What is AHCI vs NVMe SSD and Why do i need it?

Hi

1. So im about to purchase a Dell 9550 4k Spec either the 256ssd or the 512ssd. I read somewhere that the new samsung 950 pro nvme is incredibly quick ?

Firstly is it compatible with the 9550?

Has anyone successfully installed it with 10?

A worthy upgrade?

Anything else you need to tell me?

 

Yes the 950 pro is fast, but it's not worth it going from the 512gb PM951 NVME drive that comes with the stock system. It works in the system and there are lots of folks running them.

 

Here's the short version:

NVMe and AHCI are two different protocols used by your computer to communicate with storage devices.

AHCI was created when mechanical HDDs were prevalent. NVMe was specifically designed for SSDs. And in certain situations, an SSD using NVMe can be pretty fast when compared to a similar drive using AHCI (1500 MBps vs 500MBps).

So.

Yes it is compatible with a Dell XPS 15 9550. Pretty much all laptops and computers that come out now will just have NVMe support as a standard feature.

Yes, people have installed Windows 10 onto it. In fact, if you buy a Dell XPS 15 9550 with a 256 GB or 512GB SSD configuration, it will come with an NVMe drive (Samsung SM951).


Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

I'd say it depends on which stock drive you opt for. With the 512, the speed difference is negligible so I wouldn't bother. The 256 ssd is a different story and the 950 pro would give a decent boost in read/write speeds.

 

They come with PM951 drives FYI, I wish they came with SM951s.

 

Good to know. I thought they came with SM951's.... I must be thinking of the XPS 13 9350's that I saw that did that.

In any case, the SSD speed doesn't really matter. Even though a Samsung 950 Pro is supposed to be so much "faster" than a "slow" drive like a Samsung 850 EVO, there really isn't any real-world difference. Boot times, application load times, game load times, etc are all the same.

The only time an M.2 NVMe drive (Samsung 950 Pro) would show any performance benefit to an M.2 AHCI drive are in synthetic benchmarks, and file copy tests. So unless you're buying a laptop to just run benchmarks all day, or copy files all day, then there really isn't a practical difference between NVMe / AHCI.

 

I actualy see a real world diffrence when using the 950 pro as a scratch disk for 4K content using premiere the speeds are much better with HUGH files

 

I recently upgraded my XPS 15 to have a Samsung 950 Pro and can answer any questions you may have. I used to have the 1 TB + 32 GB hybrid.

I have my BIOS set to AHCI and here's a CDM benchmark http://imgur.com/C0HsxRD.

It seems pretty fast already, but if I can get faster by changing my settings, please let me know.