# PCI-Express 4.0 NVMe SSD Performance on Ryzen 3000 & X570



## W1zzard (Jul 12, 2019)

AMD's new Ryzens are the first desktop processors to support PCI-Express 4.0, which doubles transfer rates over PCIe 3.0. We test real-life performance gains using the 2 TB Gigabyte Aorus Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSD, which reaches over 5 GB/s in sequential speeds.

*Show full review*


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## danbert2000 (Jul 12, 2019)

Your comment about where the data is going if you're doing big copies is right on the money. I recently added an NVMe drive to my PC. It has probably 2x faster sequential read/write as my old 850 Evo SATA SSD. But how am I going to see that when I'm copying between the NVMe and SATA drives? Or, more often than not, copying from my hard drive? Luckily the new drive also has better random performance, which does lead to it feeling faster.

Unfortunately, PCIe 4.0 x2 drives would probably not much sense ever, because you'll have many legacy users that will need to run at 3.0 right now, so those "newer" drives will actually run slower than the current PCIe 3.0 x4 drives instead of the same speed for lower cost due to controller pairbacks. I think the big win is going to be embedded storage in thin and light laptops, where the manufacturer can pair a PCIe 4.0 x2 link with a suitable drive to save a few dollars and avoid issues with customer perception.


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## XiGMAKiD (Jul 12, 2019)

I was hoping for sustained temp and speed under continuous load, still a nice review


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## Windyson (Jul 12, 2019)

no 6GB/s, no buy


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## chinmi (Jul 12, 2019)

Still too expensive. But those adata looks awesome. Gonna get me a couple of those for my next uprades.


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## Delta6326 (Jul 12, 2019)

XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB is on sale for $120 us. I'm curious to see how the Patriot VPN100 1TB performs.









						XPG SX8200 Pro Series: 1TB Internal Solid State Drive PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 - Newegg.com
					

Buy XPG SX8200 Pro Series: 1TB Internal Solid State Drive PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.com


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## W1zzard (Jul 12, 2019)

danbert2000 said:


> thin and light laptops, where the manufacturer can pair a PCIe 4.0 x2 link with a suitable drive to save a few dollars and avoid issues with customer perception.


very good point



XiGMAKiD said:


> I was hoping for sustained temp and speed under continuous load


without heatsink, doing sequential writes at full speed, 100°C + throttle within 30 seconds or so. running with the heatsink installed right now, just for you. will update this post.

edit: added a section with FLIR pics on page 3 of the review


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## john_ (Jul 12, 2019)

RAID performance could be more interesting?
Just asking.


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## Metroid (Jul 12, 2019)

Thanks for the review. As we can see no improvements on 4k random read, so move on nothing to see here hehe


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## laszlo (Jul 12, 2019)

good to know that 1%  vs previous gen don't worth the price difference for now!

in my opinion in 5 years we'll see hardware which will use it proper than now; time and investments .. a lot...


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## EatingDirt (Jul 12, 2019)

This is more of a Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen4 SSD & the Phison PS5016-E16-32 controller review than it is a PCIe 4.0 NVME performance review on Zen 2 & X570.

It doesn't seem like we'll be getting any Intel PCIe 4.0 capability anytime soon, so it seems TPU should probably rig up an AMD rig for future PCIe 4.0 NVME reviews.


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## bug (Jul 12, 2019)

I wasn't expecting to see a difference. What I'm hoping to see is manufacturers moving the drives to PCIe x2 (or even x1) so we can connect all out storage directly to the CPU. Judging by how everyone is pushing numbers for sequential speeds above all else, that may not happen.


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## Imsochobo (Jul 12, 2019)

bug said:


> I wasn't expecting to see a difference. What I'm hoping to see is manufacturers moving the drives to PCIe x2 (or even x1) so we can connect all out storage directly to the CPU. Judging by how everything is pushing numbers for sequential speeds above all else, that may not happen.



Same same!
I probably want a new os drive up to 1tb and do it on pci-e 4.0.
But I also sometimes want capacity 
Also, Intel have no cpu attached nvme storage until HEDT lineup, x99,x299 as LGa115x is all through the chipset.


Wizzard, could you also do subsystem tests with drives, I'm seeing a noticeable increase in drive performance on my OS nvme with zen2 compared to zen1.
zen1 did score worse than intel and curious if there is more parity.

I used to see this at cpu launches, but I guess a arch, cpu range, two gpu vendors, new chipset, new pci-e standard is kinda... enough for you guys


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## HTC (Jul 12, 2019)

john_ said:


> RAID performance could be more interesting?
> Just asking.



I'd agree: it should be when doing RAID that PCIe 4.0's benefits should prove more worthwhile.

But that's just theory ... unless @W1zzard wants to test it ...


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## Basard (Jul 13, 2019)

Have you tried taking all but 1GB of the system RAM out?  lol......


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## jonup (Jul 13, 2019)

EatingDirt said:


> This is more of a Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen4 SSD & the Phison PS5016-E16-32 controller review than it is a PCIe 4.0 NVME performance review on Zen 2 & X570.
> 
> It doesn't seem like we'll be getting any Intel PCIe 4.0 capability anytime soon, so it seems TPU should probably rig up an AMD rig for future PCIe 4.0 NVME reviews.



Not particularly responding to your post but it has some relevance. AMD worked closely (gave them bunch of money) with Phison so that there are PCI-E 4.0 drives at launch. the Phison E16 is basically E12 with PCI-E 4.0 interface. This is not a new NVMe controller from the ground up, hanse no particular random benefit over E12, if the interface even allows for any random benefits. Back to your comment, this is the best AMD could master for Zen2 & X570 as of now.


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## EatingDirt (Jul 13, 2019)

jonup said:


> Not particularly responding to your post but it has some relevance. AMD worked closely (gave them bunch of money) with Phison so that there are PCI-E 4.0 drives at launch. the Phison E16 is basically E12 with PCI-E 4.0 interface. This is not a new NVMe controller from the ground up, hanse no particular random benefit over E12, if the interface even allows for any random benefits. Back to your comment, this is the best AMD could master for Zen2 & X570 as of now.


AMD didn't master this, it was Phison & Gigabyte. Early drives to new interfaces rarely are all that fast, look at the early NVMe & SATA drives for a good example. 

That being said, real world performance in the majority of consumer applications often don't see much of a benefit even from an SSD to a 3.0 NVMe, so I don't expect 4.0 NVMe drives to be significantly faster in many consumer applications than 3.0 drives.


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## Wavetrex (Jul 13, 2019)

Basically the only people who might benefit from these new fast drives are 4K video editors.

X570 is completely useless
... but it will sell. People want the best of the best, even if the "older" solution is just as good.

I for one can't wait for 3900X-es to get in stocks here in Europe (nobody has them already, all stores are pre-order or "10+ days delivery" and use it on my "old" X370 board (which I already updated to latest bios and it supports 3000 series just fine !).

I will upgrade it to X570 or X670 when it will actually make sense...


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## TheinsanegamerN (Jul 13, 2019)

laszlo said:


> good to know that 1%  vs previous gen don't worth the price difference for now!
> 
> in my opinion in 5 years we'll see hardware which will use it proper than now; time and investments .. a lot...


I wouldnt think so. We still havent seen optimizations for NVMe speeds. The difference in boot time, game loading time, ece from NVMe VS SATA is insignificant right now, and that is NVMe 2.0. NVMe 4.0 has tons of speed that simply isnt utilized, and likely wont for some time. For end users, speeds are beyond good enough.

Now for pro use, I see this being much more important, I'm thinking of editing 8k video or loading multiple high rez pictures for editing. But here, the SSD size restriction would be a serious issue.



Wavetrex said:


> Basically the only people who might benefit from these new fast drives are 4K video editors.
> 
> X570 is completely useless
> ... but it will sell. People want the best of the best, even if the "older" solution is just as good.
> ...


I'm still on X470, with 0 desire to upgrade. 

I'm not even bothering with ryzen 3000, seeing as a 4.0 GHz 1700 is, what, 5% slower in games at most?

I wonder if this ryzen system will last longer then my ivy bridge setup did, nearly 6 years of use.


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## Wavetrex (Jul 13, 2019)

TheinsanegamerN said:


> seeing as a 4.0 GHz 1700 is, what, 5% slower in games at most?


I think you haven't watched the reviews with sufficient attention.

The difference between that 1700 overclocked (which is basically an 1800X) and 3700X is quite significant. Especially in games.
Looking at 15-20% difference between Ryzen 1000 and Ryzen 3000 in per/core performance (with an even bigger diff when looking at single thread clocks .... (up to)4000 vs 4400 in older titles.

Add on top of that double the AVX power for some professional workloads, and Ryzen 3700X vs 1700 is like the difference between an old Core 2 Quad and a much newer Skylake (same cores, but MUCH faster).
Oh, and it consumes half of the power.


But I feel you, I wouldn't upgrade either an 8-core to another 8-core.
You should get the 3900X when it's in stock


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## TheLostSwede (Jul 13, 2019)

EatingDirt said:


> AMD didn't master this, it was Phison & Gigabyte. Early drives to new interfaces rarely are all that fast, look at the early NVMe & SATA drives for a good example.
> 
> That being said, real world performance in the majority of consumer applications often don't see much of a benefit even from an SSD to a 3.0 NVMe, so I don't expect 4.0 NVMe drives to be significantly faster in many consumer applications than 3.0 drives.


Uhm, sorry, but you're wrong, AMD did indeed give Phison money to develop the controller so the would be a PCIe 4.0 SDD controller in time for the new platform from AMD.


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## Kamgusta (Jul 13, 2019)

What matters is the random speed and that's the same across all PCI-express revisions. PCI-express bandwidth for SSDs is wool over the eyes. Access times is the king.
Move on guys. I still only buy SATA SSDs.


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Jul 13, 2019)

just like the RX5700 & 5700XT, which utilizes PCIe 4 protocols, has little to no real world gains over PCIe 3. Guess I'll wait for the tech to mature or PCIe 5 comes in with actual gains in a few years.


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## Voluman (Jul 13, 2019)

Thanks for the review (all of the past week too). So how long can sustain max write? Until reach 100C degree or how big is the cache?


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## voltage (Jul 13, 2019)

"the actual real-life gains are small. Averaged across our test suite, we only see a 1% improvement, nothing you'd ever notice in real-life."

That is why we need PCIE 5.0, the difference from 3.0 will be more noticeable.


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## Imsochobo (Jul 13, 2019)

Wavetrex said:


> Basically the only people who might benefit from these new fast drives are 4K video editors.
> 
> X570 is completely useless
> ... but it will sell. People want the best of the best, even if the "older" solution is just as good.
> ...



Absolutely not.
X570 is not useless, but PCi-e 4.0 to add in parts is rather pointless, the pci-e 4.0 to the chipset is really needed, also x470 outputs pci-e 2.0! 2.0!
also anything you plug in through the chipset is limited to x4 pci-e 3.0 total bandwidth shared, which is too little.
so if they had pci-e 3.0 out and 4.0 to cpu it'd be just as good imho, you can have 3 x nvme (2x pci-e 3.0 and 1x pci-e 4.0) without any i/o bottlenecks on a mainstream platform!

Please keep in mind the lowest end 1000 $ Intel HEDT cpu's was a requirement from the other side for that.


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## crotach (Jul 13, 2019)

How does this compare to 970 Pro ? The price is pretty much the same.

It's clear to me from this article that it's not worth it upgrading to x570, but is it worth getting a gen4 ssd vs 970 pro?


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## W1zzard (Jul 13, 2019)

crotach said:


> How does this compare to 970 Pro ?


My data shows 970 Pro to be on-par with the ADATA SX8200 Pro (which is included in this article): https://www.techpowerup.com/review/adata-sx6000-pro-1-tb/14.html

So I'd prefer the PCIe 3.0 970 Pro over the Gigabyte PCIe 4, or just go with the ADATA which is more affordable at the same time.


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## tony359 (Jul 13, 2019)

TheinsanegamerN said:


> I wonder if this ryzen system will last longer then my ivy bridge setup did, nearly 6 years of use.



Probably not but this is because intel hasn’t had any real competition until now and they could afford to release products delivering 3% improvements over the previous line. 

I have an i7 2700K which still goes very well from 2011 and now I have finally some reason to upgrade it. 

So I wouldn’t blame AMD for doing what they’re supposed to do!


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## TheGuruStud (Jul 13, 2019)

Corsair mp510 was 115 USD, but now zen 2 launched lol


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## Darmok N Jalad (Jul 13, 2019)

It's not to say that the technology shouldn't advance or that there is no use for these improvements, but I think for everyday users, it's not much of a selling point. The biggest gain in feel still came when we went from spinning drives to SSDs. Near instantaneous seek time is what makes the system feel fast. Maybe if you're a heavy video editor this is for you, but even then, all the ways you transfer to these drives will be through a much slower bus speed. Even game load times seem to be limited by other processes at this point. I guess hard drive access is no longer the bottleneck?


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## efahl (Jul 13, 2019)

I'm curious as to whether the poor 4k performance is an architectural issue or just firmware.  Since the drive can stream large data at good rates, seems like they should be able to tune up small block performance with some code and make this thing show better results on more generic workflows.


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## Mescalamba (Jul 13, 2019)

Servers will love that, when it comes. Probably.


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## W1zzard (Jul 13, 2019)

Mescalamba said:


> Servers will love that, when it comes. Probably.


Honest question, what does your server do that requires that much sequential performance (assuming you don't have a 100G NIC)


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## Recus (Jul 13, 2019)

Why 4KiB stuff haven't improved?


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## HD64G (Jul 13, 2019)

Asus publishes X470 and B450 PCIe Gen 4 compatibility chart
					

At Computex AMD denied that pre-X570 motherboards would support PCIe Gen 4.




					hexus.net
				




So, any vendor who made a motherboard in spec to PCI-E 4.0 can add the feature with a BIOS update. AM4 socket is truly the best in upgradeability ever, especially if the rumors on Zen3 being DDR4 for 2020 are true.


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## Imsochobo (Jul 13, 2019)

HD64G said:


> Asus publishes X470 and B450 PCIe Gen 4 compatibility chart
> 
> 
> At Computex AMD denied that pre-X570 motherboards would support PCIe Gen 4.
> ...



I'd expect.. yes and no?
There is someone.. someone over at AMD who's been there or left a mindset.
AM2,AM2+,AM3 stuff is amazing and I expect them to do the same.
Phenom II came with DDR3 and 2 controller so you could use a chipset from 2003 on a 2010 cpu.. so my agp gpu can have a 6 core phenom because of reasons.

Also Intel's cpu's usually have a ddr3 controller for skylake, cfl and such for ddr3LP which laptops like so they support both as well.

So I'd expect it to support both.


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## svan71 (Jul 13, 2019)

Just waiting for the 980 Pro.


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## bug (Jul 13, 2019)

Recus said:


> Why 4KiB stuff haven't improved?


It's a limitation of either the flash memory itself or the controller. Something about the way memory is accessed. Besides being way more durable, XPoint also eats Flash for breakfast in 4k random reads. But...


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## tony359 (Jul 13, 2019)

HD64G said:


> Asus publishes X470 and B450 PCIe Gen 4 compatibility chart
> 
> 
> At Computex AMD denied that pre-X570 motherboards would support PCIe Gen 4.
> ...



Great! 
Then what’s the point of the new 15W chipset? It must have some features we don’t know!!


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## Imsochobo (Jul 14, 2019)

tony359 said:


> Great!
> Then what’s the point of the new 15W chipset? It must have some features we don’t know!!



PLEASE SEE BLOCK DIAGRAMS, Read.. it's everywhere!
It shows, PCI-E4.0 to chipset, that is DOUBLE bandwidth vs X470 which has PCI-E 3.0 between chipset and cpu.
Then please see what comes out of X470.. ohh.. PCI-E 2.0.
Quadrouple bandwidth from X570 for PCI-E out of the chipset.

It may not be for you but it's still new features and vastly superior I/O capability.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 14, 2019)

The data shown in this article shows that Sata3 and PCIe3 are just not bottlenecking most drive usage scenarios. As with mechanical drives, the drives themselves seem to be the limiting factors. Very interesting indeed. Somewhat related, Jay built a NAS server with mechanical HDDs that were out performing an SSD;








The relevant part starts at 13:40.


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## Vlada011 (Jul 14, 2019)

All of us should put this in signature with Intel Statement PCI-E 4.0 mean nothing for gamers.
Maybe for owners of Playstation, but for PC and Apple mean a lot.
i9-9980XE now worth between 500 and 750$.


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## AMX85 (Jul 14, 2019)

Update Mobo BIOS please


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## tony359 (Jul 14, 2019)

Imsochobo said:


> PLEASE SEE BLOCK DIAGRAMS, Read.. it's everywhere!
> 
> It may not be for you but it's still new features and vastly superior I/O capability.



Thanks. I appreciate your input, I wasn’t aware of that. 

Mine was a genuine question, no need to shout


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## LionelGeek (Jul 14, 2019)

Thanks for posting this review. Was just looking into whether or not to spend the extra money for the Aorus PCIe 4.0 M.2 drive. Based on your results, I'll hold off and stick with the 512GB version of WD Black's latest drive.

Maybe I'll upgrade to a PCIe 4 SSD down the road after manufacturers have a chance to develop controllers that can take better advantage of the PCIe 4.0 bandwidth increase.


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## Mescalamba (Jul 14, 2019)

W1zzard said:


> Honest question, what does your server do that requires that much sequential performance (assuming you don't have a 100G NIC)



Not mine, in general, server industry. There is never enough performance.


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## TheinsanegamerN (Jul 14, 2019)

Wavetrex said:


> I think you haven't watched the reviews with sufficient attention.
> 
> The difference between that 1700 overclocked (which is basically an 1800X) and 3700X is quite significant. Especially in games.
> Looking at 15-20% difference between Ryzen 1000 and Ryzen 3000 in per/core performance (with an even bigger diff when looking at single thread clocks .... (up to)4000 vs 4400 in older titles.
> ...


I'm judging based on TPU's review here:








						AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Review
					

AMD's $330 Ryzen 7 3700X is an 8-core, 16-thread CPU that's clocked high enough to compete with Intel's offerings. Actually, its application performance matches even the more expensive Intel Core i9-9900K. Gaming performance has been increased significantly, too, thanks to the improved...




					www.techpowerup.com
				




AC: odyssey - 98.6 VS 115.3
BF:V - 142.8 VS 173.3
Civ VI - 155.8 VS 182.7
FC5 - 93.9 VS 118
ME - 134.1 VS 168.3
rage 2: 230.4 VS 237.4
sekiro - 122.5 VS 151.3
Tomb raider - 205.3 VS 247.8
witcher 3 - 213.4 VS 224.9
wolfenstein II- LOL vs LMFAO

Now, these are 720p settings. We can see that in Wolfenstein, witcher, tomb raider, rage 2, civ vi and BFV the framerate difference doesnt matter. At all. All of these results are over 144 FPS (except BFV, which is 1 frame off, close enough) so unless you are using a 165hz monitor the chip makes no difference.

AC; odyssey, far cry 5, metro, and sekiro all show large differences in favor of the 3700x, but that brings in the other bugbear. Subjectively, to me, this makes no difference, because my 1440p monitor's freesync range is only 35-90 FPS, so anything above 90 makes no difference to me. Speaking of 1440p, look at the results there, and you will see:





Wow. A whopping 5% faster! I was right on the money. As someone who games at a modern resolution, the 3700x is only about 5% faster then the chip I have right now. And in the 2 games that show a big difference between the 1700 OC and the 3700x, both are above the 90 FPS I need to max out freesync.

So, for me, the 3700x is meaningless as it has 0 OC headroom to improve those numbers, and the 1700x is good enough to keep 90 FPS in every title out today. This may change in the future, but at the moment my vega 64 doesnt come close to maintaining 90 FPS in most titles at 1440p, so until a navi 5900xt comes out or I splurge on a 3080ti whenever it comes out, its a pointless exercise in which CPU is faster. Zen 3 may finally offer a large enough difference for me to care, but that will likely be on a different socket.

Trust me, I've been paying attention. In realistic scenarios, the 3700x is barely any faster then my OCed 1700. If I needed to upgrade, the 2700 is much cheaper then a 3700x and can still be OCed to 4.5-4.6 GHz, and based on the 2700x results from the same graphs, that would close any gap with the 3700x. The only reason the 3700x would be exciting is if you wanted to pus 144 FPS constantly, but then you'd be better off with intel. 

I should have just bought the 2700 when I built this thing. I was hoping the 3700x would be a bigger step forward like the 2700 was from the 1700.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 14, 2019)

TheinsanegamerN said:


> Wow. A whopping 5% faster!


That was gaming performance. Other benchmarks show a larger variance. Additionally, you're comparing a 1*8*00X to a 3*7*00X. Compare the 1800X to the 3800X and you will see a bigger difference. Apples to Apples, Oranges to Oranges..


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## Xuper (Jul 14, 2019)

80'c with heatsink ? my god.....i didn't expect it.


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## Mescalamba (Jul 15, 2019)

Xuper said:


> 80'c with heatsink ? my god.....i didn't expect it.



I did. Actually recommended EK to look into new mobos for x570 and full cover solutions. Hope they listened (well they said they will).

Honestly it was quite obvious from moment we saw every mobo having fan on chipset.


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## TheinsanegamerN (Jul 15, 2019)

lexluthermiester said:


> That was gaming performance. Other benchmarks show a larger variance. Additionally, you're comparing a 1*8*00X to a 3*7*00X. Compare the 1800X to the 3800X and you will see a bigger difference. Apples to Apples, Oranges to Oranges..


Like I said, for MY USE CASE, which is GAMING (if you still cant get the hint, I'd suggest using a sledgehammer) there is effectively no difference. I am using the 1800x because (this was in my earlier comments, that you didnt read apparently) my 1700 is OCed to 4.0 GHz, because you can OC first gen ryzen, unlike these newer chips, so the 1800x is closer to my CPU's performance then the 1700 in these charts. 

As for the 3800x, nobody has reviewed that chip that I can see. Mind linking to them here? And I doubt a whopping 100 MHz increase is going to be much of a game changer here, especially as the big IPC increase seems to be doing squat in gaming.


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## lexluthermiester (Jul 15, 2019)

TheinsanegamerN said:


> because you can OC first gen ryzen, unlike these newer chips


That's not true. I've already built three Ryzen3 systems and each OC's by 10-15% without lots of voltage.


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## bobbygamer (Jul 17, 2019)

Time for samsung to release 980 PRO and blow these early pci-e 4.0 drives away


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## cat1092 (Jul 18, 2019)

svan71 said:


> Just waiting for the 980 Pro.



Me too!

The Samsung 980, when released, will likely be a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. Currently have the 1st of the series (512GB 950 PRO) & a 970 PRO of the same type & size, just haven't got around to installing it. I want to perform a clean install of Windows 10 1903, no desire to clone. Will use the 950 PRO in a secondary PC. The 970 PRO should be faster, because I'll have it installed in the 2nd GPU slot, where the 950 is now. Being it's getting a full 4 lanes, no need to believe it won't reach advertised speed. 

Hopefully can get most of the advertised speed on my Z97 platform, system specs listed below my avatar. Only significant change was the addition of a 28" LG 4K HDR monitor. 

My next build will be Ryzen, X570 MB (or newer), once there's plenty of stock & Newegg & Amazon begins to run promos on these. I'm in no rush, as will have to also purchase a more powerful GPU & possibly PSU as well. Don't know if 650W Gold rated will be enough, these boards with 12-16 ATX (CPU power) pins will generate a lot of heat. Won't be half hearted about the build & go with 8 pin, going better will add only $100-150 to the cost. Yet still will cost less to build than this one, hopefully under the $1,500 mark. This one was $1,700, although had to performance RAM (32GB GSkill TridentX 2400MHz), in two 16GB packs. Was on promo for $99, so purchased 4 kits to install in two PC's.

Today & because of the scandal, RAM prices are great, so expect to save some cash there. 

Cat


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## msroadkill612 (Jul 24, 2019)

bug said:


> I wasn't expecting to see a difference. What I'm hoping to see is manufacturers moving the drives to PCIe x2 (or even x1) so we can connect all out storage directly to the CPU. Judging by how everyone is pushing numbers for sequential speeds above all else, that may not happen.


I had similar thoughts. Double the pcie 4 x2 lane nvme ports has its good points vs a single 4 lane port. If you look at the amd block diagram slide, substituting 2x 2 lane m.2 ports for the one 4 lane m.2 is clearly an option mobo makers have. 

We could have 2x nvme that really do ~4GB/s r/w, vs a single drive that only does 6GB/4GB

as seems the fashion, 2 lane nvme has been popularised by Intel, but seems better suited to amd. There are standard 2 lane nvme drives on the market.


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## bug (Jul 24, 2019)

msroadkill612 said:


> I had similar thoughts. Double the pcie 4 x2 lane nvme ports has its good points vs a single 4 lane port. If you look at the amd block diagram slide, substituting 2x 2 lane m.2 ports for the one 4 lane m.2 is clearly an option mobo makers have.
> 
> We could have 2x nvme that really do ~4GB/s r/w, vs a single drive that only does 6GB/4GB
> 
> as seems the fashion, 2 lane nvme has been popularised by Intel, but seems better suited to amd. There are standard 2 lane nvme drives on the market.


The thing is, those sequential speeds don't matter much, no drive can write more than 1-2GB/s without throttling within a few seconds. Of course, 5 seconds of writing 2GB/s and you're already written 2 DVDs.
Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure it's important to connect all those drives to the CPU, I don't recall a benchmark looking at whether or not going through the southbridge incurs a penalty or not. But on most mobos, you can only use M.2 slots that go through the southbridge in exchange for giving up 2 SATA slots.


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## tony359 (Jul 24, 2019)

bug said:


> The thing is, those sequential speeds don't matter much, no drive can write more than 1-2GB/s without throttling within a few seconds



I believe I saw reviews of drives writing 10-15 before running out of cache


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## bug (Jul 24, 2019)

tony359 said:


> I believe I saw reviews of drives writing 10-15 before running out of cache


The 970 Pro doesn't drop speed: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/samsung-970-pro-ssd-512-gb/6.html
But it doesn't go anywhere near the available bandwidth either.


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## svan71 (Jul 25, 2019)

cat1092 said:


> Me too!
> 
> The Samsung 980, when released, will likely be a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. Currently have the 1st of the series (512GB 950 PRO) & a 970 PRO of the same type & size, just haven't got around to installing it. I want to perform a clean install of Windows 10 1903, no desire to clone. Will use the 950 PRO in a secondary PC. The 970 PRO should be faster, because I'll have it installed in the 2nd GPU slot, where the 950 is now. Being it's getting a full 4 lanes, no need to believe it won't reach advertised speed.
> 
> ...



Only one Z97 board has M.2 3x4 and that is the AsRock Z97 Extreme 6. My board


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## svan71 (Aug 4, 2019)

Kamgusta said:


> What matters is the random speed and that's the same across all PCI-express revisions. PCI-express bandwidth for SSDs is wool over the eyes. Access times is the king.
> Move on guys. I still only buy SATA SSDs.



Hey you pesky nvme drives get off my lawn !


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