XPS 15 9520 --M.2 NVMe Upgrade Performance

What happens if you benchmark just one drive (i.e., remove the non-OS drive)?

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@Tiny_Tech wrote:

 

1. The 2 TB Kingston Fury Renegade drives list performance numbers 7300 read, 7000 write, which are pretty impressive.

2. My Dell, however, after running CrystalDiskMark, showed some pretty poor numbers:  5224 Read / 5967 Write.

3. Windows setting was on "Best Performance".  

4. Why is my "Write" speed faster than my "Read" speed?

5. Why are the numbers so low overall -- nowhere near the advertised 7300 / 7000.

6. Also, this is on a clean install of Windows 11 Pro, fully updated, and I also installed and ran Dell Command Update until I had all updates installed.

 

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1. Sounds a bit inflated. Is that a standard 4x4 NVMe SSD ?

2. My (stock, Dell pre-installed) Samsung PM9A1 512gb NVMe SSD -
Crystal DiskMark speed:  6874=R/W=5022 .
Personally, I thought that was pretty good. Seems like appropriate 4x4-class speed to me.

3. Where is that exactly ?

4. Not really. Compare as percentages. 

5. Maybe see what benchmark (and settings) they were using. Were you plugged-in to AC-Adapter?

6. Are you in RAID mode or AHCI? That might be the difference ? I've heard that AHCI can provide slightly better speeds, however ... I've never really seen or measured that in actual machines. 

My XPS-15 (9520)
- Intel i7-12700H, 32GB-DDR5 (2x16GB SoDIMM in Dual-Channel),
- Firmware and BIOS v1.4.0 (6-9-2022) is installed
- Storage Mode: RAID (and Intel-OMaSM v19.x is installed in Windows-11).
- Windows-11 Pro 64-bit v.21H2 (Dell Factory Pre-Loaded and Fully Updated)
- Cold-Boots to fully-loaded and usable Windows-11 Desktop in under 15 seconds.

Edited

1. Yes, this is the Kingston Fury Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2.

2. Notice that your read speed is higher than your write speed, as I believe it should be.  I just removed my non-OS drive, and ran CrystalDiskMark again on the C drive, and came up with 5566 read / 6382 write.  Seems odd to me that the read speed is less than the write speed, and also that the numbers aren´t even close to 7000.

3. Look for the battery symbol on the taskbar.  Right click on it.  You will see "Power and sleep settings".  Click on that.  Look at Power Mode, and there you will see a drop down menu:  Best power efficiency / Balanced / Best performance.

4. In all of my CrystalDiskMark tests, my write speed is always higher than my read speed.

5. I wrote to Kingston, and I have received a reply.  They have requested that I send them info off the SSD stickers (Part number, revision number), as well as screenshots using Crystal Disk Mark (CDM) Version 5.2.1.  After receiving my info, they will forward my service request to the technical department.  (See ***note below)

6. I´m in AHCI. 

My XPS-15 (9520)
- Intel i9-12900HK, 64GB-DDR5 (2x32GB SoDIMM in Dual-Channel),
- Firmware and BIOS v1.4.0 (6-9-2022) is installed
- Storage Mode: AHCI/NVMe.
- Windows-11 Pro 64-bit v.21H2 (Build 22000.856) - Clean install, fully updated, as well as all drivers, firmware, software per Dell Command Update.

***note - I forgot to add:  Yes, I have tried using CrystalDiskMark both plugged in, and on battery power.  Same results.

So I have some good news.  My mind wouldn´t let me rest until I figured this out, so today I made a list of things to try.....

First of all, I´d like to say that anyone who is doing a clean install of Windows 11 or 10, as of today, on the XPS 15 9520, you should be aware that the installation media does NOT contain the Wi-Fi driver, so be prepared to have that on hand if you are doing a clean install.

I decided to look at the driver that Windows 11 ultimately did install after all the updates.

Then I wondered what would happen if I did a clean install of Windows 10..... Benchmark was still slow after the install (5000 / 6000).  After fully updating Windows and Dell Command Update, the driver version changed, and still 5000 / 6000 benchmarks.

I decided to put the original SSD that came with the laptop back in, and put my Kingston Fury Renegade as drive #2.  Switched back to RAID mode.  Checked driver version, it was different.  Ran CrystalDiskMark v5.2.1 (version recommended by Kingston) and guess what? 

Dell (Samsung) SSD = 6758 / 4917

Kingston Fury Renegade 2 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD = 7090 / 6790

Obviously the Dell XPS 15 9520 should be in RAID mode for better NVMe SSD performance, as suggested above by Tesla1856. 

This is a good article: https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/9520-SSD-speed-drops-and-hibernate-stops-working-after-switching/m-p/8217335/highlight/true#M99253

XPS_Man wrote: "About the speeds, there is a reason that Dell sets SATA mode to RAID for their machines. They perform better with Intel Rapid storage drivers. Even 4500 MBPS is not bad and capable of holding any thing you can throw at it."

So, my next plan is to do a clean install of Windows, but this time having Storage SATA/NVMe Operation set with RAID turned ON.

Incidentally, when doing a clean install of Windows 11 on the XPS 15 9520, in addition to needing to have the Wi-Fi driver handy (as mentioned above, it is NOT included in the Windows 11 Installation Media as of today), one must also have the correct drivers to enable RAID.  I think the solution is in this article:

https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/support/articles/000057787/memory-and-storage/intel-optane-memory.html

If anyone has anything else to add, I´d sure be glad to hear it.  I´m going to give Tesla1856 the credit for solving this one (and me a little tiny bit of credit for proving it).

Thanks all for your help!

Tiny Tech