Choosing the Right SSD for a Skylake-U System
by Ganesh T S on May 9, 2016 8:00 AM ESTSYSmark 2014 Benchmarks
BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 is an objective performance benchmark for PCs. It is based on running real computer applications that one might use in day-to-day business / office activities. It is important to note that it does not intend to artificially drive components to peak capacity. Real user workloads and datasets are processed to determine how the user experience is impacted by the performance of the system.
SYSmark 2014 has three usage scenarios
- Office Productivity
- Media Creation
- Data/Financial Analysis.
The Office Productivity scenario models productivity usage including word processing, spreadsheet data manipulation, email creation/management and web browsing. The Media Creation scenario models using digital photos and digital video to create, preview, and render advertisements for a fictional businesses. The Data/Financial Analysis scenario creates, compresses, and decompresses data to review, evaluate and forecast business expenses. Also, the performance and viability of financial investments is analyzed using past and projected performance data.
The raw scores are meant to be compared against the 1000 scored by a Haswell Core i3-based desktop sporting a 500GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM. A score of 2000 would meant that the PC under test would appear to be twice as responsive as the calibration system.
SYSmark 2014's whitepaper (PDF) includes sensitivity analysis - how the scores vary with the amount of RAM, processor choice, GPU, storage drive, OS and display resolution. The whitepaper's sensitivity analysis for the storage subsystem involves comparison of a hard-drive based system and a SATA SSD. One can get as much as 20% improvement in scores (depending on the workload) by upgrading from a HDD to a SSD.
Since our evaluation also keeps all the system hardware and software the same, except for the storage drive, it also fits SYSmark 2014's sensitivity analysis model. What is the improvement when one goes from a SATA SSD to a PCIe SSD, or, from a PCIe AHCI SSD to a PCIe NVMe SSD, or, from a PCIe 2.0 x4 SSD to a PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD? The graphs in this section bring out the SYSmark 2014 scores in these scenarios.
A note about the colors used in the graphs is in order. Since we are dealing with a number of degrees of freedom - BIOS version differences corresponding to OPI GT2 and OPI GT4 rates, as well the characteristics of the SSDs themselves - PCIe vs. SATA and AHCI vs. NVMe, we chose to go with a lighter color shade for the older BIOS / OPI GT2 link and separate colors for the different SSDs.
The important takeaway here is that day-to-day PC activities have little to gain by moving from AHCI to NVMe or from PCIe 2.0 x4 to PCIe 3.0 x4. There is a bit of discernible benefit in moving from SATA to PCIe, though. Surprisingly, the OPI GT4 rates improve the scores quite a bit for the Mushkin Atlas Vital SATA SSD. This means that even budget Skylake NUC users using traditional SATA SSDs have something to gain by moving to the BIOS with OPI GT4 rates when it becomes public.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
40 Comments
View All Comments
Kristian Vättö - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
I just checked all drives that I benchmarked while at AT. The most was 37MB/s (4KB random read QD1), with most SATA drives hovering between 25-30MB/s. The 256GB SM951-NVMe, on the other hand, did 52MB/s.vladx - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
Yeah, but paying double for that much is definitely not worth it.Haul22 - Tuesday, May 10, 2016 - link
While I believe you that the fastest SATA drives that you tested maxed at 30 MBps in random read tests, what makes you think that this is a limitation/bottleneck of the SATA bus rather than the components inside of the SSD (the controller, the NAND flash chips, the number of NAND flash chips, etc)? I do not understand how Ganesh can make statements like "The bandwidth numbers, on the other hand, show that there is a lot to gain by going from SATA to PCIe, and from AHCI to NVMe, and from PCIe 2.0 to PCIe 3.0. However, the gains obtained in each of these upgrades becomes progressively smaller." While I find your benchmark of the 4 SSDs to be very useful, I don't see how you can draw these kinds of conclusions about SATA vs PCIe or AHCI vs NVMe based on your tests.Also, I don't understand where these 50 MBps and 30 MBps numbers are coming from. Your 850 Pro review from 2014 at http://www.anandtech.com/show/8216/samsung-ssd-850... shows numbers way higher than 30 or 50. Sorry if I'm missing something obvious.
Haul22 - Tuesday, May 10, 2016 - link
Okay I just re-read the article and think the 50 MBps number is coming from the CrystalDiskMark tests. I think these numbers are very low compared to what other tools will produce, even at QD=1. Regardless, I still don't see how we can draw conclusions about SATA vs PCIe or AHCI vs NVMe based on these results.Visual - Thursday, May 12, 2016 - link
I'm totally confused... what are these 30-50MB/s you guys are talking about? Even a crappy USB3 magnetic drive easily does 150MB/s, internal ssds have been pushing the 300MB/s limits of SATA 2 and even 600MB/s of SATA 3 for years now. And before you jump on me with the "random vs sequential" excuse, aren't ssds supposed to make that distinction irrelevant?TheinsanegamerN - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
The premium is pretty high. A 256GB 950 pro m.2 is $189, a 1TB sata ssd is $209. That is a pretty big difference.Heck, last year I got a 512GB SSD for less than $189.
dzezik - Thursday, May 12, 2016 - link
this is limited by very old sandforce controller not designed for MLC but for SLCvladx - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
I don't know why would you buy a PCI SSD unless you do a lot video work where you really need the best seq speed. For others , even gamers it's 99% waste of money.jasonelmore - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
i disagree. Load times in multiplayer games are heavily affected by seq speed. Battlefield 4 is a prime example, where fast load times, equal access to the jets and heli's before anyone else.A5 - Monday, May 9, 2016 - link
Not if you play on a competently admined server. This is what pre-round timers are for.