Wednesday, September 27th 2017

Eight NVMe Drives RAIDed on AMD X399 Break the 28 GB/s Barrier

by
Chino
 Discuss (22 Comments)
When AMD launched its Ryzen Threadripper HEDT platform, they forgot one crucial feature - NVMe RAID support. They realized their fault and promised a BIOS and driver update on September 25 that would allow users to boot from a NVMe RAID. Der8auer, overclocker extraordinaire, got first dibs on the BIOS update and uploaded a Youtube video to show us the performance numbers from a RAID array of eight NVMe SSDs. Unfortunately, he took down the video, but not before HardOCP could grab some screenshots of his feat.

As we can see from the screenshots, Der8auer created his RAID array on an ASUS X399 motherboard. Since the UEFI interface has ROG markings all over it, he probably used a ROG Zenith Extreme. With the help of two ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 cards, Der8auer was able to install his eight Samsung 960 PRO/EVO SSDs. Although we cannot distinguish the model clearly, the performance is simply spectacular. IOmeter measured a transfer speed of 28375.84 MB/s.
Source: HardOCP

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22 Comments on Eight NVMe Drives RAIDed on AMD X399 Break the 28 GB/s Barrier

#1
Chaitanya
Impressive to say the least, but not sure of its applications for average consumers.
Posted on Reply
#2
Rehmanpa
Why would he take it down? Also this is fricken awesome speeds!!!!! Who needs a Sonic game for PC when you can just have Sonic as a boot drive? :p

Also just out of curiosity does anyone know if he could have plugged 3 of those drives into the motherboard m.2 slots and maintained similar performance, or does the motherboard m.2 drive slots have reduced performance in comparison to one of these riser slot card things?
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#3
Frick
Fishfaced Nincompoop
ChaitanyaImpressive to say the least, but not sure of its applications for average consumers.
Insane scores in spider solitare.
Posted on Reply
#4
bubbly1724
That's RAM speeds. All we're missing now is super low latency.
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#5
QinX
I've watched the video before it was taken down.
One of the things that was needed is the ability to bifurcate the PCIe slots.
The ASUS M.2 expander card needs to be set in the BIOS to 4x/4x/4x/4x.

I believe he mentioned ASUS is currently the only one that has it, but thinks that competitors will be adding this in future BIOS update.
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#6
jaggerwild
RehmanpaWhy would he take it down? Also this is fricken awesome speeds!!!!! Who needs a Sonic game for PC when you can just have Sonic as a boot drive? :p

Also just out of curiosity does anyone know if he could have plugged 3 of those drives into the motherboard m.2 slots and maintained similar performance, or does the motherboard m.2 drive slots have reduced performance in comparison to one of these riser slot card things?
He is a sponsored overclocker, so his other affiliations may not like him showing off another hardware winner. OR he wants to go higher, then post a score.......
Not sure on the slots...
Posted on Reply
#7
Daven
ChaitanyaImpressive to say the least, but not sure of its applications for average consumers.
We all use those speeds today. It's called DDR# RAM. With non-volatile memory numbers like this, we can get rid of the volatile memory middleman.
Posted on Reply
#8
Vya Domus
Mark LittleWe all use those speeds today. It's called DDR# RAM. With non-volatile memory numbers like this, we can get rid of the volatile memory middleman.
Not really , system memory is still far ahead in terms of latency.
Posted on Reply
#10
FrustratedGarrett
ChaitanyaImpressive to say the least, but not sure of its applications for average consumers.
Impressive my a**. X399 motherboards are way overpriced for what the Ryzen platform offers in terms of overclockability and USB/SATA/M.2 performance, compared to Intel.
Posted on Reply
#11
Prima.Vera
One simple question and I'm gone:

But can you boot from this setup?
Posted on Reply
#12
EarthDog
RehmanpaWhy would he take it down? Also this is fricken awesome speeds!!!!! Who needs a Sonic game for PC when you can just have Sonic as a boot drive? :p

Also just out of curiosity does anyone know if he could have plugged 3 of those drives into the motherboard m.2 slots and maintained similar performance, or does the motherboard m.2 drive slots have reduced performance in comparison to one of these riser slot card things?
the board cant hold as enough to reach those speeds.
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#13
Patriot
FrustratedGarrettImpressive my a**. X399 motherboards are way overpriced for what the Ryzen platform offers in terms of overclockability and USB/SATA/M.2 performance, compared to Intel.
Riiight... Even the 1k 16c chip is trading blows (within 5% overall) with Intels 2k 18c chip...
And this clearly supports more nvme performance than intel and you can boot from it and do raid without a $$$ hardware dongle. WTF are you smoking.
Posted on Reply
#14
Rehmanpa
Prima.VeraOne simple question and I'm gone:

But can you boot from this setup?
Yes you can, as of September 25th AMD released (or said they were releasing) a bios update that allows NVME SSDs to boot under raid. Unlike Intel x299 where you have to pay extra to do that (or at least you used to have to unless that changed) and it only works with Intel SSDs.
PatriotRiiight... Even the 1k 16c chip is trading blows (within 5% overall) with Intels 2k 18c chip...
And this clearly supports more nvme performance than intel and you can boot from it and do raid without a $$$ hardware dongle. WTF are you smoking.
Just out of curiosity, as I've been eyeing threadripper, what kind of applications can you really use it for? I mean, looking at about $450 for a nice ryzen x370 mobo with a 1700 vs a threadripper 1950x plus asrock mobo for about $1450, what applications will benefit with 32 threads vs 16 threads? I'm asking out of personal interest (trying to figure out a way to create a somehow reasonable sense in my head of dropping a $1k on a cpu) not in interests of starting an intel-fanboy flame war.
Posted on Reply
#15
Patriot
RehmanpaYes you can, as of September 25th AMD released (or said they were releasing) a bios update that allows NVME SSDs to boot under raid. Unlike Intel x299 where you have to pay extra to do that (or at least you used to have to unless that changed) and it only works with Intel SSDs.



Just out of curiosity, as I've been eyeing threadripper, what kind of applications can you really use it for? I mean, looking at about $450 for a nice ryzen x370 mobo with a 1700 vs a threadripper 1950x plus asrock mobo for about $1450, what applications will benefit with 32 threads vs 16 threads? I'm asking out of personal interest (trying to figure out a way to create a somehow reasonable sense in my head of dropping a $1k on a cpu) not in interests of starting an intel-fanboy flame war.
If you need more memory than Ryzen 7 supports or more than 24 pcie lanes. Mainly for content creation. Most people don't need threadripper. Threadripper is more workstation/SMB server. For getting work done it destroys Intel price/perf.
I have a R7 1700 @ 3.9ghz... I play games at 4k, so it doesn't hurt me there... and when I flip on a few vms or stream my gameplay I don't lose FPS.
Posted on Reply
#16
CheapMeat
Good to see this because it confirms that the ASUS Hyper X16 is platform agnostic. I was kinda worried it was locked to X299 because of all the VROC mentions.
Posted on Reply
#17
CheapMeat
Mark LittleWe all use those speeds today. It's called DDR# RAM. With non-volatile memory numbers like this, we can get rid of the volatile memory middleman.
DRAM latency isn't really improving even with DDR5. It's stagnant as heck. A few MHz bump? Meh. What would really change is if DIMMs went QDR instead (quad data rate) like SRAM and GDDR5X is.



Posted on Reply
#18
ntk95
Not like bullshit "VROC DLC code" from Intel
Posted on Reply
#19
Flaky
CheapMeatGood to see this because it confirms that the ASUS Hyper X16 is platform agnostic. I was kinda worried it was locked to X299 because of all the VROC mentions.
Well, it is somehow platform dependent.
It relies on platform's bifurcation of one x16 lane into four x4.
No such thing exists on mainstream, and you'd get (with much optimism) at most 3 running ssds (115x) or 2 (am4).
It will probably require manual configuration on bios side (as seen on screencap) - most motherboards provide none.
Posted on Reply
#20
CheapMeat
That's alright because I don't care about mainstream platforms, just the enthusiast/workstation motherboards & chips, as well as potentially EPYC boards. I was mainly just worried, as I mentioned, that it was proprietary to ASUS Intel boards. But luckily some other products are coming out as well such as HighPoint's SSD7110 and Aplicata's x16 quad board. I just preferred the look of ASUS's Hyper card.
Posted on Reply
#21
Prima.Vera
Another question for connoisseurs.
This ASUS's Hyper card which is not yet sold (reason the video was pulled down), is it working without any issues on the Intel's Z370 or future Z390 platform with all 4 M2 SSDs RAID enabled and boot capable?
I am very very interested in purchasing this card together with 4xM2 SSDs for my next build.
Also what is the RAID version of it, any ideeas?
Posted on Reply
#22
Crazy zookeepster
Its samsung pro drives, the evo text is an orange colour. Amazing feat of technology though.
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