NVMe Drives in the Digital Darkroom

<p>As you may know the protocol known as NVMe breaks the SATA bottleneck. These drives ( Intel 750) only reach their maximum speed on a PCIe 3.0 connection (Intel X79 with an Ivy Bridge CPU or X99 chipsets) either via an add-in card or an adapter that fits M.2 slots (for a 2.5 inch model). Unlike M.2 drives these are easier to cool since they aren't mounted against the motherboard.<br /><br /><br />Until manufacturers update the BIOSes of their X79 motherboards it can only be used as a programs/data drive, not for booting (but who cares about boot times?). In my X79 system the 400GB Intel 750 drive runs programs and reads data as fast as I originally expected my SATA SSD to perform (which is FAST!). With only programs on it there's plenty of room for my collection, and I even have spare SATA SSD space with just Windows on that.</p>

<p><img src="http://i.imgur.com/gkcnsoF.jpg?1" alt="" width="482" height="610" /></p>

<p> </p>

<p>I suspect we will not see the true power of PCIe NVMe drives until later this year when Skylake CPUs, the Z170 chipset (Sunrise Point), drives like the Intel 750 series, and Windows 10 are released.</p>

<p>It should be a very interesting Q4 this year as all the new motherboards come into full production. </p>

<p>For now it runs as a boot drive on X99.</p>

<p>Very cool. I hadn't heard about NVMe, but I will start doing my homework.</p>

<p>Any idea when the K model (unlocked) Skylakes will be out? As I understand it, the Broadwell Ks aren't even here yet.</p>

<p>And it appears to me that Broadwell and Skylake are more for laptops with the reduced power consumption and won't be much of an improvement for desktops. Or am I reading that wrong?</p>

<p>Cheers.</p>

<p><img src="http://cdn4.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Intel-Skylake-S-Broadwell-K-Broadwell-E-2015-2016-Roadmap.jpg" alt="" width="1355" height="430" /></p>

<p>Skylake 'S' is unlocked.</p>

<p>Thanks, Brad. That's sooner than I expected.</p>

<p>What's your opinion on Broadwell and Skylake if I want to build a screamin' Windows 10 desktop? Should I wait or go with an unlocked Haswell at 4.0 GHz and overclock to 4.5 or so?</p>

<p>As best I can tell, Broadwell will be a mobile chip release. Because they ran into problems, since resolved, with the 14nm process that delayed Broadwell, Intel seems to have skipped the Broadwell desktop chips in favor of staying on track with Skylake.</p>

<p>A screaming desktop requires more than just a fast CPU; peripherals, especially disks, count. The Z170 PCH is just what is needed to bring out the best in the new SSDs coming to market. The Z170 has 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes compared to 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes for the Z97 set, and DMI 3.0, with almost twice the speed of DMI2.0, for communications with the CPU. This is a chipset that can exploit the new PCIe NVMe SSDs.</p>

<p>Me, I intend to wait until the coming Holiday Season to build a new desktop with Skylake; prices will be down and new components plentiful. </p>

<p>Thanks. A quick look indicates Skylake will be required to get the Z170 chipset, so I guess I should wait too. I also read where the new motherboards will accept either DDR3 or DDR4 RAM, so maybe faster DDR4 will be out by then too. Lots of fun stuff on the horizon so I can enjoy the summer and build a new rig next winter. </p>

<p>At roughly four times the speed of my already speedy SATA SSD, this drive is almost like having a permanent, non-volatile RAM disk. I have loaded all my programs onto it and even the robust DXO 10 runs fast. Besides programs and my collection, I have also put the Windows swap file onto it for another speedup. If you've never seen a folder of RAW files coming at you at 2.3GB/s, it's a thing of beauty, as is the way everything runs on it.</p>

<p>As far as the upcoming hardware, I tend to take a long view regarding upgrades. I always set aside a little and do a major upgrade when needed. But my old i7-920 is still chugging away in my HTPC, and the desktop with a 4930K (not overclocked) and this drive will last even longer.</p>

<p>DDR4 is out now for use with the X99 chipset and Haswell-E; it is expensive compared to DDR3. I expect prices will drop between now and the end of the year.</p>

<p>Although DDR4 is faster than DDR3, the latencies (CAS, RAS, etc.) are higher. The effective increase in speed is not as great as just the speed would suggest. Although Skylake can use either DDR3 or DDR4 memory, I am not sure that any given motherboard can use either. DDR4 memory DIMMs have 288 pins while DDR3 DIMMS have 240 pins. Unless the motherboard had separate sockets for each type of DIMM, I am not sure how a given board could use either. I suspect the motherboard will be for DDR3 or DDR4, not both.</p>

<p>In a few years I suspect finding performance DDR3 memory will be as difficult as it is to find performance DDR2 memory today. That would be a good reason to choose DDR4 memory now unless the board can accept either type or you are certain you will never wish to add memory. </p>

<p>Sorry, that's what I meant -- the CPU can use either, but not necessarily a particular motherboard. And I'm hoping some hot DDR4 will be out before I build.</p>

<p>By the way, are you familiar with PCPartPicker.com? It's kind of a fun site and you can see what others are building. Here's a link to my buddy's latest build: <a href="http://www.pcpartpicker.com/b/f9Cypg">www.pcpartpicker.com/b/f9Cypg</a></p>

<p>I'll be interested to see what you put together come the Holidays.</p>

<p>Cheers.</p>

<p>With memory, I am more interested in keeping the voltage standard for long life, rather than "Hot" memory. You might be interested in this article:</p>

<p>http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell</p>

<p>With the exception of WinRAR, memory makes, at most, a 5% difference in execution speed, and in many cases it makes no difference.</p>

<p>I, too, will be interested to see what choices I will have. I will have two machines to build.</p>

<p>One is for my wife, who is using a machine I built in 2007 - a Core 2 Duo Conroe based machine with 2 GB memory running Windows Vista. I'll probably replace it with a Skylake i7 chip, 8GB of memory, and a Z170 motherboard with some type of SSD as the boot disk (the Intel 750 would be overkill, but I may get it anyway) and at least a 1 TB HDD (a Western Digital Black) for backup. If Skylake has a decent amount of eDRAM on die, I will probably run the Integrated graphics. Since we do not game, I am interested in GPU performance mainly for its Open CL performance.</p>

<p>The second machine is for my wife's friend. She wants "a really fast machine". Again a Skylake i7 CPU, a Z170 based motherboard, 8GB or 16GB memory, the Intel 750 400 GB as the boot drive, a SanDisk 960 GB Sata III SSD for data, and a 2TB to 4TB WD Black HDD for backup. Once again, I will use the Integrated Graphics. </p>

<p>For power supply I'll reuse my wife's Corsair HX650 and reuse her Antec case updating it with a USB 3 front panel insert while retaining her DVD burner. For her friend, and Antec P100 case and a Corsair HX650 or HX750 (whichever is on sale at the time) power supply, and a DVD burner.</p>

<p>As for motherboards, I have had very good luck with Gigabyte and ASUS, but it is too early to say which until we see what comes out. </p>

<p>Whichever PCIe NVMe SSD I use will probably be the half card form rather than the M.2 form factor. I have read that the M.2 SSDs tend to thermal throttle when pushed hard - the form factor cannot dissipate the heat fast enough.</p>

<p>Those are my thoughts for now; they will probably change between now and the Holidays.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Interesting. I'm sure there will be lots of choices. Keep us posted.</p>

<p>I usually build behind the curve to save some money, but this time I think I'll build a bleeding edge machine. With the exception of the power supply, I may not save too many parts from my current rig. That doesn't bother me because I always donate my old machines to a local school and the kids in the computer club part them out.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I usually build behind the curve to save some money</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Me, too. I built my wife's machine on a P35 platform just as the P45 was being introduced; at the time we did not need any of the P45 functions. My machine is an i7-860 built on a P55 platform. </p>

<p>Besides saving money, using a mature platform means most of the bugs have been corrected in Firmware for the motherboard (BIOS) and the peripherals. By the Holidays, any bugs in the Intel 750 should have been found and corrected and the Z170 motherboards will have been out for a few months as will Windows 10.</p>

<p>I, too, donated my old machine to our local High School, after performing a secure erase on the disk and installing Ubuntu Linux to replace the unsupported Windows 2000 that was on it. </p>

 

<p>We sound similar, although the high school doesn't get my hard drives. My secure erase is a hammer. Gotta protect the nuclear launch codes.</p>

<p>The report of an interesting test of the Intel 750 vs the Samsung 951 M.2 ACHI controller.</p>

<p>http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-750-series-400gb-versus-samsung-sm951-512gb,4143.html</p>

<p>It is surprising that the Samsung has better sequential performance at low queue depths, the norm for most client PC's even though it uses ACHI commands and the M.2 form factor does not dissipate heat as well as the Intel and thus is more susceptible to thermal throttling. It will be interesting to see how the Samsung does when it uses NVMe. </p>

<p>Here ya go!<br>

<a href="http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-sm951-nvme-m-2-pcie-ssd-review_162219">http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-sm951-nvme-m-2-pcie-ssd-review_162219</a></p>

<p>Thanks for the link, Brad. It looks like Samsung has some problems due to a lack of driver.</p>

<p>The first Z170 boards made an appearance, one with 3 M.2 sockets<br>

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9299/asrock-at-computex-2015-z170-motherboards-and-4t4r-router</p>

<p>I wonder if Windows 10 will have better NVMe drivers, or if Samsung and other manufacturers will provide better ones.</p>

<p>Maybe this is not apples to apples, but I also tested my SSD with ATTO and I'm getting what looks to be better results using SATA6. I went with SATA s the PCIe drives are still more money and I need the drive for active photo edits and the speed I'm getting is more than sufficient. Always looking for performance benefit if I can find it though.<br>

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/ftZG39O.png" alt="" width="562" height="821" /></p>