CrystalDiskMark 'Run as administrator' increases benchmark speeds on WD Black NVMe

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The image below includes further details. Also, disabling UAC in Win10 (not recommended) produces the same result when running CrystalDiskMark normally.

Anyone know why there are such noticeable benchmark improvements in the 4KiB runs with ‘Run as administrator’ selected?

Thanks!

1104×864 142 KB

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Discovered the performance discrepancy is a result of Spectre/Meltdown security protocols. Switching my motherboards BIOS to a pre-Spectre/Meltdown revision improves speeds significantly in CrystalDiskMark benchmarks.

I ran some 3DMark Time Spy benchmarks with all setups and there was no performance difference across all revisions, so from a gaming perspective it has no impact. I was not able to test game load times.