SPCR

http://hexus.net/tech/news/storage/5685 ... k-designs/

This fits the 80mm version of the mini-PCI-E connector and boasts incredible speeds that blow SATA-3 devices out of the water.

I expect that this will have TRIM support and hope that this is a Samsung native design (rather than using a bridge chip), if so then it shouldn't be long until PCI-E Desktop variants turn up.

Thank you Samsung.

If the price is right, I might just end up with my 4th SSD being a PCI-E "drive" rather than a SATA model, previously PCI_E SSD's have had one or more serious flaws (price, no TRIM, not actually faster in real world tests), fingers crossed that this/these products will make PCI-E SSD's attractive at last.


Andy

This is the new iteration of mSata ssds, M.2, this are meant for ultrabooks, kinda like the introduction to sata express (thats how i see it maybe im wrong). ASUS Haswell Z87 Maximums ROG Series have a M.2 port on the top/bottom of the IO, so could take the advantage of these ssds right away.

ASUS Maximus VI Extreme Unboxing & Overview



We also have sata express coming soon, some say broadwell other say skylake... but this should give the full bandwidth of pcie lanes to SSDs via sata express.

We also have sata express coming soon, some say broadwell other say skylake... but this should give the full bandwidth of pcie lanes to SSDs via sata express.

Which is fine if you're building a new system, I have no plans to upgrade mine, but I might just want a nice super fast PCI-E SSD at some point in the future that I can just plug into a spare PCI-E 1x v3 slot (capable of 985MB/s in each direction). That would be nice, especially if its not expensive and it also means less wires to worry about hiding and no need to worry about brackets or the amount of spare drive bays.

I was looking forward to getting a PCI-E SSD a couple of years ago, but their shortcoming were pretty substantial and very few (compared to SATA SSD's) have ever been sold, which in turn does not help to reduce their cost.


Andy

I think there are a few caveats though. EFI and driver support and M.2 can also be wired as mSATA.

You can boot off a PCI Express SSD on your average retail motherboard from the Sandy/Ivy Bridge era? Or you need to wait till <whatever comes after Haswell>?

Which would be faster (given same capacity and other variables being equal): one PCIe SSD or 2 X SATA SSDs in RAID 0 ?

whispercat wrote:Which would be faster (given same capacity and other variables being equal): one PCIe SSD or 2 X SATA SSDs in RAID 0 ?

As it narrows down to bus speed finally, PCIe should always be faster because 900 > 600 regardless oft actual disk speed. YMMV if one or both cannot saturate bus bandwidth.

The SSD review already testedthe drive, the performance is great: ~1100MB/s read and ~950MB/s write speed. Higher performance numbers are for RAID 0 configuration.

Abula wrote:We also have sata express coming soon, some say broadwell other say skylake... but this should give the full bandwidth of pcie lanes to SSDs via sata express.

M.2 was formerly known as NGFF and it's Sata Express in a smaller package. Unfortunately Sata Express has been canned for Intel 9 series chipsets.

torp wrote:You can boot off a PCI Express SSD on your average retail motherboard from the Sandy/Ivy Bridge era? Or you need to wait till <whatever comes after Haswell>?

Yup, some Sony ultrabooks come with M.2 SSDs.

whispercat wrote:Which would be faster (given same capacity and other variables being equal): one PCIe SSD or 2 X SATA SSDs in RAID 0 ?

Sata Express.
2 SSDs in Raid 0 can only ever (capped by SATA) deliver a read speed of (550MB/s x2) 1100MB/s same as the Samsung M.2 SSD, and this is Samsung's first generation device.
With new drivers the OS can access a M.2 SSD more effieciently via NVM Express starting with Win 8.1. NVM Epress is designed for SSDs, Sata was designed for hard disk drives.