Anyone upgrade a PM951 in a laptop?

I just got a Dell Latitude E7470 and was all excited that it has an PCIe NVMe SSD in there, until I ran speed tests. I was expecting something crazy over my E7450 with a 1TB 850 Pro...but it was only about 1000 read/500 write. In looking I see it came with a Samsung 512GB PM951. Was interested in upgrading the SSD to a 950 Pro, but concerned about heat, throttling, etc. Is there something else I should look at that is a good bump over the PM951? Maybe the SM951?

 

Is your E7470 capable of PCIe x4 NVMe speeds?

If so, then the 1TB Toshiba XG3 SSD may be the best bet today. Yeah, even above the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe in real world tests.

The problem is that this drive isn't for sale in retail channels (it comes inside certain (non guaranteed) Surface Pro and Surface Book ultrabooks, for example). How good are your sources?

Another possible issue? The consumer version (non-OEM) will most likely be the OCZ RevoDrive 400.

Can't comment on the reliability, stability or the sustained performance of these options, but for highest actual, real world (i.e. non-Samsung marketing bs 'scores'), this seems to be a winner.

As long as your E7470 has the required lanes, the attention to the cooling design for the M.2 SSD (it already has and any other one you may want to install) and the M.2 connectors and bay are able to accommodate the Toshiba XG3 M.2 SSD is a 2280 (80mm) form factor (or the similar sized OCZ RevoDrive 400 when it becomes available), then you should see a huge jump in your storage subsystem 'scores' and any real world need for such a storage system like intense video/audio/photo (RAW) editing too. Otherwise? All you'll have achieved is bragging rights by getting the best performing M.2 drive now.

But improvements in real world, actual 'normal/average' workflows and workloads? Yawn. Even a modern HDD can keep up with those scenarios (yeah, no joke), even if most of us here don't have the patience for them anymore.

Another benefit of the Toshiba XG3 SSD is that it doesn't require 3rd party drivers to run optimally (unlike Samsung's M.2 SSD's).

Btw, nice notebook (curious as to the specific configuration you've chosen).

A new drive such as the Toshiba XG3 SSD/OCZ RevoDrive 400 (assuming they perform identically) would be a good fit for your system, no doubt. However, do you 'need' it today?

Tell us your workflows/workloads for this system and that will help us answer that question better.

Getting even twice the performance of sequential reads/writes sounds sexy. Actually using that ability only once or twice a month would be 'overkill', even for me.

Hope this helps? Good luck.

 

Yes, the E7470 does PCIe x4 NVMe speeds.....or at least I sure hope so. Everything I have read says it is. AS SSD shows 1300 read and 160 write, 4k writes are <1MB/sec and takes over 20 minutes to run that test. That seems really low to me and I get some stuttering. It certainly does not feel as snappy as my E7450 with the 1TB 850 Pro. There are applications that seem to take a long time to open.

Are you saying that because there is a 2280 PCIe NVMe SSD in there....the cooling should already be adequate?

I just saw that the PM961s are going to be out in a few months. I'll maybe wait for one of those. I didn't see any Toshiba XG3s on eBay.....so that exhausts my sources! I don't think I would ever buy an OCZ drive....too many guys at my office used those back in the days and had way too many failures.

Specs: Latitude E7470, i5-6300U, 16GB, 512GB NVMe SSD, Intel 18260 802.11ac/Bluetooth, 1920x1080 non touch, backlit keyboard, fingerprint reader.

 

Yeah....this is not right....

 

Wow, 160 write? Throw that Samsung pile of dung into the dump where it belongs.

I would have guessed the cooling should be adequate as it comes with that M.2 drive from the notebook manufacturer... but, seeing that you are seeing stuttering and other symptoms - maybe it is being thermally throttled? How long have you had this notebook? I would certainly be returning it (won't even consider them 'fixing' it - ever).

Samsung PM961 will only be out in a few months as OEM drives (once again). I'd say we'd be lucky to find any before 2017... (The spec's look great... another doubling of the 'scores'... but look how well your Samsung is in actual use... not something to be envied).

I can understand the hesitation of purchasing the OCZ brand. But they are not the same anymore.

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/toshiba-xg3-ssd-ocz-revodrive-400,4434.html

Whether they are a good buy also remains to be seen (we'll know sometime north of 2020... if they've shipped by then - the OCZ RevoDrive 400 model - with performance as indicated as the OEM Toshiba XG3).

Thanks for the component list. None of those spec's would indicate a system that would run hot?

Samsung, stuttering (and now throttling) goes back to circa 2009 for me. Shame it is continuing.

 

PM drives are TLC and the new one is TLC too ... so yes that's why PM951 is the issue..

 

Update....installed a newer version of Intel RST (14.8.2.1044) and there was a slight change in speed.

Before and after


Needless to say the laptop feels a lot better. I can wait for the 1TB drives to come out now.

 

Slight change indeed. Look at the write access times (a two orders of magnitude improvement).

Hope people remember this when stating that read speeds are all that matter...

Btw, what IRST version was installed before?

Glad you have it sorted out (even if it takes away from my stuttering/throttling Samsung theory).

 

Not sure what version was on there before. I think it was whatever came from Dell with their Dell Command Update full driver install option.

So at this point I am going to wait for a 1TB M.2 to come out. Then I'll buy the 12.5" E7270 with the smallest drive possible and move this one to that one.

 

AS-SSD is buggy, use crystal disk mark

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

Looks decent to me.

 

I got a good deal on a Samsung 950 Pro 512GB and put it in my E7470. Had to reinstall Windows 10 to allow me to install the Samsung NVMe Controller. Good bump on the write speeds, was expecting read to be a little higher though. It does feel snappier for sure.

 

Looks horrible to me...

Samsung 950 Pro using NVMe Driver v1.1 on Windows 10:

 

here's my AS SSD Benchmark on the 950 Pro:

 

This is in a laptop. Not sure if My Dell E7470 doesn't support all the lanes or something. I have Magician installed and don't have all the options. I did overprovision 10%.

 

Maybe this has something to do with it?

 

that is it. You are running at half the PCIe available bandwidth. On my Clevo P870DM-G, it runs @4X

Don't get me wrong though, still very good scores and better than most 2.5" SSDs. I just posted my benchmarks as a comparison for you to see why yours are slightly lower, but now I understand. don't worry about it too much, other than in benchmarks, you won't be able to tell the difference, it's fast as heck anyway.

 

Been looking around and it might be my CPU as well. I have an i5-6300U

PCI Express Revision 3.0
PCI Express Configurations‡ 1x4, 2x2, 1x2+2x1 and 4x1

My wireless card is a PCIe as well.....so I might be stuck with 2x2.

 

You are very correct about that. It is a nice upgrade over my E7450 with an 850 Pro.

 

Funny how the 4K Q32T1 write is that much different. 120,7 vs 421,5 mb/s on my PM951 512GB. On Precision 5510 with Xeon.



Was looking at the RD400, but then I read this, and I might just wait for the Samsung. But I'm open for input on the matter.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ocz-rd400-nvme-ssd,4578-6.html
"Overall, we like the OCZ RD400 SSDs but think the Samsung 950 Pro is a superior product when the price is this close. OCZ did an exceptional job with the tools available at this time. But OCZ and parent company Toshiba made the same mistake Intel and Micron made with 3D flash. Samsung made a leap that is paying off while the other NAND flash manufacturers continued to walk to 3D flash. Toshiba missed the mark with the first version of 3D flash called BiCS. The company is working hard on its successor BiCS 2, but from this point forward, every product cycle without 3D just falls farther behind what Samsung has already delivered.....

Verdict : Without the advances of 3D NAND flash and the features that come with it (density and endurance), OCZ is limited by the tools it has. If released in early 2015 the RD400, is a remarkable product - but market conditions have changed..... "

 

Is the different versions of CDM a possible reason? Besides that they are different SSD's with most likely different drivers and maybe different Windows O/S versions?

 

I'm on Windows 10 with the Intel 14.08.0.1042 and he's on 14.8.2.1044 but not sure about his OS.

Just a dorky question but does the disk driver matter, it's from 2006, 10.0.10586.0