Getting slow NVME write speeds

[kvnkim]

Returned 980 Pro and grabbed a WD SN850 1TB and a heatsink to go with it because I read about hotter temps ... @Pwablo thanks for the tip. Much better. Moving on from 980 Pro, farewell!

WD SN850 Speeds are definitely much more consistent.

Good luck to others here with the 980 Pro still hoping for samsung to do something about the slower speeds/inconsistencies

 

[monkeyboy46800]

My SN850 1TB speeds are pretty crappy compared to yours, did you optimise settings somewhere ? Any special driver needed ?

 

[kvnkim]

My SN850 1TB speeds are pretty crappy compared to yours, did you optimise settings somewhere ? Any special driver needed ?


View attachment 187095

Hi
Did you make sure you're in pcie gen 4 x4 mode and make sure your pc is power performance mode? No special nvme driver needed. Did you get a heatsink for the drive? How full is the drive/ did you just install it (age and writes low?)

I will keep this thread updated or create a new thread regarding slow speeds if I see them happening.

 

[monkeyboy46800]

Hi
Did you make sure you're in pcie gen 4 x4 mode and make sure your pc is power performance mode? No special nvme driver needed. Did you get a heatsink for the drive? How full is the drive/ did you just install it (age and writes low?)

I will keep this thread updated or create a new thread regarding slow speeds if I see them happening.

Yep, Gen 4 @x4 is configured correctly:

What is your write policy in device manager ?

Is it the same as mine :

 

[kvnkim]

It's indeed the exact same. Have you installed the dashboard software and upgraded firmware as well? Optimized with TRIM?

 

[monkeyboy46800]

First thing I did was update firmware, didn't optimize anything yet, its brand new.
I'm thinking maybe the lack of a heatsink could be the cause or bug with the motherboard.

 

[kvnkim]

Let's keep this thread focused on the 980 Pro and make a new thread for the wd SN 850 problems if you continue to need help. as to not hijack this thread!

 

[Pwablo]

@monkeyboy46800 Check the drive information in Samsung Magician for your SN850 and ensure it says 4x4 and not 4x2. If you have a B550 chipset with two M.2 slots only the M.2 Slot nearest the CPU is Gen 4.0, and the other is Gen 3.0, however both slots are run by the same interface controller which is reported as being Gen 4.0.

Hope this helps

ATB

 

[monkeyboy46800]

@monkeyboy46800 Check the drive information in Samsung Magician for your SN850 and ensure it says 4x4 and not 4x2. If you have a B550 chipset with two M.2 slots only the M.2 Slot nearest the CPU is Gen 4.0, and the other is Gen 3.0, however both slots are run by the same interface controller which is reported as being Gen 4.0.

View attachment 187204

Hope this helps

ATB

I have a Asrock X570 ITX/TB3 + 5950x, it only has one Nvme slot , just fitted a heatsink to the ssd and im getting max temps of 55c but still hitting a wall when comparing to: https://www.kitguru.net/components/ssd-drives/simon-crisp/wd-black-sn850-1tb-ssd-review/5/

My Benchmark:

Kit Guru Benchmark:

 

[Dimokto]

IF ANYONE KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT THE LOW WRITE & READ 4K ?

 

[Coldblackice]

I'm also getting horrendous 4K/random speeds despite being in Safe mode + updated firmware + properly TRIMmed.

What BIOS settings might affect this? How much free space is necessary for it to not have an effect? My drive is 89% full... could that really put my RND4K Q1T1 write speed at 14 MB/S? Read is at 54 MB/s.

Temps are 40-50, closest NVMe slot to CPU, and in Gen-3 4x mode (I'm on a Gigabyte Z390)

 

[Kapone33]

So here we go. I was smiling to myself with all of the complaints about the write speeds on the 980 and some others. Well lo and behold my Seagate 520 1TB is my boot drive and hit 26% used. I ran Crystal Disk Mark 8.0 and saw my sequential writes at 1080 mb/s. That is a far cry from the 4800 I am used to seeing. It would seem that the achilles heel of PCIe 4.0 is capacity. It must have to do with the way the drive's cache is configured so at 25% you run out of the SLC or RAM cache that the drives have. I also have a Sx8200 Pro 2TB in the system and at 40% full I only see a 200 mb/s drop in sequential writes. Hopefully we can have some extended testing on this. I for one do not want to kill my (expensive as a MB) NVME drive to find out though.

 

[mittar]

Something is wrong with my disk It is getting even slower ... I moved some games on the disk few hours back and try second bench (first was on empty drive) and the result is sad. Asus WS X570 ACE. Why IOPS are so low? PCIE is 4x4 , I tried more tests to be sure that this is not anomaly. Even the first one on empty disk has lower IOPS than they are on your screenshots. Temperature was max 67.

 

[OCD Guy]

I've been following this thread since the beginning. I blindly bought a 980 Pro after assuming they were still the "best".

You can imagine my disappointment when I came across the slow speeds.

After trying what many on this thread tried with no real improvements I decided to set up an exchange for the SN850.

However I recently updated my Chipset drivers (latest for X570) and here are my speeds now (I've screenshooted next to @kvnkim who posted their SN850 results: My benchmark is on the right.

As you can see I've not done any trickery like benchmark a drive that's nearly empty or anything, my drive is actually nearly full lol.

So I'm now considering cancelling the exchange for the Sn850 as to be honest it's a massive inconvenience having to re-install windows and download my games again.

For anyone with issues, maybe try installing the latest chipset drivers, AMD released some this month.

If anyone is wondering why my drive shows only 847gb I've enabled over-provisioning in Samsung Magician

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Not a good example that thing is nearly full at 89% lol

 

[OCD Guy]

Hi,
Not a good example that thing is nearly full at 89% lol

I thought it would be as the speeds are meant to get worse the less free space there is right?

So the fact I'm getting "normal" speeds when I'm close to full is a good thing I thought.

I noticed the SN850 is still faster in some aspects so I think I'm still going to exchange the 980 pro.

 

[Pwablo]

I've been following this thread since the beginning. I blindly bought a 980 Pro after assuming they were still the "best".

You can imagine my disappointment when I came across the slow speeds.

After trying what many on this thread tried with no real improvements I decided to set up an exchange for the SN850.

However I recently updated my Chipset drivers (latest for X570) and here are my speeds now (I've screenshooted next to @kvnkim who posted their SN850 results: My benchmark is on the right.


View attachment 187918


As you can see I've not done any trickery like benchmark a drive that's nearly empty or anything, my drive is actually nearly full lol.

So I'm now considering cancelling the exchange for the Sn850 as to be honest it's a massive inconvenience having to re-install windows and download my games again.

For anyone with issues, maybe try installing the latest chipset drivers, AMD released some this month.

If anyone is wondering why my drive shows only 847gb I've enabled over-provisioning in Samsung Magician

View attachment 187919

You dont have to reinstall windows and your games m8. Jayz Two Cents has a video on YT showing how to image the entire drive (980 Pro) onto another NVME, all you need is both drives installed. Once installed the partition can be expanded on the new drive if the capacity is larger than the original source drive. The only thing that could stop you doing this is if your motherboard only has one M.2 slot. Or ofc, you have to return the old drive to get a new one.

Works a treat, I do this all the time when I need too.

Good Luck

 

[OCD Guy]

You dont have to reinstall windows and your games m8. Jayz Two Cents has a video on YT showing how to image the entire drive (980 Pro) onto another NVME, all you need is both drives installed. Once installed the partition can be expanded on the new drive if the capacity is larger than the original source drive. The only thing that could stop you doing this is if your motherboard only has one M.2 slot. Or ofc, you have to return the old drive to get a new one.

Works a treat, I do this all the time when I need too.

Good Luck

Thanks I think I'll do that then.

Luckily my motherboard has 3 m.2 slots so it won't be a problem to do.

Even though my 980 pro speeds are "normal" the SN850 still seems like an allround better drive so I'm going to stick with the exchange (when it ever arrives!)

 

[Pwablo]

Well folks, I would like to think that Samsung have taken on board all of the issues that users have been experiencing with the 980 Pro, as they have just released a firmware update for it. I have not installed it yet, but hopefully this is the fix for the write speed issues we have been waiting for.

 

[ThrashZone]

Thanks I think I'll do that then.

Luckily my motherboard has 3 m.2 slots so it won't be a problem to do.

Even though my 980 pro speeds are "normal" the SN850 still seems like an allround better drive so I'm going to stick with the exchange (when it ever arrives!)

Hi,
System images you should already have and are more reliable than cloning.

 

[OCD Guy]

Well folks, I would like to think that Samsung have taken on board all of the issues that users have been experiencing with the 980 Pro, as they have just released a firmware update for it. I have not installed it yet, but hopefully this is the fix for the write speed issues we have been waiting for.
View attachment 189030

Unfortunately that firmware has changed nothing.

The performance we are seeing is normal.

It's been picked up by recent reviews, even tech power up have a section on it https://www.techpowerup.com/review/samsung-980-pro-1-tb-ssd/6.html

Essentially when the cache get's full "TurboWrite" stops and we are left with slower speeds. Samsung state:

The sequential write performances after Intelligent TurboWrite region are: up to 500MB/s(250GB), 1,000MB/s(500GB) and 2,000MB/s(1TB and 2TB).

Which is inline with what we are seeing.

EVERY single TLC NVMe has the same issue, however drives like the SN850 have a larger cache and faster speeds in other areas.

Samsung just haven't been transparent about this, it's great focusing on peak speeds but the reality is no 980 pro owner will see them 90% of the time.

One thing that is interesting is that normally NVMe drives get slower as they fill up right? Well the 980 Pro get's faster and has the fastest sustained write speed when nearly full.

 

[Pwablo]

The SLC cache does indeed become full and Turbowriter 2.0 does indeed begin to write to the MLC at the reduced rates, however the SLC Cache should not stay full, unless the data held in cache is frequently written to the drive. The SLC Cache is subject to "garbage collection" algorithms which should remove files that have met a certain criteria, hence why some people experience an improvement of speed after periods of idle. Waiting for weeks for the SLC to be house cleaned and speeds to improve, even when the drive has only been written too once with data only slightly exceeding the SLC cache capacity is not normal. The SLC cache should not act like a small bucket inside a barrel that fills first and empties last.

 

[Mon]

Hi,
I have a Samsung 980 PRO 500 GB and the same problem. However, after the recent 2B2QGXA7 firmware update and over provisioning (I remember that previously it could not be done) with recommended maximum 27 GB it seems that the cache is cleared somewhat and from time to time it returns to the original values although not always . But it comes out of the blockade. It could be the beginning of the solution on Samsung's part.
Happens to you?

 

[OCD Guy]

Waiting for weeks for the SLC to be house cleaned and speeds to improve, even when the drive has only been written too once with data only slightly exceeding the SLC cache capacity is not normal. The SLC cache should not act like a small bucket inside a barrel that fills first and empties last.

I agree with you.

But what do you think the issue is? Hardware or software?

It would be great if it could be fixed with software, whether that be an actual driver, or firmware but I just have a feeling it's a physical limitation and the way Samsung have designed it.

Everything around this drive is so weird, like why have Samsung suddenly stopped putting a driver out for their latest flagship drive?

No other Gen 4 drive has this issue, the cache seems to clear as you'd expect. Can't believe Samsung have got this so wrong....

 

[Mon]

I correct. My 980 PRO 500 GB returns to low performance and does not come out of there. Although it has 27 GB of over provisioning. There is no cause-effect relationship.
OCD guy, I don't know what's going on in there. I don't have enough information. We only have to wait for Samsung to investigate and give us a solution.

I complained to samsungmemory@hanaro.eu for a driver but they replied that it was not necessary. My 980 PRO works under Windows 10 with a Microsoft driver from 2006! Amazing but I can't say anything about it!

I hope a samsung driver was the solution!

But it seems a bad internal management