5 ms·

PCIe SSD cards can provide more bandwidth and IOPS, but for those prices you might as well RAID0 several M.2 sticks.

dragontamer 9y ago
Your terminology is slightly off, so I'm not entirely sure what you mean. M.2 is a form-factor, which can be NVMe (PCIe-based) or SATA-based. Yeah, a bit confusing but M.2 supports two different protocols. If you mean RAID0 SATA drives (in the M.2 form factor), well the processor's south-bridge has a lower limit compared to the direct-to-CPU connections most NVMe drives get. SATA is great for bulk storage: either cheaper SSDs (~$250 for 1TB for MX500) or big hard drives (~5TB Toshiba Hard Drives for $150). But for maximum performance, you have to go NVMe. After all, RAID0 NVMe drives will simply perform better than RAID0 SATA. --------------------- Case in point: the Samsung 970 Evo has a specified read bandwidth of 3700 MB/s. The SATA3 connector has a maximum speed of 600MB/s theoretical (and in practice, SSDs only achieve ~550 MB/s). So you'll need SIX RAID0 SATA drives to keep up with this single Samsung 970 Evo. Assuming your southbridge can even sustain 6x RAID0 (probably not. In my experience, south-bridges seem to slow down dramatically by 3x RAID0). All you need to do with the 970 Evo is go RAID0 2x 970 Evo to achieve performance that no SATA RAID array will ever touch.
- the8472 9y ago
  I am aware of the distinctions, I thought it would be obvious from the context. I meant to compare a 2x m.2 NVMe RAID0 with dedicated NVMe add-in cards, e.g. a kingston dcp1000. The latter can outperform the former per unit but seem more expensive even when you adjust for the higher stats.
  - dragontamer 9y ago
    I think I see what you mean now. M.2 NVMe drives are electrically PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes. Since laptops are such a popular form factor, it seems like all the best technology and mass-production is favoring M.2 drives. Its clear to me that older physical PCIe drives are just going obsolete in terms of price/performance now. PCIe drives (the ones that physically went into a x4, x8, or x16 slot) are a dinosaur at this point. It seems like the "serious" datacenter technology is converging upon U.2 drives (which are also PCIe 3.0 x4 slots, except over a cable). Its been a bit rocky these past few years: Sata-Express (2x PCIe), U.2, M.2 SATA, M.2 NVMe, and "physical PCIe" SSDs. But the industry is finally converging into something of a standard. M.2 NVMe is the high-performance part for consumers, especially the laptop market. While U.2 for servers who need large capacity and benefit from the physical presence of a wire connection.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    Took me a bit to understand what you are saying. The 3700 mb read is what I am intrested in exactly. I really think we are going to have some foundamental change in chip design to make 5K video and 8K (For commercial video it will be 15-20 years until 8K will be common in personal use.

Your terminology is slightly off, so I'm not entirely sure what you mean. M.2 is a form-factor, which can be NVMe (PCIe-based) or SATA-based. Yeah, a bit confusing but M.2 supports two different protocols. If you mean RAID0 SATA drives (in the M.2 form factor), well the processor's south-bridge has a lower limit compared to the direct-to-CPU connections most NVMe drives get. SATA is great for bulk storage: either cheaper SSDs (~$250 for 1TB for MX500) or big hard drives (~5TB Toshiba Hard Drives for $150). But for maximum performance, you have to go NVMe. After all, RAID0 NVMe drives will simply perform better than RAID0 SATA. --------------------- Case in point: the Samsung 970 Evo has a specified read bandwidth of 3700 MB/s. The SATA3 connector has a maximum speed of 600MB/s theoretical (and in practice, SSDs only achieve ~550 MB/s). So you'll need SIX RAID0 SATA drives to keep up with this single Samsung 970 Evo. Assuming your southbridge can even sustain 6x RAID0 (probably not. In my experience, south-bridges seem to slow down dramatically by 3x RAID0). All you need to do with the 970 Evo is go RAID0 2x 970 Evo to achieve performance that no SATA RAID array will ever touch.

the8472 9y ago
I am aware of the distinctions, I thought it would be obvious from the context. I meant to compare a 2x m.2 NVMe RAID0 with dedicated NVMe add-in cards, e.g. a kingston dcp1000. The latter can outperform the former per unit but seem more expensive even when you adjust for the higher stats.
- dragontamer 9y ago
  I think I see what you mean now. M.2 NVMe drives are electrically PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes. Since laptops are such a popular form factor, it seems like all the best technology and mass-production is favoring M.2 drives. Its clear to me that older physical PCIe drives are just going obsolete in terms of price/performance now. PCIe drives (the ones that physically went into a x4, x8, or x16 slot) are a dinosaur at this point. It seems like the "serious" datacenter technology is converging upon U.2 drives (which are also PCIe 3.0 x4 slots, except over a cable). Its been a bit rocky these past few years: Sata-Express (2x PCIe), U.2, M.2 SATA, M.2 NVMe, and "physical PCIe" SSDs. But the industry is finally converging into something of a standard. M.2 NVMe is the high-performance part for consumers, especially the laptop market. While U.2 for servers who need large capacity and benefit from the physical presence of a wire connection.
- baldfat 9y ago
  Took me a bit to understand what you are saying. The 3700 mb read is what I am intrested in exactly. I really think we are going to have some foundamental change in chip design to make 5K video and 8K (For commercial video it will be 15-20 years until 8K will be common in personal use.