Importance of 4k speeds

[Deleted member 194470]

Hello,

I have a wd sn750 black and I noticed the 4k speeds(in anvil ss) are slower than a mx500. It is a few mb/s a second slower but I would expect the wd black to be much faster. What is the importance of 4k speed? This is the typical type of read/write by the ssd? I notice despite that the wd black should be way faster than the mx500(read/write speeds 5-6 times faster) it is not that much faster. Windows 10 starts up 2 seconds faster and games load moderately faster.

 

[Zach_01]

You have to be more specific about it.
Give the exact drive models and names and your system as well.
And maybe some screenshots of benchmarks (of both drives).

 

[Deleted member 194470]

It's wd black sn750 vs Cruicial mx 500. I did put the model numbers in there. I have windows 7 and windows 10, ryzen 2600 x, geforce 1660 super, ddr 4 3200 16 gb. Here are the pictures, I labeled them.

I just wanted to understand 4k more. Also I am surprised the sn750 is not way faster, maybe this is partly because applications/games don't make use of ssd.

 

[oobymach]

ssd is faster than hdd, m2 is faster than ssd, if thats what you mean? everything you store on an ssd or m2 drive will load much faster than an hdd, including your os, but your os load time is dependent on a few things like whether or not you made changes in bios, your ram and cpu speed and timings, but everything looks good as far as speed goes.

you have a gen3 drive, gen4 drives are faster but u need a gen4 socket

WD_BLACK™ SN850 NVMe™ SSD PCIe® Gen4 for PC or Laptop | Western Digital | Western Digital

Long load times are obsolete with next-gen PCIe® Gen4 technology. Arm your system with RGB lighting, an optional heatsink model, and up to 2TB1 capacity.

shop.westerndigital.com

my m2 gen3 samsung drives to compare

 

[Deleted member 194470]

Yeah I have gen 3 but that's all I need for this drive but the max read/write does not even come close to gen 4 limits right? So your drive is about as fast. Although your random is in iops and not mb/s so its hard to tell the comparison on here. Although I can run the benchmark with iops. I know you can change settings for os boot, but without changing the settings its only 2 seconds faster, and the drive is supposed to be 7 times faster than the mx500.

I know m.2 is faster than sata, but my point is that I expected the ssd drive to be way faster than the mx500(500 mb/s) and there difference is not that great.

 

[Toothless]

Using ONE test software helps.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

m2 is faster than ssd

Lol you mean M.2 SSD is faster than SSD with SATA or mSATA interface. It is important to clarify the statement, otherwise it may be misunderstood.

 

[TheLostSwede]

You seem to have mixed up Anvil and As SSD for one, but that's a minor issue...

As for the significance of 4K speeds, well, it relates to how well a drive handles small files.
Based on my older WD Black, it seem like your drive is on the slow side, have you tried trimming it? As in, running a TRIM command?
What motherboard do you have? Is the SSD connected directly to the CPU or going via the chipset?
Also keep in mind that SSD benchmark figures tend to go down as the drives fill up and the smaller the drive, the worse the performance due to how an SSD works in terms of NAND flash channels. Obviously this doesn't have as much of an impact on the random 4K performance as it has on other metrics.
Obviously this is using an older version of CDM, but the 4K scores shouldn't be that different.
I threw in a couple of other drives I have for comparison. As you can see, the 4K read is quite similar across the board, although my SATA drive is the slowest one.

 

[Vya Domus]

I notice despite that the wd black should be way faster than the mx500(read/write speeds 5-6 times faster) it is not that much faster. Windows 10 starts up 2 seconds faster and games load moderately faster.

That's to be expected, NVMe drives despite being much faster offer no real speed improvements in typical use. Load times for programs are impacted by latency more than actual throughput but a SATA SSD has more or less the same latency an NVMe drive has.

 

[Zach_01]

 

[TheLostSwede]

And since this just went up, this is what to expect from the upcoming PCIe 4.0 SSD controllers.

Phison Readies Next-Gen E18 SSD Controller, Upward of 7.38 GB/s Sequential Transfers for Client Segment

Phison was first to market with a PCI-Express gen 4.0 client-segment NVMe SSD controller, the E16 series, which let it bag design wins with several DIY gaming PC SSD manufacturers. Not to be left behind by PCIe gen 4.0 controllers by its competitors, such as SMI, Marvell, Samsung, etc., offering...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Zach_01]

Yes very impressive numbers.
Although other that transferring large amounts data doesn’t really help on every day tasks. Os boot and app installs excluded.

 

[Deleted member 194470]

Oh so its latency that effects load times. I wish I knew that, I got the ssd for free with a gift card but I am not super impressed. I also looking at dashboard that shows live read/write speeds most games do not use more than 100 mb read. I don't know if this has to do with the game or hard drive. Since one game which shows the fastest difference in load times resident evil 3 will go up to 300 mb/s

I have trim turned on and 10 percent overprovision. I am not sure if ssd is connected to the cpu. Its a gigabyte b450 aorus elite motherboard. It was annoying to install the ssd there is only m.2 slot fast enough and i had to use a special stud.

So if I wanted a noticably faster ssd or one that loaded games faster I would want one with lower latency and better 4k? What effects latency? Is it the controller?

 

[Zach_01]

Game loading is not effected much by SSD speed. Even the slowest SATA SSD against fastest NVMe SSD don’t make a whole lot difference.
Game loading is not designed to benefit from very fast SSDs. It’s more of a CPU bound issue and the system in general.

 

[Deleted member 194470]

That's a good video, i was trying to find an article that posted various game loading times like that. Some ssd tests show game loading but usually just for one game. If cpu matters then where are cpu based tests for that. It doesn't seem like the cpu imo, it doesn't seem to make a great difference. I don't know, I would like to see benchmarks on that. Game loading is generally not that big of a deal, I just expected a bigger improvement and I guess my observation was right there is not much of a difference between sata and nvme.

The main games that should be tested are fallout 4 and gta v lol. Gta v initial loading takes forever and fallout 4 constantly loads. I do wonder how much of this is a software issue, if game companies tailored their games for ssd wouldn't that make it faster? Maybe ps5/xbox one x will change that and it will effect how games are made for pc.