Laptop nvme speedcapped? - Acer Nitro 5 AN517-52-74YB

Ch3vr0n
Ch3vr0n Member Posts: 9

Tinkerer

edited July 2021 in Nitro Gaming

The following (long) post isn't so much a problem, more an info request post.

So a few days ago (due to my STRIX 3090 oc being cancelled and getting the refund) i replaced my 12? y old Sony vaio vgn-aw11m/h laptop with a brand spanning new Acer Nitro 5 model AN517-52-74YB. Going to adult school for classes in 3d modelling with blender in September so needed a powerful system. The schools basic systems a few years ago were barely capable of running Lightroom smoothly, so i don't have much faith in them rubbing blender smoothly lol.


Anyway, set it up to my liking, did some benchmarking on the ssd and found the installed SN530 (very little info on it through Google) capped at approx 2400R/1900W. I had a spare Samsung 960 pro 512GB (which I originally was using as an nvme USB drive through an enclosure) and cloned the drive over with Acronis. Opened the thing up this evening swapped the drives out, changed the bios settings from that crappy (optane with raid) over to AHCI, installed the Samsung nvme driver and ran CrystalDisk mark again (v8.0.2).


My read speeds increased to around the expected 3000MB/s, but the write speeds didn't move 1 bit. Capped out at the same 1900. Samsung Magician reports the drive as running in PCIe 3.0 x4 mode as it should.


Now since I'm a desktop system builder mainly, and this is my first new laptop in over a decade, i have 0 experience if this is normal behavior. My Sony laptop ran it's Samsung 860 in SATA II mode, so i have nothing to compare with, other than the fact that knowing the 960 easily achieved over 3000on both read and write in my desktop (before it got replaced by a 970 Evo plus 1TB). So i guess the question is, is this normal behavior? Despite operating in x4 mode that the write speeds are only approx 2/3 of what they should be? Are laptop nvme speeds normally slower than desktop speeds? Please enlighten this primally desktop user.


​//Edited the content to add model name.

Answers

  • AnhEZ28
    AnhEZ28 ACE, Member Posts: 4,277 Pathfinder
    On the Samsung website they said that 960 Pro has max read speed of 2100 MB/s. Is your drive capped out at exact 1900MB/s or else?  You can try with your 970 EVO plus. Or change your 960 to another slot.
    Please remember to include @AnhEZ28 when you want to reply back to my comment so that I can check your response.
    Thank you and have a nice day!
  • Ch3vr0n
    Ch3vr0n Member Posts: 9

    Tinkerer

    Read speed was fine, it's the WRITE speed i was talking about (as said in the first and subsequent posts). I was so used to seeing write speeds in the 3000's i forgot the 960 Pro's write speed is maxed out (not capped) at around 1900. so both the SN530 (drive it came with) as the 960 Pro were performing at max capabilities.

    Swapping that drive out with a 970 Evo plus kicked things up a knotch on both read and write speeds. Well into the 3000's like i wanted. And considering i'll be using this thing for blender modelling, i'll need fast drives (alongside that RTX GPU).