SSD 860 evo sata VS 970 evo plus NVMe 500gb - Z68

[Rav106]

The time has come for a small upgrade for my old system so it would be nice to hear some recommendations and tips in choosing a new ssd

I have a motherboard on Z68 (GA-Z68x-UD3-B3) F7 bios and there is no M.2 / NVMe support but there is sata 3 so it would seem that the choice is obvious, buying 860 and just plug in. so everything is pretty clear. but since the 970 can also work on this system at a faster speed, why not buy it?

now a little more detailed:
- I want to get the highest possible speed from the indicated ssd's
- I want to make ssd a boot disk
- GA Z68x UD3 B3 has 2 PCI Express slots 2.0 (When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode)

and the question is:
I should add manually NVMe support on my bios and I see new bios versions on the gigabyte site that I have not yet installed but the description is nothing about NVMe. Unfortunately, I have not yet found any information that someone would make a modification specifically for this motherboard but similar models such as GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 works great. So does anyone really have experience with adding nvme on this motherboard or if some one can help creating the necessary bios files, it would be very appreciated.

Ok now a little about performance, I have gtx 1060 6g on my X16 so how the performance of a video card is reflected when connecting a second PCI Express slots? (he will become x8 4.0 GB/s) . As far as I know 970 evo plus will work on x4, so my maximum speed will be possible 2.0 GB/s and only at PCI 3.0 I can get its usual speed. however, it is still faster compared to the 860, and besides, in my opinion the m2 looks more promising in the future, buying a new motherboard also gives better potential.

[Shakadam]

I have no idea about any BIOS that would get NVME drives (I assume you mean with a PCI-E to m.2 adapter?) working so I can't answer that, it's probably more bother than what you get out of it though.

GPU performance with a 1060 @PCI-E 2.0 x8 should be OK, there might be some minor performance loss but I don't think it'll be more than a few %.

That said, neither an 860 Evo or 970 Evo Plus is a good choice. Samsung SSD's are just overpriced. Get a Crucial P1 if you want a cheap m.2 NVME SSD, or a Sabrent Rocket or Adata XPG SX8200Pro if you want a high performance m.2 NVME SSD.
For a standard SATA SSD just go with a Crucial MX500.

[Rav106]

That said, neither an 860 Evo or 970 Evo Plus is a good choice. Samsung SSD's are just overpriced. Get a Crucial P1 if you want a cheap m.2 NVME SSD, or a Sabrent Rocket or Adata XPG SX8200Pro if you want a high performance m.2 NVME SSD.
For a standard SATA SSD just go with a Crucial MX500.

Thanks for your advice,

honestly, using m2 with an adapter on pcie is better solution for me especially if it does not affect the speed of the video card. BIOS modification does not look complicated there is a lot of information how to do it using uefi tool, beside i have dual bios on my motherboard. but sometimes there are problems where for example "DXE Driver Volume" is nearly no space for the insertion of an additional NVMe module but again it can be solved by removing other DXE modules such as Wake-on-LAN feature.

so if someone has dealt with this or just have experience I will appreciate for any help

[chazus]

- I want to get the highest possible speed from the indicated ssd'sl.

Why, exactly?

Are you saying "I want great speed for my computer and gaming" or are you saying "An application I'm running requires maximum throughtput for image processing"?

I should add manually NVMe support on my bios and I see new bios versions on the gigabyte site that I have not yet installed but the description is nothing about NVMe. Unfortunately, I have not yet found any information that someone would make a modification specifically for this motherboard but similar models such as GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 works great. So does anyone really have experience with adding nvme on this motherboard or if some one can help creating the necessary bios files, it would be very appreciated

You can't really just 'add nvme support'. Its both a hardware and software specification. Your best bet would be a PCIE drive but... again, it goes back to the first question.

Are you using a HDD now, and just want to upgrade to an SSD? Just get the 860 and call it a day, but there are also other good quality, decent SSDs out there. Crucial MX500s are my go-to these days.

- - - Updated - - -

BIOS modification does not look complicated there is a lot of information how to do it using uefi tool, beside i have dual bios on my motherboard. but sometimes there are problems where for example "DXE Driver Volume" is nearly no space for the insertion of an additional NVMe module but again it can be solved by removing other DXE modules such as Wake-on-LAN feature.

The board has no m.2 slot, you cannot just 'add nvme'. Period.

You CAN add a PCI-E card, with that, but that is unrelated to the motherboard.

I would seriously just consider getting a decent 2.5" SSD and call it a day, rather than making it overcomplicated for little benefit or reason.

[Rav106]

The board has no m.2 slot, you cannot just 'add nvme'. Period.

Yes you are right but as I mentioned earlier I want to make ssd bootable, that why I need BIOS modification.

Are you using a HDD now, and just want to upgrade to an SSD?

Yes exactly and I know that sata ssd just looks like the perfect choice for this system. Actually, I have a small difference in price between 970 and 860, and if we consider the Adata XPG SX8200Pro, then the difference will just be insignificant. but even on PCI-E 2.0 we have ~ 1.5 GB/s instead of ~ 500 MB/s from sata and only the desire to make it bootable adds additional bother

[Temp name]

Yes you are right but as I mentioned earlier I want to make ssd bootable, that why I need BIOS modification.



Yes exactly and I know that sata ssd just looks like the perfect choice for this system. Actually, I have a small difference in price between 970 and 860, and if we consider the Adata XPG SX8200Pro, then the difference will just be insignificant. but even on PCI-E 2.0 we have ~ 1.5 GB/s instead of ~ 500 MB/s from sata and only the desire to make it bootable adds additional bother

Considering your situation, just get the SATA one. The major bottleneck in most day to day usages isn't the theoretical maximum bandwidth a drive can do, but the random performance, which is limited by the controller and if it has a DRAM cache or not. An SSD spends most of its time looking up data in the cache, and only a tiny fraction actually transferring data. Of course that changes if you regularly move around huge singular files (Like movies, or similar), but then you'll want to make sure the connection is up to snuff as well (Most home equipment maxes out at 1gbit per second, which is ~120MB per second, a SATA SSD thoroughly saturates that already).

Add to that that BIOS modification is inherently dangerous, I'd just drop it, at least until you upgrade your platform. Get the SATA one, it's easier, cheaper, and you won't notice the difference.

[Finear]

im pretty sure z68 doesn't support booting from nvme ssd

i dont remember all the details but i was doing some research a while ago for the same thing for my asus z68
and i gave up, i just bought sata ones and im waiting for new pc to fully swap to m.2 drivers

[Temp name]

im pretty sure z68 doesn't support booting from nvme ssd

i dont remember all the details but i was doing some research a while ago for the same thing for my asus z68
and i gave up, i just bought sata ones and im waiting for new pc to fully swap to m.2 drivers

You can hack it to work. I want to say it's not too hard, but that's because I know roughly how to do it. The research is hell unless you actually care for BIOS driver diving and the techy stuff behind it.
(And no, I'm not going to give a tutorial or links, I don't know enough to teach it, and don't want to encourage doing it, you can and will brick your board if you're not careful)

[Finear]

You can hack it to work. I want to say it's not too hard, but that's because I know roughly how to do it. The research is hell unless you actually care for BIOS driver diving and the techy stuff behind it.

yeah i saw some people making it work but it was such a hassle and resources for 10 year old motherboard are sparse

time and cost makes no sense for avarage user, and sooner or later you gonna upgrade and you are stuck with wasted money on m.2-pcie adapter even if they are not that expensive

[Thunderball]

Yes you are right but as I mentioned earlier I want to make ssd bootable, that why I need BIOS modification.

That board will never properly boot from an NVMe SSD, regardless of how you connect it. You can probably make it work with Windows 7 but dont even dream of Windows 10 working, especially with all the updates. There were huge issues with bootable NVMe SSDs regardless of formfactor until Z170, and M.2 slots started appearing since Z77.

Yes exactly and I know that sata ssd just looks like the perfect choice for this system. Actually, I have a small difference in price between 970 and 860, and if we consider the Adata XPG SX8200Pro, then the difference will just be insignificant. but even on PCI-E 2.0 we have ~ 1.5 GB/s instead of ~ 500 MB/s from sata and only the desire to make it bootable adds additional bother

If you're using it for gaming you're never going to reach those speeds. They are specified for big uniform files that are written to an empty disk. Gaming usecase is reading a bunch of big and small files that are all over the disk that is always over half full. Long story short you're pretty much never going to break SATA speeds for gaming usecase, bar maybe cinematics.