Corsair MP600 Pro 1 TB

[W1zzard]

Yes, I'd like to see clearance around it with the cooler installed and proximity to the GPU.

not much to see

 

[THU31]

Looking forward to the comparison with the Samsung and WD drives.

But mainly I am waiting for DirectStorage to make an appearance. I am curious to see the difference between Gen3 and Gen4 drives in games supporting this technology.
I would love to see the end of hitching and stuttering, which is usually related to streaming and loading new data on the fly.

 

[Palladium]

Despite what it looks like, I have a few BX500s in lower end rigs, and they are still way faster than a HDD. I wouldn't buy one today with prices so close for better drives. But if, say there was a 4tb BX500 for $200, I wouldn't hesitate to pick it up.

I bought a dirt cheap Lexar NS100 250GB as a HDD replacement for my non-demanding rigs at work. I expected crappy to ho-hum performance but was absolutely stunned when it benched an amazing 12100 IOPS at 4KQ1 and 561MB/s sequential reads according to this review. The NS100 visibly loaded Win8 faster than the MX500s I used later, let alone BX500.

 

[lizardx]

The MP600 Pro uses the new Phison PS5018-E18 controller; the MP600 Pro is actually the first drive to market that uses this controller.

@W1zzard Wasn't that Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus? It has been available on Amazon for a month or so.

 

[efikkan]

I got to say, that old 970 Pro holds up remarkably well, especially in sustained workloads.
I'm torn between 970 Pro and 980 Pro myself for a workstation build.

I'm not so convinced about these endurance ratings though. In my opinion, a storage device becomes "unusable" once it starts to get SMART errors. I've seen far too many SSDs go bad after ~3 years of workstation use. (anecdotal of course…)

You might want to check out Samsung PM9A1 that is essentially OEM version of 980 Pro with cheaper prices. 2TB is less than 300.

I'm not finding a lot of specs, are you sure it's not more comparable to an EVO product? The IOPS numbers seem to vary a lot.
I would love to see a benchmark between them.

But mainly I am waiting for DirectStorage to make an appearance. I am curious to see the difference between Gen3 and Gen4 drives in games supporting this technology.
I would love to see the end of hitching and stuttering, which is usually related to streaming and loading new data on the fly.

Stutter is likely due to latency, not bandwidth. Even a SATA SSD is plenty for resource streaming. The solution is for games to prefetch, no PCIe will be fast enough to load resources on the spot without causing delays.

 

[THU31]

And what does latency come from? From copying data from the drive to the system memory, and then from the system memory to the VRAM.

If the GPU can access the drive directly, especially when the drive is connected via the CPU and not the chipset, latency should be reduced drastically. Gen3 drives should be enough for this technology, but I definitely want to see the difference.
With DirectStorage, both the CPU and GPU will be accessing the drive simultaneously, so higher bandwidth might make a difference as well.

 

[kapone32]

Where is the Seagate Firecuda 520 in thew review?

 

[efikkan]

And what does latency come from? From copying data from the drive to the system memory, and then from the system memory to the VRAM.

If the GPU can access the drive directly, especially when the drive is connected via the CPU and not the chipset, latency should be reduced drastically. Gen3 drives should be enough for this technology, but I definitely want to see the difference.
With DirectStorage, both the CPU and GPU will be accessing the drive simultaneously, so higher bandwidth might make a difference as well.

Even if the data doesn't go through RAM, the GPU still has to check that it's missing from VRAM, then halt rendering while sending a requiest over PCIe twice, plus the SSD response time and file system overhead, before the data is returned. That's a lot of clock cycles wasted.
Don't get me wrong, saving the round-trip to RAM is advantageous for resource streaming, but higher PCIe bandwidth will not make the GPU access the SSD with the same latency as VRAM, not even close.

 

[S73fan]

And what will be the difference in performance between MP600Pro and for example 860Pro ?

 

[W1zzard]

Where is the Seagate Firecuda 520 in thew review?

Don't have one for review yet, @seagate_surfer, any chance to get one of those for review?

 

[Minus Infinity]

Despite what it looks like, I have a few BX500s in lower end rigs, and they are still way faster than a HDD. I wouldn't buy one today with prices so close for better drives. But if, say there was a 4tb BX500 for $200, I wouldn't hesitate to pick it up.

Ok if we are comparing to HDD's then sure even BX500 looks ok. But I wouldn't ever recommend one unless I hated them.

 

[W1zzard]

Ok if we are comparing to HDD's then sure even BX500 looks ok. But I wouldn't ever recommend one unless I hated them.

BX500 is an awesome drive for light read-heavy workloads, like in a media PC or your parent's PC. If you can find it at great pricing

 

[W1zzard]

Current leaders Samsung 980 Pro and WD SN850 are missing. The comparisons with various others are meaningless.

Review has been updated with results for WD SN850 and Samsung 980 Pro. Ordered them on Amazon with same-day shipping and benched all weekend just for you.

Detailed reviews soon

 

[THU31]

Nice job. Seems there is no clear winner. Each of the drives is better at something. But both Samsung and WD seem slightly ahead in most scenarios.

 

[bug]

Nice job. Seems there is no clear winner. Each of the drives is better at something. But both Samsung and WD seem slightly ahead in most scenarios.

Keep in mind if you don't see a 20-30% difference in benchmarks, you won't actually feel that difference in practice.
I run several AHCI and one NVMe drive and I can't honestly tell when I'm using which.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Don't have one for review yet, @seagate_surfer, any chance to get one of those for review?

Lets see what I can do.

 

[Makaveli]

Review has been updated with results for WD SN850 and Samsung 980 Pro. Ordered them on Amazon with same-day shipping and benched all weekend just for you.

Detailed reviews soon

Thank you for adding these two drives.

I do have a question are we sure the SLC cache numbers are correct?

In the chart I see the Gigabyte M.2 Aorus PCIe 4.0 drive which is based on the E16 controller and it has a 55GB SLC cache, however the other E16 Drives like the MP600 has a 333GB SLC cache.

 

[W1zzard]

Thank you for adding these two drives.

I do have a question are we sure the SLC cache numbers are correct?

In the chart I see the Gigabyte M.2 Aorus PCIe 4.0 drive which is based on the E16 controller and it has a 55GB SLC cache, however the other E16 Drives like the MP600 has a 333GB SLC cache.

Vendors can configure the SLC cache any way they want. I secure erase the drive, then fill it, while recording transfer rates. Not much that can go wrong here