Plextor M6e M.2 PCI-E 256GB

nWovance · 10 Apr 2014 at 22:09

Not an expert on SSD's this is my first one, apparently motherboard controller chipsets effect transfer rates.

I ran a benchmark on it and i'm getting 350mb max, is this normal speeds?

Is it a issue with the benchmark/motherboard.

Motherboard is in sig, sorry if this sounds stupid ^.^

wazza300 · 10 Apr 2014 at 22:17

Try atto benchmark and post screenshot of results

nWovance · 10 Apr 2014 at 22:58

"edit" http://gyazo.com/e311373563313ab247dde19b3740a667 incase above is an issue.

let me know if this works okay.

wazza300 · 11 Apr 2014 at 00:39

does seem a bit slow,idk why though

tried installing latest intel rapid storage drivers? idk if they would work with pcie ssd

latest bios might help

ZXSpectrum · 11 Apr 2014 at 10:48

Make sure you have installed it in a physical/electrical 4x PCIe slot. You may have installed it in a 4x physical but 1x electrical so it will only run at 1x. Other than that I would say you have PCIe 1.0 on a P55 board which will also cause it to run a lot slower.

nWovance · 11 Apr 2014 at 12:41

wazza300 said:
does seem a bit slow,idk why though

tried installing latest intel rapid storage drivers? idk if they would work with pcie ssd

latest bios might help

I installed the Intel rapid storage drivers, ran benchmark, same results.
As regards to the bios update, i'm in the process of doing so, but i'm afraid i'll brick my motherboard altogether :S (never updated bios, it's very old according to the asus website)

ZXSpectrum said:
Make sure you have installed it in a physical/electrical 4x PCIe slot. You may have installed it in a 4x physical but 1x electrical so it will only run at 1x. Other than that I would say you have PCIe 1.0 on a P55 board which will also cause it to run a lot slower.

Expansion slots are
1x PCIe 2.0 x16 (single at x16) <---graphics card
1x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (@x4 mode, 2.5GT/s) <--- SSD

Atleast as far as i can tell.

ZXSpectrum · 11 Apr 2014 at 13:06

nWovance said:
Expansion slots are
1x PCIe 2.0 x16 (single at x16) <---graphics card
1x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (@x4 mode, 2.5GT/s) <--- SSD

Atleast as far as i can tell.

How strange. Try swapping your GPU with the ssd and see if it improves things. If it does then it looks like a PCIe bandwidth issue.

wazza300 · 11 Apr 2014 at 15:07

you'll be ok on asus board as the bios chips pull out if you need to replace it

just flash with usb stick using ezflash and from within the bios

usb3 sometimes affects sata speeds on p55,but not sure if it also applies to pcie lanes

nWovance · 13 Apr 2014 at 22:16

wazza300 said:
you'll be ok on asus board as the bios chips pull out if you need to replace it

just flash with usb stick using ezflash and from within the bios

usb3 sometimes affects sata speeds on p55,but not sure if it also applies to pcie lanes

Finally flashed the bios using ezflash 2, and the results are as follows

http://gyazo.com/1454cbaca8f3d3ad7a1b90c80fefe5a0

Not a particularly impressive result.

ZXSpectrum said:
How strange. Try swapping your GPU with the ssd and see if it improves things. If it does then it looks like a PCIe bandwidth issue.

Strange, but considering i've updated my OS service pack and bios to practically no avail, i guess this couldn't hurt the process of elimination lol.

OracIe · 14 Apr 2014 at 15:27

On that motherboard, with the SSD I would expect those results. Your motherboard is bottlenecking the SSD.

nWovance · 14 Apr 2014 at 16:20

ZXSpectrum said:
How strange. Try swapping your GPU with the ssd and see if it improves things. If it does then it looks like a PCIe bandwidth issue.

Ladie's and gentlemen we have a winner!

Result's after swapping the GPU around with the SSD

http://gyazo.com/7f1f69b7ca1cbf1edf142a1c59fdc939

OracIe said:
On that motherboard, with the SSD I would expect those results. Your motherboard is bottlenecking the SSD.

Indeed you were correct, obviously a bandwidth issue on the PCIe lanes?
I take it a new motherboard is in order if i want the full speed of this beast, i guess we can mark this as solved.

I'd like to thank everyone who chipped in their two cent's

Might try fob my board off to my younger brother and purchase a newer board, although i guess that would mean either a newer CPU to fit in the socket or just a more powerful LGA 1156 (socket H) board.

nWovance · 16 Apr 2014 at 01:24

Quick update upon further bench marking and general mucking about.

I have come to the conclusion after switching the graphics card around with the PCIE SSD, i lose "no performance" putting the graphics card in the x4 over the x16 slot.

Based off FurMark burn tests, at 15 minute intervals.

I'm not exactly sure what this exactly means? :confused:

OracIe · 16 Apr 2014 at 12:31

That says to me that your GFX wasn't fully utilising the PCI-E x16 lane, but the SSD is doing a better job of maximising the lane speed.

David Bisset · 21 Apr 2014 at 16:19

A bit late, but you need to test with a different tool....

You've not lost performance while running furmark as it requires basically no data transfer between the graphics card & the rest of the system so the x4 slot is plenty.

That's why it stresses graphics cards cores so much - and why it's a meaningless test, it's creating totally unrealistic load.
Test with a decent tool/benchmark/game to see how much performance is impacted and never use furmark as it tells you nothing of use.