ASUS Unveils Hyper M.2 X4 Adapter

[AsRock]

The only advantage so far that I've seen on M2 reviews is sequential speed (700-800MB/s vs 400-450 for a high end SATA 3 SSD). Random and 4K speed seems to be comparable, at least so far, and those are the biggest bottleneck in my opinion.

Depends on price to remember it maybe cheaper to buy 2 sata 3 SSD's then you be looking at 900 +MBs.

 

[TRWOV]

Yeah, I concur on that RAID 0 over SATA would offer better throughput.

I won't get excited for M2 until I see a remarkable improvement on random access.

 

[KevinCobley]

Can't figure why they just didn't use a standard already developed and in production PCIe x4 mounted sideways on the back of the board, instead of these absurd numbers of odd slots M.2, PCIe, MSATA, SATA Express. Simple slender ribbon cable to device. Too many differing standards of devices leads to increased costs for consumers and development costs for manufacturers.

 

[AsRock]

Can't figure why they just didn't use a standard already developed and in production PCIe x4 mounted sideways on the back of the board, instead of these absurd numbers of odd slots M.2, PCIe, MSATA, SATA Express. Simple slender ribbon cable to device. Too many differing standards of devices leads to increased costs for consumers and development costs for manufacturers.

Money, make progress as slow as possible..

It's SATA at fault they seen this happening before it did, surly they could boost the speeds of that and not some 6Gbs BS..

 

[t_ski]

Can't figure why they just didn't use a standard already developed and in production PCIe x4 mounted sideways on the back of the board, instead of these absurd numbers of odd slots M.2, PCIe, MSATA, SATA Express. Simple slender ribbon cable to device. Too many differing standards of devices leads to increased costs for consumers and development costs for manufacturers.

How the hell are they going to come up with a standard for a drive interface when they can't even settle on a pin-out for the motherboard header that goes to the case switches and LEDs?

 

[Hood]

I wasn't aware of a forum user with more cynical sarcasm than I.
That was sheer poetry to my eyes.

Many of us aspire to your level of sarcastic greatness, RCoon, but none have toppled the master so far. Hmmmm....maybe I should drink more beer, that always helps...

 

[RCoon]

Many of us aspire to your level of sarcastic greatness, RCoon, but none have toppled the master so far. Hmmmm....maybe I should drink more beer, that always helps...

Can't tell if disgruntled sarcasm, or just drunk ;D

Interestingly enough I did actually make a speech in front of 700 or so students on sarcasm and the lowest forms of humour. I even won a competition with it!

 

[Hood]

Can't tell if disgruntled sarcasm, or just drunk ;D

Interestingly enough I did actually make a speech in front of 700 or so students on sarcasm and the lowest forms of humour. I even won a competition with it!

I'm not surprised; as I said, you're the master. My sarcastic comments are either too subtle to be noticed, or too strong and they get mad. Yours have that delicate balance required to keep them wondering...

 

[techtony]

Depends on price to remember it maybe cheaper to buy 2 sata 3 SSD's then you be looking at 900 +MBs.

One may have limited space for drives, e.g., a small form factor PC, and not have a high budget, but needs a large amount of secondary storage, so then the space available for drives would be used for one or more high-capacity, low-cost mechanical drives with the m.2 slot being used as an OS and caching disk.

 

[AsRock]

Then ya should should of got a size worthy case for your needs lol.. Those small ass cases often cost more than bigger one's.

 

[techtony]

Then ya should should of got a size worthy case for your needs lol.. Those small ass cases often cost more than bigger one's.

It depends on what one values or what the requirements are. In the scenario I gave, "obviously" I was suggesting that smaller was better for the hypothetical build. Another thing though, reserving the RAID capability for the storage drives may be desirable. With 10 Gb/s m.2 (20 Gb/s x4 cards in the near future), not need to mess with RAID just to get performance (if the theoretical bandwidth is approachable in practice). When I said one may not have a high budget, I was thinking about the high cost of SSDs vs. 2.5" mechanical drives:

1 TB, 2.5", SATA III, mechanical drive: $80 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145875&cm_re=0303563-_-22-145-875-_-Product)

1 TB, 2.5", SSD: $440 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA29P1EC5324)

So if you want RAID 0 or 1 using the above drives, the 2 SSDs will cost 5X as much.

m.2 as an OS/program/caching drive seems to be a good solution to what I have been wanting for many years: a separation of system bits and data. (I think caching data on the "system drive" may still need to be addressed by the industry from a security perspective, though).