Humour me... 'Fast' PCI-E 4.0 drives...

mrk said:
I have a 3500MB/s gen 3 1TB, 7000MB/s gen 4 2TB, 7000MB/s gen 4 8TB and a SATA 8TB, so 550MB/s.

Between them for normal use inc gaming, there's little to tell them apart if you blindfolded someone and told them which seems faster to load etc.

90% of games I have played barely breach 250MB/s read speeds when a game is loading, and in the few games that state a minimum req of a PCIe SSD, I have seen around 1500MB/s read speed give or take (Dead Space remake), which is still well below gen 3 specs.

You also don't need Direct Storage to leverage PCIe bandwidth, as evidenced by games like Dead Space remake which load the moment you click the mouse button to your save location in the game, with no further "loading" throughout the rest of the game.

Windows does not boot any faster either, and applications might load slightly faster on the faster gens due to the slight bump in random 4k reads, but again without measuring, it would all feel the same.
Click to expand...
Cheers mate!
 
  • Like
Reactions: mrk
mattyfez said:
Yeah, it's a bit like... if you forgive the brutal analogy...

Having a 5 foot wide sewer pipe, but if you're only pouring a trickle of water through it, the water isn't going to arrive any faster.
Click to expand...
yeah I get you, I just thought in this day and age having pci-e 4.0/5.0, mass amounts of ram and vram paired with fast cpu/gpu it'd be stupid quick and benefit from the added speeds, it is mental that a sata3 ssd is not very far behind a 7000mb/sec pci-e 4.0 m.2 for gaming load times etc...

I get the whole but if you're transferring files from drive to drive but that's irrelevant in gaming usage which is all this rig is turned on and used for. shame.

I guess I was just hoping for a bigger leap in tech since my last q66 stepping first gen quad core - last rig I built, but have run macs since but obviously don't game on them and have multiple consoles.
 
keef247 said:
yeah I get you, I just thought in this day and age having pci-e 4.0/5.0, mass amounts of ram and vram paired with fast cpu/gpu it'd be stupid quick and benefit from the added speeds, it is mental that a sata3 ssd is not very far behind a 7000mb/sec pci-e 4.0 m.2 for gaming load times etc...

I get the whole but if you're transferring files from drive to drive but that's irrelevant in gaming usage which is all this rig is turned on and used for. shame.

I guess I was just hoping for a bigger leap in tech since my last q66 stepping first gen quad core - last rig I built, but have run macs since but obviously don't game on them and have multiple consoles.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd go for a decent gen4 Nvme drive as a system drive, but for storage, or even a steam games drive, any SSD will be fine as long as it's not a bargain basement ali-express special...

...don't worry about it too much, put the extra money into CPU/RAM/GPU if you are building a new system or upgrading an older one.
 
mattyfez said:
Yeah, I'd go for a decent gen4 Nvme drive as a system drive, but for storage, or even a steam games drive, any SSD will be fine as long as it's not a bargain basement ali-express special...

...don't worry about it too much, put the extra money into CPU/RAM/GPU if you are building a new system or upgrading an older one.
Click to expand...
It's going to be my only drive mate as it's purely used for gaming, so screw it I'll just go ott and get the 7XXXmb/sec one. I've got everything else bar the psu/ram/gpu which I'll be getting in the next 2-6 weeks, so ready to rock haha, cheers for your help mate.
 
keef247 said:
Tempting but for £15 more elsewhere delivered next day I can get a 2TB Corsair MP600 PRO NH, M.2 (2280) PCIe 4.0 (x4) NVMe SSD, 7000MB/s Read, 5700MB/s Write, 1000k/1200k IOPS
Click to expand...
I see the SN770 can be had for under £110 now. Sustained speeds look impressive but more most use cases it will never be used. That said if you're happy to spend the extra it won't hurt.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/wd-black-sn770-1-tb/
 
Not sure if this warrants its own thread but given fast PCIe 4 is the topic, how's this for fast lmao :d

 
Last edited:
mattyfez said:
We're gonna need longer motherboards lol

Even most ATX boards are maxxed out space wise with gpus being so fat these days.
Click to expand...
More likely we'll get a reversible ATX standard or something, along with a new 'slightly thicker case' where you'll have the nvme slots on the rear (it's already a thing on some itx)....thinner gpu's would be nicer though lol
 
keef247 said:
In the end I got a Corsair MP600 Pro XT with the posh OTT spec massive heatsink for the price of the same model without the heatsink - so £130 delivered next day... So couldn't really say no considering the spec/lifespan!
Click to expand...
Yes, prices have really dropped. I bought SN770's for a gaming build, very snappy on a W11 build. The "better" drives are so cheap now you may as well buy those.
 
Troezar said:
Yes, prices have really dropped. I bought SN770's for a gaming build, very snappy on a W11 build. The "better" drives are so cheap now you may as well buy those.
Click to expand...
Yeah 2TB and the mad spec that mine has along with the proven not to throttle even after nailing it for hours heat sink etc was a no brainer. way better than any of the crappy heat sinks I've seen that you can buy, and I didn't want one of the ones with a silly fan on that'd end up failing knowing my luck.
 
keef247 said:
Yeah 2TB and the mad spec that mine has along with the proven not to throttle even after nailing it for hours heat sink etc was a no brainer. way better than any of the crappy heat sinks I've seen that you can buy, and I didn't want one of the ones with a silly fan on that'd end up failing knowing my luck.
Click to expand...
Yes, I just use the motherboard heatsinks and gaming doesn't really put a huge sustained demand on the drives. If I was doing a lot large data transfers I'd have gone for another option. One interesting thing I noticed is that some of the DRAM drives can slow to a relative crawl if the cache gets filled up.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom