Samsung 980 Pros not as fast as they should be

[Hello Paul]

Hello,
A few months ago I received my PCS PC (spec pasted below), complete with a 1TB Samsung 980 PRO (system drive) and a 2TB Samsung 980 PRO (working/projects drive), plus an 8TB "ready for archiving" drive. I've not been impressed with the speed of the system sometimes when playing back video (stored on the 2TB drive) in Premiere Pro and After Effects (even just 1920x1080 sometimes stutters). Today I downloaded the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and ran it on the 2TB drive, and was somewhat disappointed to be only getting about half the write speed and 5000MB/s instead of the 7000MB/s read speed. My system is a pretty high spec, and, I'd have thought, should be fully capable of exploiting every bit of speed this drive can put out. Other reviews of this drive have raved about its real-world speed. Any idea why mine is a bit less-than-blisteringly-fast? The drive has about 400GB free space out of the actual capacity of 1810GB.

Case
CORSAIR 5000D AIRFLOW TEMPERED GLASS GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16 Core CPU (3.4GHz-4.9GHz/72MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING (USB 3.2 Gen 2, PCIe 4.0) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
2x Patriot Viper Steel 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C18 3600MHz (128MB total)
Graphics Card
24GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 3090
1st Storage Drive
8TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 7000MB/R, 5000MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 7000MB/R, 5000MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling
Corsair H115i ELITE CAPELLIX RGB Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]

 

[sck451]

It's not surprising for write speeds to go down as an SSD fills up. That is precisely normal behaviour. I'm surprised to see your read speeds so low, however. I'm not familiar with the BlackMagic tool you're using: do you think you could install CrystalDiskMark and see what results its benchmarks give? My 980 is only the 500GB one, but it is at least something by way of comparison.

 

[Bhuna50]

With machine turned off and yourself grounded, carefully remove both drives, blow for dust and reinsert both drives.

Then use Samsung’s dedicated tool Magician to check their speeds.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ubuysa]

A few months ago I received my PCS PC (spec pasted below), complete with a 1TB Samsung 980 PRO (system drive) and a 2TB Samsung 980 PRO (working/projects drive), plus an 8TB "ready for archiving" drive. I've not been impressed with the speed of the system sometimes when playing back video (stored on the 2TB drive) in Premiere Pro and After Effects (even just 1920x1080 sometimes stutters). Today I downloaded the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and ran it on the 2TB drive, and was somewhat disappointed to be only getting about half the write speed and 5000MB/s instead of the 7000MB/s read speed. My system is a pretty high spec, and, I'd have thought, should be fully capable of exploiting every bit of speed this drive can put out. Other reviews of this drive have raved about its real-world speed. Any idea why mine is a bit less-than-blisteringly-fast? The drive has about 400GB free space out of the actual capacity of 1810GB.

Regardless of whether you're only getting only 5000MB/s from the 2TB 980 Pro you shouldn't see stuttering on a 1080p video. I appreciate that you are seeing reduced read speed on that drive, but that's not what's causing the video stuttering. I can play back 1080p video from an HDD (160MB/s) without stutter.

I would suggest that there is something more fundamentally amiss with your system than just low SSD read speeds.

Do you have all Windows updates installed - especially any option updates?

 

[Hello Paul]

Crystal DiskMark reports this (pasted below)...write speeds seem a little slow.

@ubuysa Yes, I agree - 1080p video should not cause any issues at all on my system. Maybe it's just Adobe being a bit weird sometimes!

@Bhuna50 I might give that a go when I get the chance - probably not this month though, with the amount of work I've got coming through!

 

[ubuysa]

Crystal DiskMark reports this (pasted below)...write speeds seem a little slow.

@ubuysa Yes, I agree - 1080p video should not cause any issues at all on my system. Maybe it's just Adobe being a bit weird sometimes!

@Bhuna50 I might give that a go when I get the chance - probably not this month though, with the amount of work I've got coming through!

View attachment 29652

Indeed, I'm wondering whether the low read speed is a symptom of a wider issue and its not just a bad SSD?

 

[TonyCarter]

Mine's got the same SSD (but the 1TB model) & Strix motherboard, and I get very similar figures (with the exception of Q1T1 random read) in CrystalDiskMark.

Don't know if the fact that it's the boot drive or that it's only 26% full makes any difference though.

Just downloaded some 8K demos from here and have really smooth playback on mine - but that's just playing them back in VLC as I don't have Premiere installed.

 

[Scott]

Being over 50% will definitely affect the performance of the drive, that's just the way of it unfortunately.

It being the OS drive will also have an impact.

Regardless of all that though these drives are blisteringly quick and you definitely shouldn't be seeing any issues.

 

[Hello Paul]

The drive I was testing (a 2TB one) is not the OS (the OS is also a 980 PRO, but the 1TB version). I'll have to be more rigorous in moving projects off the M.2 drive onto my backup drives to keep the fullness down!

 

[Scott]

The drive I was testing (a 2TB one) is not the OS (the OS is also a 980 PRO, but the 1TB version). I'll have to be more rigorous in moving projects off the M.2 drive onto my backup drives to keep the fullness down!

Yeah I meant yourself for being past 50% and Tony, above, with regards to the OS

I was just too lazy with my response to separate you out.