Which NVMe Drivers are the best (performance related)?

[Fernando]

During the past 2 days I have done some new bechmark tests trying to find out the best performant NVMe driver for
a) my AMD X570 chipset PCIe 4.0 system using a 1TB Samsung 990 Pro SSD as system drive and
b) my old Intel Z170 chipset PCIe 3.0 system using a 1 TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD as system drive.

OS for both configurations: Win11 x64 version 22H2 Build 22621.1343

These were the tested NVMe drivers:

1. Microsoft’s generic Win11 in-box NVMe driver v10.0.22621.755 dated 10/19/2022
2. Samsung’s latest NVMe driver v3.3.0.2003 WHQL dated 01/21/2020 (forced installation)
3. Phison’s latest generic NVMe driver v1.5.0.0 WHQL dated 02/23/2018
4. Micron’s latest NVMe driver v2.1.19.0 WHQL dated 08/03/2021 (forced installation)
5. Intel’s latest RST NVMe driver v17.11.3.1010 WHQL dated 11/25/2022 (forced installation)
6. Intel’s latest “pure” NVMe driver v5.3.0.1010 WHQL dated 10/19/2022 (forced installation)
   
   

A. Test results with my AMD X570 chipset system

Here are the related screenshots:

Evaluation of the results with my AMD chipset system:

1. All tested NVMe drivers worked extremely performant with a Samsung 990 Pro SSD.
2. Only the Random Access read/write numbers (undermost 2 lines) were quite different.
3. My winner: The generic Win11 in-box MS NVMe driver (outstanding RND4K Q32T16 Write numbers!).
   
   

B. Test results with my Intel Z170 chipset system

Here are the related screenshots:

Evaluation of the results with my Intel chipset system:

1. All tested NVMe drivers worked fine with my Intel Z170 chipset and a Samsung 980 Pro SSD.
2. The benchmark results were quite similar with all tested NVMe drivers.
3. My personal favorite: Phison’s NVMe driver v1.5.0.0 (best RND4K Q1T1 scores)

Summary:
There is no NVMe driver available, which is the best for all systems!
My advice: Find it out yourself by doing a benchmark comparison (after having set a “Restore Point”).