Is VROC worth it?

[knotted]

I have seen all the problems people on this board have had with getting VROC to work on the Rampage boards. Special thanks to JustinThyme for all the info provided.
My question is, was it worth it? Is there a noticeable difference in boot times, game level loads, programs opening etc. Or is it only on large file transfers?
Web reviews are full of synthetic benchmarks, but that doesn't help much in real life.

[kcmcc]

I've given VROC a shot on my 9900x, TUF x299 Mark 1

hyper m.2 v1, 2tb 7600p x2 drives, bootable

I have 2 1080tis and the thunderbolt ex3 card as well, so using all PCIe lanes now.

When I did my first bench with crystal right after installing windows, I got 5737/703/2621/54 Read -- 3158/644/2866/135 Write on 1GB setting, now I'm lucky if I hit 4500 after installing a few programs. Wondering if it's a driver issue or something or it's just how it is.

Boot times seem slower than on a single nvme.

EDIT: After unlocking Ultimate Performance plan, I've now achieved 5055/450/2242/31 Read -- 2858/413/2491/52 on 8GB setting in CDM

Are there any magic settings I am missing perhaps in BIOS or windows or RST?

[Brighttail]

The only really noticeable increase you will see is seq read/write. Pretty much every thing else will suffer due to latency and the fact that VROC is actually slower than regular windows RAID. Boot up times are longer because it has to load up the VROC drivers.

[BlackhatEspeed]

So what you are saying is that with a 44 lane X CPU 4 Samsung 970 Pro M.2's wont RAID 0?

[Brighttail]

BlackhatEspeed wrote:
So what you are saying is that with a 44 lane X CPU 4 Samsung 970 Pro M.2's wont RAID 0?

Not as a boot drive, no. You can only make a boot drive using VROC.
You can only use VROC using specific INTEL drives. Samsung won't be recognized by the hardware/software properly to create a boot drive.

You can create a RAID 0 that is NOT a boot drive however but if you are going to do that, use Windows striping as it is faster than VROC.

[BlackhatEspeed]

Brighttail wrote:
Not as a boot drive, no. You can only make a boot drive using VROC.
You can only use VROC using specific INTEL drives. Samsung won't be recognized by the hardware/software properly to create a boot drive.

You can create a RAID 0 that is NOT a boot drive however but if you are going to do that, use Windows striping as it is faster than VROC.

Can you recommend an Intel M.2 to use with the riser cards for the Asus Rampage VI APEX?

[Brighttail]

BlackhatEspeed wrote:
Can you recommend an Intel M.2 to use with the riser cards for the Asus Rampage VI APEX?

For use of VROC? Intel new ones that are like 300GB, m.2 form factor (not sure of model number) will work but I'm not sure if they will work on the DIMM.2 for VROC. They didn't with the Rampage 6 Extreme and you had to use one of those hyper x16 cards or two Intel 900/905 drives.

[kathampy]

Brighttail wrote:
Not as a boot drive, no. You can only make a boot drive using VROC.
You can only use VROC using specific INTEL drives. Samsung won't be recognized by the hardware/software properly to create a boot drive.

You can create a RAID 0 that is NOT a boot drive however but if you are going to do that, use Windows striping as it is faster than VROC.

Does non-bootable non-Intel RAID 0 work without a key outside trial mode in RST? I assume the array must be created in RST and cannot be created from UEFI. I'm skeptical of such reports as they could be running in trial mode.

Disk Manager Striped Volumes don't support TRIM. Storage Spaces does.

[BlackhatEspeed]

kathampy wrote:
Does non-bootable non-Intel RAID 0 work without a key outside trial mode in RST? I assume the array must be created in RST and cannot be created from UEFI. I'm skeptical of such reports as they could be running in trial mode.

Disk Manager Striped Volumes don't support TRIM. Storage Spaces does.

RAID 0 works, but everything else requires the key, and honestly the key is so cheap it seems that this was a standard implementation for server hardware and they just left it on the board because it would have cost more to delete the option from the server framework.. and as far as servers are concerned VROC is .....

GOD LIKE.

[BlackhatEspeed]

Will 970 Pro Samsung Drives not work with a ASUS HYPER M.2 x16 Expansion Card?

[Brighttail]

BlackhatEspeed wrote:
Will 970 Pro Samsung Drives not work with a ASUS HYPER M.2 x16 Expansion Card?

They will work as individual drives or even in RAID 0,1,5,10 so long as it isn't a boot drive and you aren't trying to use VROC. I have two installed in a x8 slot and they work fine as non-boot drives.