Be Jealous - a new toy for Dad - NVMe SSD M.2

[oshunluvr]

Interesting topic. I have built my own PCs since about 1988. Started with HDOS (Heathkit H-89) and CP/M.

Here is for my current rig - SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 250GB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4

[FONT=monospace]$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1:
Timing cached reads:   19888 MB in  2.00 seconds = 9958.07 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 5602 MB in  3.00 seconds = 1866.40 MB/sec

[/FONT]

I don't think I am getting the full performance from that drive. I am somewhat disappointed in the lackluster boot to login time on this desktop rig. I was hoping for 10 seconds from power on. Unrealistic?

-=Ken=-

I'm not sure how good hdparm is at testing these new devices, but I would agree you should be getting better than that.

For comparison with my drive: http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare...00373vsm498971

[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#000000]$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/nvme0n1[/COLOR]

/dev/nvme0n1:
[/FONT][FONT=monospace]Timing cached reads:   36244 MB in  1.99 seconds = 18193.89 MB/sec[/FONT]
[FONT=monospace]Timing buffered disk reads: 9422 MB in  3.00 seconds = 3140.26 MB/sec[/FONT]

So I'm nearly twice as fast but tests say I should be roughly ¼ faster.

EDIT: My write speed will be twice as fast, but not read.

Here's another quick test:

[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#000000]$ sync; dd if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=1M count=10240; sync ; sudo /sbin/sysctl -w vm.drop_caches=3 ; dd if=tempfile of=/dev/null bs=1M count=10240[/COLOR]
10240+0 records in
10240+0 records out
10737418240 bytes (11 GB, 10 GiB) copied, 3.10854 s, 3.5 GB/s
vm.drop_caches = 3
10240+0 records in
10240+0 records out
10737418240 bytes (11 GB, 10 GiB) copied, 2.54356 s, 4.2 GB/s[/FONT]

I can't say what your bottleneck is for sure, but I'd guess it's the mobo interface.

And no, 10 seconds from power-on is reachable if you don't have a lot of network overhead like network mounts.

[kenj70]

Interesting topic. I have built my own PCs since about 1988. Started with HDOS (Heathkit H-89) and CP/M.

Here is for my current rig - SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 250GB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4

[FONT=monospace]$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1:
Timing cached reads:   19888 MB in  2.00 seconds = 9958.07 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 5602 MB in  3.00 seconds = 1866.40 MB/sec

[/FONT]

I don't think I am getting the full performance from that drive. I am somewhat disappointed in the lackluster boot to login time on this desktop rig. I was hoping for 10 seconds from power on. Unrealistic?

-=Ken=-

[GreyGeek]

Alms, alms for the poor!
(Poor in terms of SSD)

[woodsmoke]

LOL

OMG!!

WOAH!!

woodLIKESITsmoke

[oshunluvr]

Oh you old hardware guy!
woodlikesitsmoke

You know it! I always have been a tinkerer. I once made a 40 pin rotating switch (the number of pins on an old HD cable) into a dual-boot device before we could actually do that in a simple fashion. I could power-down, turn the knob, power on and boot to my second drive. I basically swapped the drive position connections using the switch.

[oshunluvr]

Yeah, video cards are crazy expensive - more than CPUs these days. For me, the reason to spend $ on SSD tech is to gain speed so I usually wait the the price I feel comfortable spending for what I want. At $250 for 512GB and the fastest SSD in it's form factor, it seemed a reasonable price. Last year's 960 Pro M.2 is still selling at $320-340 but I can't imagine why anyone would buy it at that price. This new one is 1000 mbs faster than the 960 for less money, and the 1TB version is even faster. I do have cheaper SSDs where speed isn't a factor like my server.

[claydoh]

Even the cheapies are pretty fast, but not spectacular, vs the OEM spinning drive in my cheap-ish new laptop
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

claydoh@widget-lenovo:~$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/nvme0n1
/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing cached reads:   21578 MB in  1.99 seconds = 10828.61 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1036 MB in  3.01 seconds = 344.54 MB/sec
claydoh@widget-lenovo:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 396 MB in  3.01 seconds = 131.48 MB/sec

I spied somewhere yesterday a 1TB ssd for 100 dollars. Probably not super fast, but roomy goodness for laptop users.

I can't find the link

Now I'd be happy with GPUs dropping back down to sane, pre-cryptocurrency mining days,or for DDR4 laptop ram dropping as well.

[woodsmoke]

Oh you old hardware guy!
woodlikesitsmoke

[oshunluvr]

I bought a new motherboard a couple months ago that supports the new NVME M.2 standard -- two slots!

My current SSDs are OK but are now three years old and past their warranty - which generally means they are due to fail.

Samsung just released their newest M.2 SSD : The 970 Pro and it's priced at almost $100 less then last years model - so I bit. I haven't even tested it yet, but I partitioned it and ran a basic speed test:

stuart@office:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 432 MB in  3.00 seconds = 143.82 MB/sec

stuart@office:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sdb

/dev/sdb:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1554 MB in  3.00 seconds = 517.83 MB/sec

stuart@office:~$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1550 MB in  3.00 seconds = 516.54 MB/sec

stuart@office:~$ sudo hdparm -tT /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 9202 MB in  3.00 seconds = [B]3067.07 [/B]MB/sec

Six times faster than already fast SSDs. 20+ times faster than a 7200 RPM WD Black performance HD

sda is an HD, sdb and c are Samsung 850 840 Pro SSDs, and nvme0n1 is the Samsung 970 Pro M.2 SSD at 512GB.

Retail delivered from NewEgg for $249.99