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

[W1zzard]

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.

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[danbert2000]

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.

 

[XiGMAKiD]

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

 

[Windyson]

no 6GB/s, no buy

 

[chinmi]

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

 

[Delta6326]

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

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[W1zzard]

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

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

 

[john_]

RAID performance could be more interesting?
Just asking.

 

[Metroid]

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

 

[laszlo]

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...

 

[EatingDirt]

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.

 

[bug]

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.

 

[Imsochobo]

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

 

[HTC]

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 ...

 

[Basard]

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

 

[jonup]

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.

 

[EatingDirt]

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.

 

[Wavetrex]

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...

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

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.

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...

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.

 

[Wavetrex]

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

 

[TheLostSwede]

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.

 

[Kamgusta]

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.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

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.

 

[Voluman]

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?

 

[voltage]

"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.