@luca44
Since I was able to get different NVMe Controllers (of various Samsung and SanDisk NVMe SSDs) properly working after having forced the installation of the Micron NVMe driver v2.1.19.0 WHQL (see attached picture), I suspect, that your problem has another origin.
@Fernando
In this place:
on my hardware …
should be
on my cousin’s hardware …
Problem with micron driver (v2.1.17.0-2.1.19.0) refers to my cousin’s hardware (adata xpg sx8200 pro etc.), not mine. And especially win8.1 he uses on a daily basis. He don’t use win10/11. I use win10 all the time and have no problem with micron driver.
Attached picture indicates that you use win10 or 11. Have you possibility to check micron v2.1.18.0 or v2.1.19.0 driver in tandem with win8.1 ? Maybe the operating system is the reason.
@Fernando
My cousin will have to stick with version 2.1.5.0 of micron driver. There is no problem with installing this version and making it work. But it hasn’t improved performance neither of nvme adata disk nor 970 pro disk so far. That’s why me and my cousin began to talk about newer versions of driver a few weeks ago.
Anyway, thanks for help and best regards.
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:
- Microsoft’s generic Win11 in-box NVMe driver v10.0.22621.755 dated 10/19/2022
- Samsung’s latest NVMe driver v3.3.0.2003 WHQL dated 01/21/2020 (forced installation)
- Phison’s latest generic NVMe driver v1.5.0.0 WHQL dated 02/23/2018
- Micron’s latest NVMe driver v2.1.19.0 WHQL dated 08/03/2021 (forced installation)
- Intel’s latest RST NVMe driver v17.11.3.1010 WHQL dated 11/25/2022 (forced installation)
- 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:
- All tested NVMe drivers worked extremely performant with a Samsung 990 Pro SSD.
- Only the Random Access read/write numbers (undermost 2 lines) were quite different.
-
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:
- All tested NVMe drivers worked fine with my Intel Z170 chipset and a Samsung 980 Pro SSD.
- The benchmark results were quite similar with all tested NVMe drivers.
- 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”).
2 Likes
Windows 11 21H2 (22000.1757) @ Release Preview Channel
Standard NVM Express Controller (stornvme.xxx)
10.0.22000.1757 (03/11/2023) > 10.0.22000.1639 (02/04/2023)
The rest are older:
Windows 11 24H2 (25314.1010) - 03/04/2023(?) (10.0.25314.1000) @ Canary Channel
Windows 11 23H2 (23403.1001) - 02/26/2023(?) (10.0.23403.1001) @ Dev Channel
Windows 11 22H2 (22624.1465) - 09/27/2022 (10.0.22621.741) @ Beta Channel
Windows 11 22H2 (22621.1413) - 10/19/2022 (10.0.22621.755) @ Normal Channel
Windows 10 22H2 (19045.2787) - 09/10/2022 (10.0.19045.2075) @ Release Preview Channel
@westlake
Thanks for the important hint, that the available Win10/11 Builds contain different versions of the in-box MS NVMe driver named stornvme.sys. That it why all NVMe driver performance comparison tests should be done with the exactly same Win10/11 Build number.
Tiny correction: The Build Number of the related stornvme.sys file is 10.0.22621.755.
@all
Since I recently got access to a 2 TB WD_black SN850X NVMe SSD, I was able to do some additional benchmark tests by comparing its performance with the 1 TB Samsung 990 Pro SSD (they both do support PCIe 4.0).
Test configuration:
Chipset: AMD X570
OS: Windows 11 v22H2 Build 2261.1413, clean installed onto the Samsung 990 Pro SSD.
Tested NVMe SSDs:
- a) 1TB Samsung 990 Pro (as system drive C:)
- b) 2TB Western Digital WD_black SN850X (as storage drive D:)
Tested NVMe drivers:
- generic Microsoft Standard NVM Express Driver v10.22621.755 dated 10/19/2022
- Micron NVMe Controller Driver v2.1.19.0 WHQL dated 08/03/2021 (forced installation)
- generic Phison NVMe 1.2 Storport Miniport Driver v1.5.0.0 WHQL dated 02/23/2018
- Samsung NVMe Controller Driver v3.3.0.2003 WHQL dated 01/21/2020 (forced installation)
-
Intel RST NVMe Controller Driver v17.11.3.1010 WHQL dated 11/25/2022 (forced installation)
Here are the benchmark test results:
(left/upper Pics: Samsung 990 Pro, right/lower Pics: WD_black SN850X)
1. MS Win11 in-box NVMe driver:
2. Micron NVMe driver v2.1.19.0:
3. Phison NVMe driver v1.5.0.0:
4. Samsung NVMe driver v3.3.0.2003:
)
5. Intel RST NVMe driver v17.11.3.1010:
Evaluation:
- Both tested NVMe SSDs are extremely performant, no matter which NVMe driver has been used. Only exception: Intel’s RST driver v17.11.3.1010 gave me bad “Random” Read and Write scores.
- Remarkable difference: When it comes to Random Write accesses of bigger sized files (marked with red color), the Western Digital WD_black SN850X SSD gave me by far better numbers than the Samsung 990 Pro SSD.
1 Like
Hi Fernando,
You should check your Motherboard settings because on my ASUS X570 Crosshair Hero the 990 Pro 1 TB and 2 TB are really close using the default Windows 11 nvme driver build 22621.1413.
Best regards
@KibaNoOu
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum!
Why should I check my mainboard’s settings and which ones do you mean?
I haven’t compared the 1TB and 2 TB variants of Samsung’s 990 Pro SSDs.
Because the difference between 990 Pro and SN850X on RND4K Q32T16 should be really low.
Hi Folks!
I have searched through our forum and found none about Amazon AWS NVME drivers.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-windows-drivers-downloads/NVMe/Latest/AWSNVMe.zip
I guess it is worth mention about these. My bro told me about these drivers, have tested and it looks promising.
There are two versions of it.
Platform: Asus Mini PL63 (Tiger lake) + Kingston KC3000 + Win11
- Windows 11 Microsoft drivers
- Intel drivers
- Phison drivers
- AWS drivers
Final thoughts:
- It looks AWS drivers give boost with 4K files on long queue.
- Anything is better than Windows drivers.
Has anybody tested these before?
I don’t know how you came up with the Windows driver result, it’s not realistic by any means. There may be configurations where a third party driver is better, but in general Windows’ own driver is a better choice than anything else.
@westlake could you tell me why it is not realistic? From my experience I can tell something completely opposite. Those are my brother’s results. On my machine it looks the same - windows 11 nvme drivers are the worst. Take a look below on my results with z590 + rocket lake + 970evo+
- Windows 11 drivers
- Samsung drivers
Generic drivers are never better than manufacturers specific.
@pacuro
Thanks for offering here the rather new AWS NVMe drivers v1.4.2.26 WHQL.
After having read the related text and done a test installion of the AWS NVMe Instance Storage Adapter driver v1.4.2.26 I found out this:
-
The AWS NVMe drivers have been designed for being used either
a) with an AWS NVMe “Elastic Block” Storage Adapter or
b) with an AWS NVMe “Instance” Storage Adapter
while running a Windows Server OS from 2012 up. -
With my AMD X570 chipset system running Windows 11 x64 Build 22621.1555 on a 2TB WD SN980X SSD I got better benchmark results with the generic in-box MS NVMe driver than with the specific (but here not matching) AWS NVMe driver.
Here are my results:
a) MS in-box NVMe driver named stornvme.sys:
b) AWS NVMe Instance Storage Adapter driver v1.4.2.26 WHQL:
This is simply not true.
By the way - your Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD doesn’t contain an AWS NVMe adapter.
From my tests (Windows 10 ~ year 2019) all drivers showed approximately the same performance within the margin of error. The generic driver was worse than the manufacturer’s driver at the start of Windows 10, since then the generic driver has taken a step forward.
AWS driver is obviously specially optimized for the loads specific to AWS so I don’t expect miracles from it when used at home.
OK guys. Your results show you are right. Then I compare these to my results. What to do to get such a performance on Windows 11 drivers? Samsung drivers got 50% more in sequential test than Microsoft drivers.
@pacuro
Before you start with a benchmark comparison test using different NVMe drivers you should make sure, that all tests are done with the same system and with similar settings (SSD write cashing policies, power options etc.). As you can see >here<, the results may be quite different.
You may need a mainboard and an NVMe SSD, which do support PCIe 4.0.
I am not asking about PCIe 4.0 performance. I have mobo with nvme pcie 4.0 slot. My question regards performance on windows 11 drivers. You say it should be the best and my screenshot says “samsung driver is better than windows driver”. Am I doing something wrong? It is not the case of 10 MB/s difference. It is 2247 MB/s vs 3090 MB/s.