Guild Wars 2

Not problem, just an observation. GW2 flies on one of these drives (as far as load times are concerned, obviously). Of course, it should do, but it’s made quite a difference in performance so I thought I’d share…

with m.2 samsung 950 pro u have like 4x the read performance so it makes sense still i wait for this kind of ssd to go cheapper

I plan buying/building a new desktop PC and I wanted to buy a Samsung 950 pro M.2, for the read/write speeds comparing to sata3

I tested on 2 more or less same computers with 64bits client and graphic options are high/1080p :

1) Windows 10 Family / i5 3570 4core 3.4~3.8Ghz / 8Gb RAM / Samsung 850 EVO 256Gb Sata3
2) Windows 10 Family / i5 5287U 2core 2.9~3.3Ghz / 8Gb RAM / Samsung 512Gb M.2

With CristalDiskMark I have the benchmarks :
(1) read = 550MB/s write = 522MB/s
(2) read = 1375MB/s write = 1228MB/s

So I expected the loading of the maps to be much faster, but nothing impressive :
(Sata3) vs (M.2) in seconds
game launch : 13,63 vs 14,19
loading Lion Arch : 6,87 vs 6,43
back to character selection : 1,27 vs 1,12
loading character 2 to Lion Arch : 6,87 vs 6,43
LA → Malchor : 10,27 vs 10,13
Malchor → E.B. : 6,95 vs 5,65

Ok the M.2 is faster but I don’t think I will buy one… I’m a bit disapointed, I don’t know why the results are not better with M.2

becasue your cpu still have to unpack the packed files. your cpu bottleneck

Thanks I didn’t think of that.

I wonder if changing the CPU will give me better results ? The best I can find is the i7 6700 3.4~4Ghz but it seems to be very close to my 3.4~3.8Ghz 3570 so…

also some tests revealed that 950 pro’s and sm 951’s thermal throttle alot when under high load, so maybe thats a problem too
some ppl even slapped some heatsinks to them to reduce throttle

after more than 2 minutes on full load a game never come close to get long enough full load to thermal throttle ssd´s . it´s no big deal in general until you often copy large files from such a drive on another fast enough drive with files big enough to take longer than 2 minutes to trasnfer. in a proffesional workflow maybe, in home use never a problem

What Olli said is true. You won’t find thermals to be a problem in a home use environment. Unless you are doing commercial applications in a house, otherwise no.

Must say, I have actually seen benefits to using a M.2 SSD in my computer as well, where not only loading maps is a benefit hugely, but also when turning the camera, there is no issue of screen freezing as new resources are loaded in. This is from my experiences.

i don’t see any reason to use a M2 drive unless you really want the M2 form factor .. small pc . tablet .. etc ..

because 2 x SSD 250gb in RAID 0 ( 5xx gb ) is a lot cheaper than a single M.2 512 and you will get similar performance …

i have M.2 slot in my motherboard and i can’t justify to buy a M.2 drive while my 2 old Crucial M4 SSD in RAID 0 allow me to get above 1Gb/s read speed. Where i live , two samsung 850 evo 250gb drives is 100$ cheaper than a single 950 512gb.

M.2 is nice when you get a new computer or if you upgrading from a old HD .. if you already have a Solid state drive … it a waste of money.

Farming Flats.5370:

i don’t see any reason to use a M2 drive unless you really want the M2 form factor .. small pc . tablet .. etc ..

because 2 x SSD 250gb in RAID 0 ( 5xx gb ) is a lot cheaper than a single M.2 512 and you will get similar performance …

i have M.2 slot in my motherboard and i can’t justify to buy a M.2 drive while my 2 old Crucial M4 SSD in RAID 0 allow me to get above 1Gb/s read speed. Where i live , two samsung 850 evo 250gb drives is 100$ cheaper than a single 950 512gb.

M.2 is nice when you get a new computer or if you upgrading from a old HD .. if you already have a Solid state drive … it a waste of money.

On a 9 series system your M.2 slot is limited to about 1.8GB/s in speed due to DMI 2.0, on a 10 series system (skylake+) your M.2 is going to see 3.5GB/s+, due to DMI 3.0.

No 2 SSDs in raid0 can touch M.2 on the 10 series, and very few (950pro being one of them) will see M.2 speeds on the 9 series.

That 100USD you spend on the m.2 makes a huge difference in performance.

funny thing is that i like the 950 pro soo much but im still on sandy bridge )) still rockin i5 2320 at 3.0 ghz and gtx 750 :/
that m.2 drive is top priority and a must for me when ill hopefully upgrade in 6-7 months
just tested the sm951 129 gb at a friend (he paired it with an i5 6500 an 16 gb ddr4), i see the diference but its not that impressive since in map loading times he has like 4-5 seconds advantage over 850 evo

950 pro makes the most sense in itx builds where u dont need that cable mess inside so its nice to have

revox.8273:

i see the diference but its not that impressive since in map loading times he has like 4-5 seconds advantage over 850 evo

this is exactly what i tried to explain .. it don’t worth the extra $$ for just 4 seconds