This might sound as a simple or a noob question to you, but what is the difference between a normal Solid State Drive and M.2 SSD? Yes, I know you need to have a special PCI-E port but what is the difference? Is it only the compatibility or what are the M.2 drives used for? Are you able to boot from them as you would from a usual HDD or SSD?
SSD vs M.2
- Thread starter Jacob_107
- Start date
Solution
Well there are M.2 SATA drives which aren't all that much faster than your normal SATA SSD. Then you have PCIE NVME M.2 drives that use PCIE lanes.
I have the samsung 960 evo which is a NVME m.2 ssd which uses 4 pcie lanes, here is a bench of that:
Here is the 850 evo, a good sata ssd:
That may show a large difference and there is in certain tasks, however if you are just a gamer it wont help you much, might shave a few seconds off load times. Yes they can be used as a boot drive just like a hard drive or normal ssd.
I have the samsung 960 evo which is a NVME m.2 ssd which uses 4 pcie lanes, here is a bench of that:
Here is the 850 evo, a good sata ssd:
That may show a large difference and there is in certain tasks, however if you are just a gamer it wont help you much, might shave a few seconds off load times. Yes they can be used as a boot drive just like a hard drive or normal ssd.
- Feb 13, 2014
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Well there are M.2 SATA drives which aren't all that much faster than your normal SATA SSD. Then you have PCIE NVME M.2 drives that use PCIE lanes.
I have the samsung 960 evo which is a NVME m.2 ssd which uses 4 pcie lanes, here is a bench of that:
Here is the 850 evo, a good sata ssd:
That may show a large difference and there is in certain tasks, however if you are just a gamer it wont help you much, might shave a few seconds off load times. Yes they can be used as a boot drive just like a hard drive or normal ssd.
I have the samsung 960 evo which is a NVME m.2 ssd which uses 4 pcie lanes, here is a bench of that:
Here is the 850 evo, a good sata ssd:
That may show a large difference and there is in certain tasks, however if you are just a gamer it wont help you much, might shave a few seconds off load times. Yes they can be used as a boot drive just like a hard drive or normal ssd.
geofelt
Titan
- Oct 9, 2006
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m.2 is a size format. About the size and shape of a stick of gum.
Some m.2 devices can run at 4x the normal sequential ssd speed in a pcie x4 port.
(not as great as it sounds, random is more important)
Yes, you can boot from them like a ssd or hdd.
Some m.2 devices can run at 4x the normal sequential ssd speed in a pcie x4 port.
(not as great as it sounds, random is more important)
Yes, you can boot from them like a ssd or hdd.
So this basically summarises everything and answers my question. Thank you for a quick response, I was just wondering what is the difference because my motherboard supports this function and it has the M.2 PCI-e slot at the back and I currently boot from a normal SSD. As it won't be much beneficial for me, I will just stay with my normal SSD and maybe in the future I might upgrade, because it looks like this is the future, I guess. Thank again.
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