XPS 13 9310 i7-1185G7 with Samsung PM9A1 PCIe Gen 4 SSD seeing only Gen 3 speeds

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

Thanks for your response.

This is what I see under Storage Controller:

Not sure which one is running the drive.

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..

My system came with "Intel Optane Memory and Storage Management" installed. even though I don't have Optane memory/storage.

Not sure if I could have it use the basic NVMe driver instead of the Intel one?

I would have to suggest you stay with what you have, for the time being..  Since I don't have that system, I cannot advise so perhaps others will get involved who can actually test any theories..

The fact you have the Intel driver installed, my be a sign unless you have a second drive that might use it.  But probably it is being used.. for that NVMe drive..

I only have one drive so like you said it is probably being used for the Samsung SSD.

Thank you for all the info you've shared.

Sorry for reviving an old post, incase anyone wondering, the it's probably the firmware or driver Dell uses on the PM9A1. I have a Samsung 980 pro 2TB as the secondary drive in my xps 15 9510, and it is running tat gen 4 x4 speed. I guess for some reason Dell decided to limit the PM9A1 to gen3 x4 speed.