Slow read/write Samsung 970 evo nvme

lawrence281 · 11 Apr 2019 at 09:23

I won an auction off the bay for a 970 evo 1tb nvme drive, so I wanted to make sure It's genuine etc, and ran a CrystalDiskMark
seq Q32T1, read speed is 830.6 and write is 787.5, which is way below the advertised... Is there something I've done wrong or could it be faulty? The drive is new and was sealed

lawrence281 · 11 Apr 2019 at 09:55

On one post...I found this.

The Sequential scores are indicative of the drive being run with 2 PCIE lanes from the motherboard and CPU instead of 4 for maximum performance. It's a hardware issue and not a fault of the drive.

Can anyone explain?

lawrence281 · 11 Apr 2019 at 09:57

Okay, so the PCIe slot needs to be 3.0 to get top speeds, but i thought mine was up to date..and would have that

lawrence281 · 11 Apr 2019 at 09:59

Gigabyte Z97 G1-Sniper specs say it has 3.0 PCIe...so i dont understand :/

JR1 · 11 Apr 2019 at 10:42

Hi Lawrence,

Which PCIe slot have you got the 970 evo plugged into?

Regds, JR

lawrence281 · 11 Apr 2019 at 11:39

JR1 said:
Hi Lawrence,

Which PCIe slot have you got the 970 evo plugged into?

Regds, JR

Its slotted into the one near the RAm, flat down, then screwed into the mob. Is there any other it would go into as Idk

JR1 · 11 Apr 2019 at 12:15

That sounds as if you have it plugged into an M2 NVMe slot. When I had a quick look at the user manual for the Gigabyte Z97 G1 Sniper it didn't seem to have an M2 NVMe slot, so I'm puzzled. I assumed therefore that you were using a bridge card (M2 to PCIe slot). Am I making a mistake?

Regds, JR

lawrence281 · 11 Apr 2019 at 12:49

JR1 said:
That sounds as if you have it plugged into an M2 NVMe slot. When I had a quick look at the user manual for the Gigabyte Z97 G1 Sniper it didn't seem to have an M2 NVMe slot, so I'm puzzled. I assumed therefore that you were using a bridge card (M2 to PCIe slot). Am I making a mistake?

Regds, JR

http://tinyimg.io/i/X3t9OTs.png

It's plugged into the M2 slot, for clarification, motherboard is ga-z97x-gaming 5.

Is it not the right slot for it to reach the speeds and need a different motherboard?

lawrence281 · 11 Apr 2019 at 12:56

So checked zpecs, doh..., No mention of nvme support on my board, only regular SSD m.2 , so...I may need to change boards

Smoogels · 11 Apr 2019 at 13:00

Z97 chipset boards only have 2 PCIe lanes, to run a 970 EVO at full speed you need 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes.

You might be able to get better performance if you get an adapter and install it in the second x16 slot but it will reduce the GPU to x8 lanes instead of x16.

lawrence281 · 11 Apr 2019 at 13:07

Smoogels said:
Z97 chipset boards only have 2 PCIe lanes, to run a 970 EVO at full speed you need 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes.

You might be able to get better performance if you get an adapter and install it in the second x16 slot but it will reduce the GPU to x8 lanes instead of x16.

I see, thanks, I'm trying to look at motherboards that mention 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and can't seem to find/or looking at the wrong spec, could you throw me an sxample please

Smoogels · 11 Apr 2019 at 13:12

lawrence281 said:
I see, thanks, I'm trying to look at motherboards that mention 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and can't seem to find/or looking at the wrong spec, could you throw me an sxample please

You would need to upgrade your CPU to at least an Intel Skylake or AMD Ryzen. Unfortunately Intel Haswell chipsets don't have enough lanes.

JR1 · 11 Apr 2019 at 13:14

Smoogels is right you can get an adapter card. In practice I doubt you will sense any change from dropping the video card to 8 lanes.

lawrence281 · 11 Apr 2019 at 13:18

Smoogels said:
You would need to upgrade your CPU to at least an Intel Skylake or AMD Ryzen. Unfortunately Intel Haswell chipsets don't have enough lanes.

I'm confused, why would I need to upgrade my CPU, couldn't I just get a motherboard that supports 3.0?

JR1 said:
Smoogels is right you can get an adapter card. In practice I doubt you will sense any change from dropping the video card to 8 lanes.

If I were to get an adapter card, it may reach its potential? Or are you saying it won't change a thing?

JR1 · 11 Apr 2019 at 13:20

lawrence281 said:
I'm confused, why would I need to upgrade my CPU, couldn't I just get a motherboard that supports 3.0?

If I were to get an adapter card, it may reach its potential? Or are you saying it won't change a thing?

JR1 · 11 Apr 2019 at 13:26

You can put an M2 to PCIe adapter card into your second x16 slot, which supports 8 lanes. This would reach the full potential of the 970 EVO. However as Smoogel has said, the consequence of using the second x16 slot is that the first x16 slot (where your probably have a video card) will drop from supporting 16 lanes to 8. What I am adding to this is that I doubt you will notice any change in performance in your video card.

lawrence281 · 11 Apr 2019 at 13:30

JR1 said:
You can put an M2 to PCIe adapter card into your second x16 slot, which supports 8 lanes. This would reach the full potential of the 970 EVO. However as Smoogel has said, the consequence of using the second x16 slot is that the first x16 slot (where your probably have a video card) will drop from supporting 16 lanes to 8. What I am adding to this is that I doubt you will notice any change in performance in your video card.

Thanks a lot for explaining, appreciate the replies, I shall get an adapter then!