Not caring about benchmarks is an interesting stance to take in the PC hardware world. If the majority of hardware enthusiasts based their purchasing decisions on how a system "feels" according to a dozen random forum users I'd imagine a lot of folk would be using a basic quad core system with standard SATA SSD and 8GB of DDR3-1600 . . . 
I upgraded a 250MB Crucial MX200 SATA3 SSD to a Samsung 256GB SM961 NVMe unit. After selling the Crucial SSD the upgrade cost me £50 smackers. I did find the NVMe benchmarks compelling enough to make the decision to buy as I know the storage system is currently the slowest thing in my system and although the performance difference is only slightly better in average workload situations the NVMe advantages are very noticeable once you get into multimedia content production, loading up massive audio/video files for editing and saving is a much more fluid experience as your flow is not interrupted as much by a loading/saving bar.
I'd say NVMe fits nicely next to a Core i7 processor in a multimedia system and the user that benefits from a hyper threaded CPU in their workload would also benefit from the huge speed increase that NVMe offers.
Overall the system feels a bit snappier in general use feeling like a -20ms reduction in memory latency, if someone is a tweaker they will notice that slight improvement. I'm not sure how NVMe offers this slightly snappier feel when used as a system drive but I guess the faster random access to swap files and other OS stuff helps.
Web surfing is also a little more responsive with pages loading quicker and all software installation is faster.
There is no doubt in my mind that NVMe SSD is technically superior to older SATA SSD and that if both technologies were the same price almost everyone would go NVMe, however as both technologies are not priced the same I gather the point of these conversations is to work out if the premium is worth it . . .
For a user who is into content production and can justify spending extra on faster memory and as many cores as possible on their CPU then NVMe fits the bill nicely but if all a user does is browse the internet, play angry birds and write simple office documents then of course it's not worth paying the NVMe premium which IMHO is still a bit much for most people to justify.
I'd say the NVMe "effect" is worth about a £15-£20 premium for most "average" folk and about £30 to the Multimedia Content producer so the current prices are still too high.
I don't have any regrets apart from a £20 early adopters tax, the Samsung NVMe drive has performed flawlessly the past few months and I hope the NVMe drives become more competitively priced so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of the latest technology . . .
I upgraded a 250MB Crucial MX200 SATA3 SSD to a Samsung 256GB SM961 NVMe unit. After selling the Crucial SSD the upgrade cost me £50 smackers. I did find the NVMe benchmarks compelling enough to make the decision to buy as I know the storage system is currently the slowest thing in my system and although the performance difference is only slightly better in average workload situations the NVMe advantages are very noticeable once you get into multimedia content production, loading up massive audio/video files for editing and saving is a much more fluid experience as your flow is not interrupted as much by a loading/saving bar.
I'd say NVMe fits nicely next to a Core i7 processor in a multimedia system and the user that benefits from a hyper threaded CPU in their workload would also benefit from the huge speed increase that NVMe offers.
Overall the system feels a bit snappier in general use feeling like a -20ms reduction in memory latency, if someone is a tweaker they will notice that slight improvement. I'm not sure how NVMe offers this slightly snappier feel when used as a system drive but I guess the faster random access to swap files and other OS stuff helps.
Web surfing is also a little more responsive with pages loading quicker and all software installation is faster.
There is no doubt in my mind that NVMe SSD is technically superior to older SATA SSD and that if both technologies were the same price almost everyone would go NVMe, however as both technologies are not priced the same I gather the point of these conversations is to work out if the premium is worth it . . .
For a user who is into content production and can justify spending extra on faster memory and as many cores as possible on their CPU then NVMe fits the bill nicely but if all a user does is browse the internet, play angry birds and write simple office documents then of course it's not worth paying the NVMe premium which IMHO is still a bit much for most people to justify.
I'd say the NVMe "effect" is worth about a £15-£20 premium for most "average" folk and about £30 to the Multimedia Content producer so the current prices are still too high.
I don't have any regrets apart from a £20 early adopters tax, the Samsung NVMe drive has performed flawlessly the past few months and I hope the NVMe drives become more competitively priced so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of the latest technology . . .
