XPS

[szogye]

My XPS 13 9310 came with a 1TB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe Gen 4 SSD which is the OEM version of the 980 Pro.

For some reason I'm only seeing Gen 3 speeds:

I know others are seeing Gen 4 speeds in their 9310 with the 980 Pro:

I wonder what the reason might be that I'm only getting Gen 3 speeds?

[JOcean]

Looking at the Dell support pages I ran across this  firmware update for that Samsung drive. I am not sure if it is an answer but it seems to be a very recent release. What is strange is the reference on the firmware is for the PM9A1 Gen 3 yet the 9A1 is a Gen 4. The PM9A was a Gen 3 that came before the Gen 4 version.

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

[ejn63]

While the processor may support PCIe 4, the system manual states PCIe 3 support.

Given that this system is a simple refresh of the 9300, it's likely the mainboard was never redesigned to support PCIe 4 -- full Intel support for PCIe 4 awaits the release of the Alder Lake CPU platform -- slated for late 2021 or early 2022.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/xps-13-9310-laptop/docs

[szogye]

Thank you for your response. I did actually install this firmware yesterday and did notice that it says Gen 3 even though the PM9A1 is definitely a Gen 4 SSD according to Samsung.

What's even more puzzling is that the 2TB firmware says Gen 4:

Samsung PM9A1 PCIe Gen4 NVMe 2TB Solid-State Drive Firmware Update

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

[szogye]

Thank you for your response. I know what you mean but then how came others could achieve the Gen 4 speeds on a XPS 9310 with the Samsung 980 Pro that is the retail version of the PM9A1?

[ordnance]

I am having the same issue with the Samsung PM9A1 PCIe Gen4 SSD on a different machine - Alienware R10 Ryzen Edition Ryzen 9 5950X - CrystalDiskMark and Samsun Magician are both reporting Gen 3 speeds and are reading the card as PCIe Gen 3.0.

Any insight would be appreciated.

[ejn63]

According to the system documentation, that's what you should see - PCIe 3.0 speed or 32 G/s.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/alienware-aurora-r10-desktop/docs

Although the chipset is capable of PCIe 4.0 -- the system board is apparently not.

[Saltgrass]

What controller is running the drive?  It should be listed in the Device Manager near the bottom under storage controllers or maybe up in the IDE ATA/ATAPI section.

The folks running the 980s may have installed those drives in a different configuration.

[szogye]

Thanks for your response.

This is what I see under Storage Controller:

Not sure which one is running the drive.

[Saltgrass]

I can only guess what Dell is doing but they have not, in the past, run the NVMe drives with the normal NVMe controller but used one from Intel instead.  If they are doing that, it might limit the speed.  

Do you have Optane Memory installed?

My Samsung 980 Pro is running on a basic NVMe driver because Samsung did not write a driver for that drive..