Is there any real world justification for PCIe SSD ?

[Tunnah]

I'm getting the upgrade itch, but I'm trying to be sensible about it - going for 1080p TV and a 970 instead of 4K G-SYNC and a 980Ti, and I'm planning on keeping my motherboard/CPU (P67/i5-2500) because really what gains would I see from upgrading those outside of benchmarks.

My next query though is storage. My SSD feels...sluggish. Because I'm scrapping SLI, I was thinking of getting a PCIe AID SSD, but they're double the price of a SATAIII SSD. Yes the speeds are way way more..but is it something I would notice in day to day usage ?

I use my PC a lot, but not for anything intensive, obviously apart from gaming. Loading times are already pretty freaking sweet, and I only reboot maybe once every month or so. It's a long term investment, but is it worth it ?

Anyone here go from SATA to PCIe and just be blown away, or is it meh-town ?

[kalniel]

The money would probably give a more noticeable increase elsewhere, if you don't have a specific need for a very fast SSD cache (as opposed to just fast).

[Tunnah]

I don't have a budget, it's just more trying not to be a silly bugger ha

[Agrippa]

Is your current SSD actually showing sub-par performance (in which case there might be something wrong with it), or is it simply an an illusion induced by a pathological desire to upgrade something/anything (a condition I suffered from for years myself)?

Anyway, I borrowed a PCIe part from a friend for a couple of weeks before upgrading most of my drives a little while back and decided to stick with a standard SSD. Like yourself I don't do anything strenuous apart from gaming and in regular use I couldn't tell a difference from my old Samsung 840 Pro. While there may have been a slight difference in loading times when running certain apps or games it's been years since I was willing to pay through the nose for anything but immediately obvious improvements.

[Biscuit]

I have one in my macbook pro retina. I can't say that I have noticed any significant difference between it and the SSDs in my other machines. There are usually other more noticeable bottlenecks in a system than that.

[Tunnah]

Is your current SSD actually showing sub-par performance (in which case there might be something wrong with it), or is it simply an an illusion induced by a pathological desire to upgrade something/anything (a condition I suffered from for years myself)?

Anyway, I borrowed a PCIe part from a friend for a couple of weeks before upgrading most of my drives a little while back and decided to stick with a standard SSD. Like yourself I don't do anything strenuous apart from gaming and in regular use I couldn't tell a difference from my old Samsung 840 Pro. While there may have been a slight difference in loading times when running certain apps or games it's been years since I was willing to pay through the nose for anything but immediately obvious improvements.

No it's very noticeable. Whenever I'm installing something, or copying something to it, the computer becomes useless. It's weird, I thought it was a software issue so I reinstalled windows (needed doing anyway I hadn't done it in over 2 years at the time) but was still evident upon boot, so I tried switching ports etc.

I have 2 SSDs, one for torrents/downloads, and it's that one I'll usually be installing from, so I thought it might be that but no, even installing from my RAID array is slow, so it's gotta be the SSD.

[KeyboardDemon]

I would start by running diagnostics on the SSD using Samsung Magician to check that the SSDs are healthy, once you have that information it will be easier to think about your next move.

You might also want to check that your AHCI drivers are up to date and check you have the latest version of your motherboard BIOS, given that it's a P67 mobo the chances are there haven't been any recent updates but you might be able to find some enthusiasts that have kept the chipset alive by creating newer versions of the BIOS through injecting updated modules to a last version from the manufacturer.

[Agrippa]

Yup, diagnostics is very much in order I think. From what you're describing it's obvious that your SSD is not at all well. It could be a driver issue I suppose, but I think that's very much less likely.

[abaxas]

TBH unless you have a specific need for the extra speed, such as ZIL, scratch disks etc, a PCI-E SSD will do nothing other than cost you more!

[watercooled]

Has the problem always existed? I've seen problem like that caused by bad drivers, especially for additional SATA controllers. If your motherboard has both chipset and additional controllers, try disabling the additional one in BIOS and use only the chipset, but of course bear in mind swapping ports for a Windows boot drive can cause it to not boot in some cases.

The issues you describe shouldn't be caused by a non-faulty SSD, SATA or PCIe.

[satrow]

For the best, stable over time, SSD performance: AHCI + connection to native SATA 3 ports + Windows SATA drivers + TRIM enabled and active + ~25% free space.

Some of the above will depend on the 'board chipset(s) available. See http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#trim for partial explanation re. active TRIM as opposed to just enabled and the drivers.

Samsung's Magician can play havoc with Windows Power settings!

[f350]

I don't see a valid justification for PCI-E SSD outside of commercial/professional use.

[ma9mwah2]

I've got a m.2 pcie in my new machine and i was surprised how much better it seemed than the old SATA 6gb. Its probably only seconds but it just feels snappier. But it also depend on what you use your machine for

[jas88]

If you think about a process ... say, 10 seconds loading data from HDD, then 10 seconds of processing, before your application is ready for use. Jump to a regular SSD, knock 9 seconds off: loading takes 11 seconds instead of 20, huge improvement! Now, PCIe instead of SATA for the SSD doubles the speed ... 10.5 seconds instead of 11. You probably won't notice without measuring carefully!

The sluggish performance doesn't sound at all right, but I have seen it on systems with SSDs: my old Macbook Pro was actually freezing up at times. It turned out to be a GPU needing a reflow; somehow, the wonky GPU was disrupting something on the PCIe bus, causing bits of data corruption, crashes - and, bizarrely, insanely slow disk access. (Still no idea how, though it's fixed now; maybe I/O errors were forcing something into a kind of failsafe mode, the way old IDE drives used to slow down to lower DMA rates then drop into PIO?)

[silent]

i have a Z97 asrock board with a 256 sammy m.2 pcie x4 ssd and it flies, especially on windows 10.

i want to get another for my spare slot on the board.

is this a good back up drive, seems good value:

http://www.ebuyer.com/706331-samsung...4939&pkw=&pmt=

[Scow Captain]

i have a Z97 asrock board with a 256 sammy m.2 pcie x4 ssd and it flies, especially on windows 10.

i want to get another for my spare slot on the board.

is this a good back up drive, seems good value:

http://www.ebuyer.com/706331-samsung...4939&pkw=&pmt=

That's a SATA drive, no different in performance to using a normal 2.5" SSD. If you want m.2 pcie performance then you want Samsung's sm951 model. There's gossip about Samsung announcing a 950 pro soon that'll take advantage of m.2, PCIe and NVMe.