Western Digital will update the firmware to resolve WD Black SN850’s performance

It was reported a few days ago that if the user installs the WD_BLACK SN850 to the indirect M.2 slot of the X570 motherboard, that is, the M.2 slot of the X570 chipset, there will be significant performance degradation. The main impact is the write performance, and there may even be a performance loss of more than 40%, while the read performance is relatively normal, at most about 10%.

Image: Western Digital

The non-direct connection method will have a slight impact on performance. In addition to possible bandwidth reasons, the delay of the non-direct connection method will also be higher. However, under normal circumstances, the performance difference of a general solid-state drive will not exceed 10% at most, but the performance difference of the WD_BLACK SN850 on the X570 motherboard indirectly connected to the M.2 slot is too large, which is abnormal.

According to a report by TomsHardware, according to the official Western Digital survey results, the reason is that the payload size (MPS) is configured to 128 bytes and the write performance decreases because this parameter determines the maximum transaction layer packet (TLP) entering the PCIe controller. Its low value will weaken the performance of relatively high-performance products, and can only be forced to run at a low value, resulting in huge performance loss.