The M2 slots do not share bandwidth with the PCIe graphics slots, they go through the PCH controller.
I have a different board but still z270 chipset and running 2 1080 strix cards in SLI and a 960 pro M2 with zero conflicts.
Problem while you can configure NVMe in raid zero its useless to do so as you are restricted by the DMI bottleneck. Already did it and went back to a single M2 drive as it just wasnt worth a marginal gain in writes and no gain at all in reads.
Right now the only boards capable of getting full speed of two or more NVMe drives in raid 0 is the X99 chipset. There is still the inherent issue that if you put M2s on PCIe lanes directly to the CPU you cant boot from them.
The 960 pros are stupid fast by themselves as a single drive. Unless you spend day after day transferring files to and from the drives (will cause a short life anyhow) you wont even realize the speed of the latest generation single drive much less raid 0. The only place Ive noticed any change at all is synthetic bench tests. Real world applications see nothing. So for a lot of money all you obtain is bragging rights in Crystal marks drive test.
I have a different board but still z270 chipset and running 2 1080 strix cards in SLI and a 960 pro M2 with zero conflicts.
Problem while you can configure NVMe in raid zero its useless to do so as you are restricted by the DMI bottleneck. Already did it and went back to a single M2 drive as it just wasnt worth a marginal gain in writes and no gain at all in reads.
Right now the only boards capable of getting full speed of two or more NVMe drives in raid 0 is the X99 chipset. There is still the inherent issue that if you put M2s on PCIe lanes directly to the CPU you cant boot from them.
The 960 pros are stupid fast by themselves as a single drive. Unless you spend day after day transferring files to and from the drives (will cause a short life anyhow) you wont even realize the speed of the latest generation single drive much less raid 0. The only place Ive noticed any change at all is synthetic bench tests. Real world applications see nothing. So for a lot of money all you obtain is bragging rights in Crystal marks drive test.
2 sata III SSDs will get you what you would expect, 1000MB/s seq read or about double that of a single drive. Im running a pair of 1TB 850 EVO drives in raid 0 for media and storage along with a 960 pro by itself for the OS and apps
JustinThyme wrote:
2 sata III SSDs will get you what you would expect, 1000MB/s seq read or about double that of a single drive. Im running a pair of 1TB 850 EVO drives in raid 0 for media and storage along with a 960 pro by itself for the OS and apps
Nice...I'm rocking that exact pair of EVO's in my rig...except my OS drive is a 500GB Crucial SATA m.2.
Sad that the Z97I-PLUS doesn't support NVMe M.2.
I just itching to upgrade this baby with the Strix Z270G and a couple of 1080 Ti. The board design is just beautiful without the traditional ROG red/black theme and I think it would look sick in my Ebony & Ivory build.
