Wednesday, June 23rd 2021
Western Digital Readies WD Black SN850 Firmware Update Restoring AMD X570 Performance
Western Digital is reportedly preparing a firmware update for its WD Black SN850 M.2 NVMe SSD that restores the drive's write performance levels on PCs based on the AMD X570 platform. This problem is localized to X570, specifically to when the drive is installed on an M.2 NVMe slot that is wired to the X570 chipset. Drives that are installed on the slot that's directly wired to the Ryzen processor perform as expected (Ryzen 3000 "Matisse" and Ryzen 5000 "Vermeer").
The drive performs as intended on AMD B550, as well as Intel platforms that support PCIe Gen 4, as the only Gen 4-capable M.2 slots are the ones directly wired to the processor. Western Digital localized the problem to certain X570 motherboards that have their PCIe maximum payload size (MPS) value set at 128 bytes. This dictates the maximum transaction layer packet (TLP) that goes through the PCIe controller, and a low MPS value cripples performance. The firmware update by Western Digital possibly works around this limitation. The company is expected to release the firmware update by 12 July, 2021.
Source:
Tom's Hardware
The drive performs as intended on AMD B550, as well as Intel platforms that support PCIe Gen 4, as the only Gen 4-capable M.2 slots are the ones directly wired to the processor. Western Digital localized the problem to certain X570 motherboards that have their PCIe maximum payload size (MPS) value set at 128 bytes. This dictates the maximum transaction layer packet (TLP) that goes through the PCIe controller, and a low MPS value cripples performance. The firmware update by Western Digital possibly works around this limitation. The company is expected to release the firmware update by 12 July, 2021.
9 Comments on Western Digital Readies WD Black SN850 Firmware Update Restoring AMD X570 Performance
Glad to hear that Western Digital is finally addressing the issue. Even though they are spinning it as something wrong with certain X570 boards when all the other SSD manufacturers somehow made their cards work just fine from day one.
@TheLostSwede next time don't be so insistent about a subject that you have no idea about, we could have brought attention to this a lot sooner if you and others had not been so insistent that we were newbies and had no idea how to set up are operating systems to correctly use a NVME drive.