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Benefits of PCI-E SSD over SATA III?

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Culbrelai

Member
Joined
Oct 25, 2012
Just what are they exactly?

And don't give me any of that ATTO nonsense companies use to bait and switch people, (cough)

Real world uses. Game loading times. Moving files. Etc.
 
I've been shopping and comparing numbers all weekend, and the only difference I can find between an M.2 drive and a SATAIII drive is the lack of cables and finding a mount in the case.
The drives built on a PCI-e bracket seem the fastest (number wise anyway) because they can use 4X slots giving them more bandwidth and higher sustained read/write speeds. They are not cheap though, with some high capacity ones reaching into the thousands of bucks.

That's what I've seen thus far anyway. I've yet to pull the trigger on purchasing anything yet (new job, still a tight budget) :(.
 
i don't think sequential throughput matters that much past a point. 4k read speed is where it's at. you could have 5000mb/s but it's like driving a veyron in the city with a stoplight at every corner.
 
No real advantage. Almost no application can process data that fast anyways.

Even if you don't have SATA3 on your motherboard, it's probably still cheaper to get a SATA3 PCI-E card and a SATA SSD.
 
PCIE has higher bandwidth but SSD is using it only for sequential transfers so in daily work you see no difference. SATA controller on board is almost always connected to a dual PCIE lines what means about 1100MB/s max from all ports if they're SATA3.
 
4k improved speed would be the largest benefit if it could handle it. Not sure if there is any latency issues with PCI-E vs SATA3. Unless you have a few high speed drives and doing video editing on it that is probably about the only thing I can see as a benefit of PCI-E vs SATA3 right now. I know the M.2 drives increase speeds which is nice to see as well still same case in point is it really better than SATA3 if its an option. Only thing that I could maybe see it as must get if its at the same price point.

Overall if drives can't improve the 4k speeds the only reason to maybe switch to one is you want more space and/or don't have any more SATA3 ports on your motherboard.

Just my opinion on it.
 
SATA is directly connected to PCIE so there are no latency issues. PCIE cards still have controllers onboard so it works about the same. Nearly all PCIE and M.2 SSD perform the same as SATA SSD in random transfers. Only some single models are faster ( but not much ) in random operations.
The same all SSD like Revo are like couple of SSD in RAID so except higher sequential transfers everything else is the same as for single SATA SSD.
 
1- Protocol is different.
2- BW is different (PCI-E...sky's the limit whereas SATA is currently a 6Gb cap (unless you have 12G SATA...which you don't)).


SATA is directly connected to PCIE so there are no latency issues. PCIE cards still have controllers onboard so it works about the same. Nearly all PCIE and M.2 SSD perform the same as SATA SSD in random transfers. Only some single models are faster ( but not much ) in random operations.
The same all SSD like Revo are like couple of SSD in RAID so except higher sequential transfers everything else is the same as for single SATA SSD.

That's a bit misleading. PCIE and M2 are mutually exclusive. M2 is the form factor, which can be SATA or PCIE...difference there. Yes, they're about the same in performance as it's still controller/chip dependent.

SATA isn't connected to PCI-E...it can be, but you have to be specific about the implementation.

PCIE is also full duplex, whereas SATA is only half duplex.

Here's a little primer...

And just to show how good a PCI-E drive will be...
 
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At to isn't used to bait and switch people, lol...

Anyway others have your question answered.
 
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