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Abel
Asked: 2017-01-21 05:56:51 +0800 CST

Determining if upgrading to a fast PCIe SSD drive is worthwhile on a dual Xeon Nehalem system with PCIe v2.0

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I am considering upgrading my workstation (almost a server) with a bootable PCIe drive, the 2TB version of the Samsung 960 Pro. But having a system with PCI v2, SATA II I am not sure if this makes sense as I am afraid of over-saturating the buses.

My main use for my system is data analysis and programming/compilation, where the data is oftentimes XML > 2GB and some of the systems I maintain presently take some 5-10 min to compile. During these tasks I can see that the CPU is doing next to nothing, so I am looking to decrease those times significantly by investing in SSD.

My system (it's from 2010, yes, it's old, but it still outperforms my high-end Asus laptop and I don't quite feel for replacing it yet):

  • Dual Xeon X5680 @3.3GHz
  • 48GB memory
  • RAID-5 physical disks (measured at 150MB/s sequential), 3x 2TB
  • 2TB Data disk (measured at ~250MB/s sequential)
  • Nehalem chipset, Intel 5520 (Tylersburg 35D) with ICH10R I/O controller hub
  • I have three free x16/x8/x4 PCI Express slots, which I think is capable of using that drive (is that a correct assumption?)

My current RAM disk is close to the expected speed of this drive (Read vs write seq. is 3,454MB/sec and 2,157MB/sec) with my current ramdisk (16GB of my 48GB is a RAM disk), I am worried the bus may be the limiting factor and not the raw speed of the drive:

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I am particularly worried that my system supports PCIe v2.0 and that this drive requires PCIe v3.0 and this will limit maxing out this drive.

I am essentially looking for upgrading my system such that I get maximum speed gains with disk access. Probably any SSD would already improve things, but if I could get the best money can buy, would it make sense? Is there any sense at all in having such a fast drive in my setup, can use it to its maximum speed?

Small update: this discussion suggests that PCIe v3 is backward compatible with PCIe v2, so the slot should fit. The drive is x4, which I think means the max throughput is 500MB x 4 = 2GB/sec, which is below the maximum of this drive, but only for the (rare) sequential reads.

performance dell ssd pci-express upgrade

2 Answers

  1. Storage performance isn't always about throughput. It's about latency. Many people confuse the two.

    Even if you can't take advantage of the full throughput available to the card with your PCIe 2.0 slots, you'll benefit greatly from the low latency and random IO performance of the card.

    So sure... buy it.

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  2. In such an old system, a PCI-express disk will not only be limited in raw speed, but you can have issues booting from it.

    So, If you don't have a specific use case for a fast PCI-express disk, I suggest you to buy a much cheaper but well performing SATA disk as Crucial MX300 or Samsung 850 EVO.

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