Anyone upgraded from SSD to Nvme?

[Penfold101]

It's definitely possible to see more than 2
I have 3 and can use all of them
And can actually add 2 more because the motherboard has a dimm.2 module
So a total of 5 of them
Though yes bifurcation would put my gpu at x8 not x16
But there's no real life issues with it at x8 anyway
Only 8 lanes available may be a limitation of your particular set up
There's cpu lanes and also chipset lanes
It does make reading your motherboard manual a lot more necessary
If you want to start using more than 1 nvme drive though

Yes, there are other configurations possible if you have the right hardware. I was meaning for the Hyper X card in particular, that you'd have to forgo the GPU to have any more than 8 lanes available to the card itself as the full setup needs 16 lanes which is the maximum the CPU gives the PCI slots.

As far as I know the standard setup is 16 lanes total from the PCI slots to the CPU - using both physical 16x slots will automatically split both to 8x (as you say, 8x is fine even for the current generation GPU's) which gives you 8 for the NVMe drives on the Hyper card, which is 4 each.

There are 4 other lanes dedicated to the closest M2 socket, which will be your OS drive normally, and then the final 4 for the chipset. This will handle all other devices including the DIMM.2 and other drives/sata connections with it's own number of lanes (28 on the latest Intel chipset) which will change the speeds they an run at.

The final total is 24 lanes to the CPU, which is the same on AMD and Intel unless you go to the high end like Threadripper.

I think we're saying the same things, just in a different way...

 

[rumple9]

Update: I've been reluctant to get an Nvme due to people saying there's little real world difference over an SSD. Indeed many people on this thread have said the same thing.

Anyway I got a good deal on a 2tb WD SN770 Nvme at the weekend and I'm blown away as to how fast it is compared to my old SSD. For example windows 11 now boots in 6 seconds. Also in elder Scrolls online travelling between wayshines used to take 10 seconds, now it takes 2 seconds, same with switching between characters. Not had chance to try other games yet but I'm happy with it

 

[Orcvader]

Definitely helps with Windows and large games, but for smaller games and general apps I saw no difference. It's mainly a speed boost vs the two, both have near instant access times while HDD's seek times is what made them feel more considerably slower.

 

[eddiew]

Little late to the thread, but...

HDD to SATA SSD was very significant; things got 7-10x faster by my timing.

SATA SSD to Samsung 960 Pro nvme... like yes? But not vastly. Boot and hibernate are a bit faster I think, but I do those 1-2x per day, it's no biggie. I can't saturate this drive. I've had it for I guess 5 years now, and there is still nothing properly challenges it. With something like 3000mb/s read and nearly the same write, I'm mostly capped by what applications can do with data when its fed to them that quickly. Autosave pauses seem to be about turning what's in memory into a file, not about writing the file to disk.

That said, I love the compact format of m.2. When 4tb becomes affordable, I am inclined to swap out my 500gb m.2, 500gb SATA, and 4tb hdd for a single m.2 drive.

Edit: oh, 5 years 3 months... my faithful 960 may actually have passed warranty. I guess that is a fair time to consider a replacement.

 

[IT Troll]

Comparing my own SATA and NVMe in the Direct Storage demo. Now we just need games to use it...

 

[rumple9]

Oh yes Eddie - hibernate - forgot about that. Couple of times I've come home and PC is instant on, and I've thought "That's odd" then it occurred to me after it was the NVME

 

[eddiew]

Oh yes Eddie - hibernate - forgot about that. Couple of times I've come home and PC is instant on, and I've thought "That's odd" then it occurred to me after it was the NVME

Tbh, I've been using hibernate by default ever since my first sata SSD. I've always got multiple things running and I lose track if they aren't as they were when I went to bed

But come to think of it, wake from hibernate might be one of the places I've really noticed sata vs nvme. The post screen can last longer than the startup spinner, even with 32gb memory to repopulate. It's not quite as convenient as an Android device that never seems to need rebooting and turns on with a fingerprint, but it's getting better.

 

[Glanza]

No major difference in game load times that you'd notice sat in front of both, once you're on a SSD or higher the real world feel drops significantly. Some programs make use of the additional speed like Lightroom

 

[Major774]

Not a massive difference when I switched to a full NVME set up. But the advantage of running less cables was my goal, makes a SFF build so much cleaner.

 

[FredFlint]

Going from fast SATA SSD to 256gb NVME was not that noticeable for most things but after using it for several years I needed more space so moved to a 750gb SATA SSD, the difference was noticeable, to the point that I moved back to 512gb NVME. Also, the drives I use are limited to 4x gen 2 using a PCI-e Card adapter as my MB only has one gen 3 m.2 slot and I use that for a 2TB games drive. I would not use a SATA SSD for the OS or Games drive.

 

[mrk]

Did you notice any real difference in games and apps?

Thinking of upgrading my old 120gb Sata 3 ssd (450 read /450 write) to 2TB pcie3 NVME (3500 read /3000 write).

Currently I use the SSD just as my windows boot drive but I was thinking of getting the NVME to put windows and multiplayer games (FPS & MMO's) on

Yes, from an Intel 730 series 480GB Skulltrail SATA to a Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB.

No difference in games/general Windows use but specific apps that leverage the much higher iops, lower latency and increased read/write bandwidth did see a noticeable boost. Lightroom for example the Develop module flicking left and right between RAW images is much quicker. Compressing/decompressing large volumes of photos is also much quicker on the NVMe.

Granted the 970 Evo Plus is only gen 3, but that just goes to show how even a gen 3 is considerably quicker and it is noticeable for specific things where the extra bandwidth and lower latency is leveraged properly.

You will notice zero difference in normal day to day things like booting up from cold, browsing the web, consuming media and gaming - Until Direct Storage is utilised in games in which case you will need an NVMe to make use of that technology.

Keep in mind a SATA SSD will only ever have a max read/write typically around 550MB/s. If you're regularly shifting large amounts of data, or are a creative, then you will notice the difference. Even the simple task of unzipping a large download is noticeably faster on the NVMe.

I will be upgrading to a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro few weeks after they launch too (launch prices are always £lol with Samsung) - That will be my final OS drive upgrade for a long while and will be teh first time I have bought an OS drive that sits way at the top of retty much every benchmark so am looking forward to seeing how that further improves my productivity usage.