Upgrade XPS 15 9550 from 512GB PM951 to 512GB 950 Pro SSD?

Has anyone had any experience with real world day to day usage with the 950 Pro Vs. the stock 512GB or 1TB PM951 Drives? I am wondering if there is any noticeable performance difference when using the 950 Pro and not just synthetic benchmarks. My system came with a 512GB SSD and I already bought a 1TB PM951, but might sell it off and get a 950 Pro if the 950 Pro has a noticeable performance difference. Thanks!

 

Don't do it, I went from the PM951 to the 950 Pro and didn't notice any real world benefits at all.

 

Same here, my 950 pros now sat in my Asus R5E and the Toshiba 1tb NVMe is still in the laptop.

 

Ah this was just the thread I was about to start. I'm considering getting the i5 model with the 32GB cache m.2 then the 1TB HDD. I'd swap out the cache m.2 for a 850 evo. I've been wondering if there truly is a "real world" difference between the evo (ACHI) vs the 850 pro (NVME)....guess there really isn't a difference?

 

None really IMO, only in synthetic score results. I'm using the 850 m.2 Evo and it flies along and what I'm quite pleased about as it doesn't get hot.

 

Big difference between AHCI/NVMe with anything that requires HDD access.
Nearly 5x faster read and 3x faster write that the max speed of a sata based drive and you can tell the difference between my old 9530 with a 1tb 840 evo and this.

 

I have on the same model as you. I removed the 32GB cache - removed the 1TB HDD and installed a 240GB Sandisk Ultra II. I then tried a few configurations and for now settled on the M.2 Samsung 850 Evo drive for the OS and the 240GB Sandisk for data.

 

I was simply replying as stupidly as you did, although I refrained from shouting as thats plain rude.

 

Can you please share how you were able to do this? I tried playing around with Bios (really didn't know what I was doing) and ended up returning it to Dell for a Replacement. I have a 2.5''SSD laying around that I plan to install, but if I can learn how to install a M.2 as well like you did then that would just be perfect!

 

What's with the yelling? Lots of people ordered the i5/1tb and swapped out the hdd with an ssd and the 32gb cache drive with a m.2 drive.

The magic of standardized hardware...

 

Yes, but how? I am born noob. I found some instructions elsewhere. Thanks for the reply.

 

I'm thinking of upgrading my 256GB PM951 to a 512GB 960 Pro. I'd prefer to just clone the drive, but how to accomplish that seems difficult. So, I ordered one of those Funtin NGFF to PCIE cards:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JG6WN5S/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I was planning of making an image of my PM951 using Macrium Reflect; install the 960 Pro on the Funtin, and stick that in my desktop; restore the image onto the 960 Pro; then move the 960 Pro to my 9550. Any reason why that wouldn't work? Has anybody tried that procedure to upgrade their drive ?

 

It will work.

 

Very cool. Thank you.

 

I have a creeping suspicion that the m.2. slot is only connected via either x4.2 or x2.3 which would essentially cut the performance in half for both cases. Is there a way to check this? I cannot find my 951 in HWInfo64 or PCI scope.

 

A few months back user TECHLAND noted that his Samsung EVO850 SSD was handicapped. That was in the 2.5" slot available in some 9550 models with the small battery. I don't remember if he looked at the m.2 slot but he spent some time looking at SSD drive issues in the 9550. See below and PM him if his posts don't provide you enough info...

 

Wouldn't there be a difference in specific disk-intensive tasks, for instance opening large raw images in PS/LR?

With the 950 Pro, under Bus I see:
Intel-Skylake PCH-H - PCI Express Root #9 [D1]
PCI Express x4 Bus #4
Samsung Electronics NVMe PCIe SSD Controller

 

You need a quad core CPU to get x4 PCIe into the M.2 slot. The dual core CPUs have 4 fewer PCIe lanes and run the M.2 slot with 2 lanes.

The higher speed of NVMe SSDs only becomes obvious when reading / writing large amounts of data. My Precision 5510 came with a 256GB Toshiba NVMe SSD which gave impressive benchmark results but was replaced with a 1TB Sandisk X400 SATA SSD and I haven't noticed the difference in everyday usage. See my Precision 5510 review to compare the PCMark (which is a reasonable indicator of everyday workloads) scores for the 5510 (i7-6820HQ, NVMe SSD and Nvidia GPU) with the Latitude E5570 (i5-6440HQ, SATA SSD and Intel graphics).

John

 

Ouch. My 9550 has the i7 6700 HQ. The CPU websites say that it is quad core, but I think it only has 2 physical cores and 2 logical cores/physical core. So, I wonder if my 9550 will see the benefit of x4 pcie ? Any thoughts ?

Edit: Oh, OK, never mind my concern there. 2 physical and 2 logical cores appears to be a typical setup for quad core CPUs...

 

My current link with according to HWINFO is 4x 3.0. The reason I said it's not worth it is because I don't notice a difference in day to day activity from my PM951 (1500mb/s read and 600mb/s write) to my 950 pro. I likely wouldn't notice much of a difference coming from a sata based drive since my daily tasks are less demanding.

You may notice it there, but going from 1500mb/s read to 2000mb/s read for me wasn't noticeable at all.

A i7 6700HQ is a quad core cpu with hyperthreading (8 threads total).

 

Saw the circuit board of an 9530 in another forum, they come with an U-Series CPU and they are connected with four lanes.
So I guess like custom90gt said, the 9550 will also be connected via four lanes. It just came to mind as the 951 seems to slightly
under perform inside the 9550 in comparison with other notebooks.

 

Check the CPU specs at Intel: the i5-6700HQ has 16 PCIe lanes. The key difference between the i5 and i7 quad core CPUs is that the former don't have hyperthreading so will be slower than the i7 CPUs when running more than 4 threads. However, they still run run 3 or more threads substantially faster than dual core CPUs with hyperthreading.

There might well be 4 lanes on every board but are they all connected at the CPU end if it's a dual core CPU? Sensibly there would be one standard board onto which the different CPU options are soldered.

John

 

These new Toshiba are not the 1st batch of 3 that all ran the same speed. For all we know they are a cheaper option (wonder why) that do a slower speed. Best to research the model number in more details, this may involve contacting Toshiba who will help but sometimes need a gentle push.

 

Oh, so, there are indeed 4 physical cores on the i7-6700HQ. I don't know where I misread that it had 2. Thanks.

 

Still waiting on that Funtin card, so it gives me more time to plan this upgrade. Another question: does it make sense to install the latest Samsung NVME drivers before I create the image of the PM951 drive with the Macrium software, or does it not matter? Also, do I understand correctly from previous posts that if I use the Samsung NVME drivers for the 960 Pro, that I do NOT then set the drive as RAID in bios, and that I leave it as AHCI, because the Samsung NVME driver is only for AHCI mode, yes ?

 

Yes AHCI and either way on the drivers, may as well do it if you already have a samsung installed.

 

Thanks. Sometimes I need to have it hammered into my skull to remove any doubt.

The Funtin card was finally delivered Saturday. Lol, wow, not much to it. it has one IC on it and the mounting slot. But the nice thing is it came with a few spares of those tiny screws for mounting an M.2 card - that's a nice plus. I still must order the 960 Pro. It seems to have gone in and out of stock on Amazon -- $329.99 for the 512GB version.

 

Why all this hassle with cloning and card?
Make a complete backup, change the ssd, boot from the restore medium (e.g. stick) and restore everything on the new SSD.

 

Thank you. I suppose that would be a more straightforward process for some. I am not very familiar with using restore media. but I have had good success with creating clones with Macrium Reflect, so I want to go with a process that I know well. And I will still need the card for continuing to use the PM951 with my desktop.

 

Did you go forward with the upgrade to 960 Pro?

I just received a brand new 960 Pro 1TB NVMe to replace stock PM951 512GB. The benchmark shows the expected results for this kind of drive, as can be seen in the picture bellow.



However, I am noticing a much worse performance in Linux. I have installed fresh Ubuntu 17.04 and the real benchmark for me is the time it takes to compile an Android build. With the old drive (PM951) I could get a build finished in about 28-30 minutes, while now it takes around 38-45 minutes. This doesn't make any sense to me and I can only think it's some kind of Linux - BIOS - SSD incompatibility. The laptop BIOS is up-to-date, so as the SSD firmware. Any ideas?

 

@GoNz0 after searching a lot regarding the above mentioned issue, I found this comment which clearly mentions some kind of fix for Dells. Do you happen to know what UEFI commands is that guy referring to?

 

No idea, maybe you could send him a message?

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

Well, this is strange...so I installed the Samsung v 2.3 NVME drivers and set AHCI mode in bios for my 9550, but device manager doesn't show the Samsung drivers being used...just the Microsoft driver shows for the PM961 drive. I then tried to change drivers while in Safe Mode, but that was no dice. Control Panel shows the driver as installed on the system. Doesn't the PM961 drive use the Samsung driver? Now that I think about it, I seem to recall something about there being an issue or incompatibility with OEM Samsung drives and the Samsung NVME driver. Can anybody set me straight on this?

 

It will be under storage controllers, not the drive entry in device manager.

 

OK, very good, then. I see that Control Panel shows under Storage Controllers both Microsoft Storage Spaces Controller and Samsung NVMe Controller.
Thank you.

 

Hmm, well this 960 Pro's performance is certainly better than the PM951 it replaced, but I was hoping for a bit more...

 

Do you actually notice a difference? I would be shocked if you do...

 

Maybe a bit quicker in booting up, I don't know...hard to compare. My PM951 was a 256 GB, so I wanted a bit more space, and I figured why not go with the 960 Pro while I was upgrading. Cute little bugger, tho. Amazing what they can stuff on a card the size of a stick of juicy fruit.