Primary M.2 Socket vs Secondary M.2 Socket Which is Faster?

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Throughput Benchmarks (SEQ and RND)

CrystalDiskMark

We are using CrystalDiskMark to benchmark sequential and random throughput of read and write performance. For these NVMe SSDs we are using the NVMe profile in CrystalDiskMark. This tests SEQ1M Q8T1, SEQ128K Q32T1, RND4K Q32T16, and RND4K Q1T1.

Primary M.2 socket versus Secondary M.2 socket CrystalDiskMark SEQ1M Q8T1

Ok, now these are much larger differences, and quite a bit more than we expected.  In CrystalDiskMark we are looking at sequential read and write performance, and this is where the Secondary M.2 socket coming off the chipset lets us down big time.  There is a read throughput loss of a whopping 10% or 700MB/s.  There is a write throughput loss of 8% or 500MB/s.  These are significant performance differences when talking about fast NVMe 1.4 drives like these, just from being in a different socket, even though both support PCIe 4.0 x4.

Primary M.2 socket versus Secondary M.2 socket CrystalDiskMark SEQ128K Q32T1

The trend continues in the SEQ128K Q32T1 test, with read throughput being 5% slower and write performance being 7% slower on the Secondary M.2 socket.  This is significant.

Primary M.2 socket versus Secondary M.2 socket CrystalDiskMark RND4K Q32T16

The trend continues on random read and write testing, though it is not as severe, there is still a loss on the secondary M.2 socket. 

Primary M.2 socket versus Secondary M.2 socket CrystalDiskMark RND4K Q1T1

There is a larger loss on the write performance for random 4K Q1T1 testing on the Secondary M.2 socket.  Write performance drops 13% which is very significant.

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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