Can you please run a benchmark with crystalmark?
I'm running a 512GB 950 pro that was installed by cloning the original 256GB SM951 NVMe that came with the machine, I have a G752VY DH72 . I didn't tweak anything and get speeds comparable to what woolfman72 posted using the so called "crap" Windows native NVMe driver. The Intel RST driver you will read everyone posting about is not an NVMe driver, it's the chipset raid controller driver that is also native to this machine out of the box, although there is an updated version that I noted no improvement from. Samsung software and NVMe driver has compatibility issues with seeing past the raid controller. Everyone running the CM236 chipset has had the same experience and it's not isolated to just this chipset or to ASUS products for that matter. I have noted that my benchmarks are also comparable with machines that have been able to use the Samsung driver and Samsung magician software. Write cache should be disabled, there is even a tweak for the in Samsung software that specifically states the SSDs do not use it and it slows performance. Trim Functions and trash are also natively handled by win 8.1 and up. You don't have to worry about over provisioning unless you run your drive close to capacity. If you want to over pro ion you don't need Samsung software for that either. Simply create a partition that's about 10% of your capacity and leave it Unallocated.
The only thing you can't do without the software is update the drives firmware or use samsungs rapid mode that is over rated IMO. Just FYI the software doesn't see the 850 EVO drive on this chipset correctly either. I posted up some screen shots in the 950 pro new info thread towards the end.
I'm running a 512GB 950 pro that was installed by cloning the original 256GB SM951 NVMe that came with the machine, I have a G752VY DH72 . I didn't tweak anything and get speeds comparable to what woolfman72 posted using the so called "crap" Windows native NVMe driver. The Intel RST driver you will read everyone posting about is not an NVMe driver, it's the chipset raid controller driver that is also native to this machine out of the box, although there is an updated version that I noted no improvement from. Samsung software and NVMe driver has compatibility issues with seeing past the raid controller. Everyone running the CM236 chipset has had the same experience and it's not isolated to just this chipset or to ASUS products for that matter. I have noted that my benchmarks are also comparable with machines that have been able to use the Samsung driver and Samsung magician software. Write cache should be disabled, there is even a tweak for the in Samsung software that specifically states the SSDs do not use it and it slows performance. Trim Functions and trash are also natively handled by win 8.1 and up. You don't have to worry about over provisioning unless you run your drive close to capacity. If you want to over pro ion you don't need Samsung software for that either. Simply create a partition that's about 10% of your capacity and leave it Unallocated.
The only thing you can't do without the software is update the drives firmware or use samsungs rapid mode that is over rated IMO. Just FYI the software doesn't see the 850 EVO drive on this chipset correctly either. I posted up some screen shots in the 950 pro new info thread towards the end.
bignadad wrote:
Justin
I have read a lot of your posts here and have a question. I am getting my G752VY-DH72 and 950 pro tomorrow. So should I just put the 950 in secondary slot and clone primary that it shipped with to it? Is that better than a clean install?
If so what cloning software did you use? The Samsung migration tool?
Also can I put another m2 ssd in the secondary slot and use it as well? I would have the 950 in primary, a 512 m2 in secondary and a 2tb sata III.
One more thing is that when i clone the 256 that it shipped with to my 512 950 pro I'll have unpartioned space on the 512 right? I can expand that to the main partition?
Thanks for any feedback u can give.
Hey Brother. Putting the 950 pro in the second M2 slot and cloning it is precisely what I did. The Samsung Data migration software works great and is probably one of the fastest and if you just choose the automatic function it will add the unallocated space to the same partition. Then after just shut it down and put the 950 where the stock one is and you are all set. Yes you can put another M2 in if you want. Ive just left mine empty. I put the stock one away for rescue missions as needed. I havent had to use it on this machine yet but I've seem a lot of others who would have benefited from that posting here. Then if I need to RMA its not a long drawn out process either, just put the original back and and good to go.
IMO I prefer cloning the original as is. You get the recovery partitions etc over with it if needed and there isn't that much bloatware like what you get on Best Buy machines that are nearly impossible to get rid of. Took me all of 15 minutes to uninstall the software I don't want. That way you are starting out with drivers already there and wont have any issues getting the machine up and running. You can update drivers that need it after the fact. Some prefer doing a clean install and swear it gives better performance etc, I'm not one of them, at least not on this machine.
Good luck with your new rig, I'm enjoying mine and if you go down the memory expansion road be sure to read the thread Ive posted on this model and save yourself a major headache! LOL
As of now I have the 512GB 950 Pro and a 1TB 850EVO. I have so many USB 3.0 external drives and enough NAS network drives to store enough media to last a life time.
Awesome!
From what I see your speeds are actually in the right ballpark. Maybe a little tweaking here and there will make slight improvements to speeds but you are close. I noticed the same with the AS SSD benchmark and came to the conclusion that not everything is working perfectly across multiple platforms. NVMe is new and evolving technology and sometimes being on the cutting edge has its challenges. The drivers you see are actually two very different drivers, they wer just all compiled on the same date with the OS. If you look at the date they are also shown to be very old but NVMe drivers were not present until Win 8.1 which wasnt until well after 2006! The screen grab on legit reviews is for an NVMe controller on a different platform, ASUS X99 Sabertooth motherboard desktop application. It has a controller completely separate just for the NVME plugged into a PCIe slot. What you have is exactly what I have except I installed the latest Intel RST driver.
I have found that updating the Intel RST drivers will all you to see some of the functions and the drives in Samsung magician although its been noted by several people, myself included, that the 950 pro will show up as a second version of the 850 or an off the wall number. For me appears as an exact duplicate until you look to the size on the right of the screen and it shows that the true 850 is 1TB and the 950 shown as another 850 is 512MB. After the update of the Intel drivers it also has some limitied functionality but noting that you cant accomplish with other means. It will tell you that AHCI is deactivated on the SATA drive, and show N/A for SATA interface.
You can download 64bit Intel RST AHCI & RAID drivers v14.8.1.1043 WHQL HERE
Credit to Win-raid forums for the driver
Simply extract then follow the usual process in device manager to update the driver, just point it to the file you extracted and it grans it right up, no problems. This is the driver for the Intel Chipset Sata RAID controller just so you dont go looking for I RST in device manager.
One more quick tweak that I can recommended is disabling prefetch and superfetch. These just store some drivers and services in the main memory for faster access as it improved overall machine performance with spinners but causes excessive reads and writes. The speed of SSDs is plenty fast so this is not needed when deploying your OS from a SSD.
It requires a registry tweak so the usual discalimer applies here to always back up your registry before making changes and proceed at your own risk.
Type Regedit into the search box next to the start button and select regedit when it pops up at the top. (I save it to the start menu for faster access ater)
Navigate to the file path "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters"
Right-click on EnablePrefetcher
Select Modify and change the value to 0
Right-click on EnableSuperfetch
Again Select Modify and change the to 0
Restart
All done
Hope you are able to use at least some of this. It all works for me on a G752 DH72:cool:
From what I see your speeds are actually in the right ballpark. Maybe a little tweaking here and there will make slight improvements to speeds but you are close. I noticed the same with the AS SSD benchmark and came to the conclusion that not everything is working perfectly across multiple platforms. NVMe is new and evolving technology and sometimes being on the cutting edge has its challenges. The drivers you see are actually two very different drivers, they wer just all compiled on the same date with the OS. If you look at the date they are also shown to be very old but NVMe drivers were not present until Win 8.1 which wasnt until well after 2006! The screen grab on legit reviews is for an NVMe controller on a different platform, ASUS X99 Sabertooth motherboard desktop application. It has a controller completely separate just for the NVME plugged into a PCIe slot. What you have is exactly what I have except I installed the latest Intel RST driver.
I have found that updating the Intel RST drivers will all you to see some of the functions and the drives in Samsung magician although its been noted by several people, myself included, that the 950 pro will show up as a second version of the 850 or an off the wall number. For me appears as an exact duplicate until you look to the size on the right of the screen and it shows that the true 850 is 1TB and the 950 shown as another 850 is 512MB. After the update of the Intel drivers it also has some limitied functionality but noting that you cant accomplish with other means. It will tell you that AHCI is deactivated on the SATA drive, and show N/A for SATA interface.
You can download 64bit Intel RST AHCI & RAID drivers v14.8.1.1043 WHQL HERE
Credit to Win-raid forums for the driver
Simply extract then follow the usual process in device manager to update the driver, just point it to the file you extracted and it grans it right up, no problems. This is the driver for the Intel Chipset Sata RAID controller just so you dont go looking for I RST in device manager.
One more quick tweak that I can recommended is disabling prefetch and superfetch. These just store some drivers and services in the main memory for faster access as it improved overall machine performance with spinners but causes excessive reads and writes. The speed of SSDs is plenty fast so this is not needed when deploying your OS from a SSD.
It requires a registry tweak so the usual discalimer applies here to always back up your registry before making changes and proceed at your own risk.
Type Regedit into the search box next to the start button and select regedit when it pops up at the top. (I save it to the start menu for faster access ater)
Navigate to the file path "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters"
Right-click on EnablePrefetcher
Select Modify and change the value to 0
Right-click on EnableSuperfetch
Again Select Modify and change the to 0
Restart
All done
Hope you are able to use at least some of this. It all works for me on a G752 DH72:cool:
