PCIe SSD's?

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

HI

My M.2 960 Pro on a Z97 motherboard benchmarks with a sequential read speed of 830MB per second and a sequental write speed of 787MB per second.

This motherboards M.2 connector uses just two PCI-E lanes (the card supports four) which is why the read speed isn't close to the potential 2.2GB per second but the write speed isn't too far from the potential maximum 900MB per second write speed.

To compare using the same test, a SATA3 Corsair Neutron GTX SSD gives 543 read and 470 write and a Kingston SATA3 SSD gives 487 read and 515 write.

GaryG

How does it boot? Does it inject its own boot code into the system BIOS, much like any other external storage adapter?

[peterhayes]

Kanawha

How does it boot? Does it inject its own boot code into the system BIOS, much like any other external storage adapter?

Not sure what you mean here. A m2 device is usually internal (it usually replaces one of the internal SATA ports if used).
It is the BIOS that will determine the boot order (which you set) and once the m2 device is first in boot priority (recognized by the BIOS and it has the system files on it) then the BIOS will do its job automatically as if the m2 drive was a conventional HDD or SSD. There were issues with BIOS settings for early m2 drives, but the motherboard manufacturer usually has a work around. If the m2 drive is NOT the system drive, it just needs to be recognized by the BIOS and obviously Windows so it can be seen as a working drive. In this case it doesn't need to be booted.
pH

[GaryG]

Hi

Kanawha is correct, the BIOS detects it just like other drives; setting the M.2 as the first boot disk (unless you want to check for a bootable CD/DVD) was the only change I made after I cloned the previous "C:\" to the M.2 SSD. After the clone finished, I shut down the computer.

While the computer was turned off I did disconnect the original "C:\" SSD just in case things went haywire.

The reboot from the M.2 was painless, worked first time and yes, I immediately knew it was faster...

GaryG

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

HI

My M.2 960 Pro on a Z97 motherboard benchmarks with a sequential read speed of 830MB per second and a sequental write speed of 787MB per second.

This motherboards M.2 connector uses just two PCI-E lanes (the card supports four) which is why the read speed isn't close to the potential 2.2GB per second but the write speed isn't too far from the potential maximum 900MB per second write speed.

To compare using the same test, a SATA3 Corsair Neutron GTX SSD gives 543 read and 470 write and a Kingston SATA3 SSD gives 487 read and 515 write.

GaryG

Thanks for clearing this up.
So you'll need a motherboard with a M2 connector (and 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes) to use these ultra fast SSD's for maximum speed.
It's BIOS will treat the M2 SSD's just like any other connected mass storage medium.

It is likely they'll set through in gaming notebooks and prices will come down, availability will increase.

You'll get used to the speed in no time and when the next level of computing arrives your system will appear 'slow' again.