, ESPECIALLY for a secondary SSD, is to look at real-world benchmarks. Many video games don't have a difference off a slower SSD. I'm talking 0.1-2 seconds from a 12 second load

 

[USAFRet]

Will be running at PCIe 3.0, but you should consider one thing: 4k read. The PCIe 4.0 SSD might have faster 4k read, and often 4k read on a PCIe 4.0 drive won't be able to saturate PCIe 3.0. The faster drive can still have an impact.

One of the best tools, ESPECIALLY for a secondary SSD, is to look at real-world benchmarks. Many video games don't have a difference off a slower SSD. I'm talking 0.1-2 seconds from a 12 second load

And in a blind test with any normal consumer use case, I defy anyone to tell the difference in any of these configurations.

 

[Co BIY]

And in a blind test with any normal consumer use case, I defy anyone to tell the difference in any of these configurations.

I understand there will be no real world difference that I, a mostly casual user, will ever notice. (and certainly am not willing to pay extra for given my extreme cheapness!)

I am just curious if the system RAM access required by a DRAM-less drive will cut into the bandwidth available on PCIe 3.0.

 

[Co BIY]

This article was updated for the 1 TB but is ignoring the biggest change - The price drops that have this drive priced less than old SATA drives.

2TB at $109. That is the promise of QLC finally coming true.

https://www.newegg.com/solidigm-1tb...olidigm-_-20-329-021-_-Product&quicklink=true

Priced less than a Crucial BX500 or Crucial P2 at 1TB.

 

[PiranhaTech]

I understand there will be no real world difference that I, a mostly casual user, will ever notice. (and certainly am not willing to pay extra for given my extreme cheapness!)

I am just curious if the system RAM access required by a DRAM-less drive will cut into the bandwidth available on PCIe 3.0.

Not really. It might make more bottlenecks, and that would slow things more than RAM bandwidth.

If you are using a program like PrimoCache, then you will use RAM to be the buffer instead. PrimoCache will also be able to use a faster SSD to cache the slower SSD

Update: I've had a few issues with PrimoCache and slow accesses

 

[Dean0919]

When operating a PCIe 4.0 DRAM-less SSD on a 3.0 PCIe connection do they underperform more than expected because of the transfers required to system RAM?

Does this change the recommendations for installing on a PCIe 3.0 limited system?


I just purchased a Solidigm P41 Plus SSD 2TB from NewEgg for $109. I wish it came in a 4TB.

I think the price promise of QLC is finally here.

It's 2023 now and I just purchased same 2TB version from Amazon for $65! Price dropped siginicantly! It's almost same price as 1TB nvme SSDs. Couldn't resist temptation to not buy it.