Is NVME worth it?

Soldato
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So I've currently got a 500gb 950 (maybe 960) evo which is full and a 2tb spinning disc that's barely used any more and painfully slow for gaming off.

As I've just upgraded to a 9900k and a AORUS z390 master. I'm wondering if I'll see any benefits to jumping to nvme, especially as I'm doing a lot more gaming now.
 
Soldato
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Problem is this is a highly subjective question, only you can determine if it's worth it to you.

On paper NVMe is a colossal upgrade, over 2000MB reads compared to the 500MB of SATA3, however the reality is far less impressive. I got a 400GB NVMe drive when they first launched, and yes it is well over four times the transfer speed of my 480GB SATA3 Steam drive, and well over eight times the speed of my 480GB SATA2 Downloads/storage drive, however I only know that because it says so on the specs sheet and the benchmark apps.

As far as real world use goes, the SATA3-NVMe upgrade is far less noticeable than SATA2-SATA3 was, which in turn was less noticeable than HDD-SSD was.

Yes Windows does boot fractionally faster, yes games/applications do load faster but the difference over SATA3 isn't really that noticeable if at all in some cases. Depending on what you play it could even be worthless, I.E I can load into a World of Tanks or Heroes of the Storm match faster but that just means I get more of the countdown timer or have to spend longer waiting for other players to load lol.
 
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As far as real world use goes, the SATA3-NVMe upgrade is far less noticeable than SATA2-SATA3 was, which in turn was less noticeable than HDD-SSD was.

That is because you no longer touch the hard drive bottleneck, so the bottleneck in the system is transfered to other places, like the main memory and central processor.

If you go back to the bottleneck, you will see that colossal upgrade, if you will:

 
Soldato
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If you go back to the bottleneck, you will see that colossal upgrade, if you will
True but unless you sit around transferring DVD/BR .ISOs between drives for fun then it's still not something that will impact games. Hell it doesn't even make a perceivable difference to most workloads.
 
Soldato
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If you go back to the bottleneck, you will see that colossal upgrade, if you will:

Real world it's about a ~5% improvement on general game loading times from a SATA SSD. That's not colossal.

What would you do with that extra second you save loading Tomb Raider? :D

Video editing or running multiple VMs you'll see more benefit. Gaming, no.
 
Soldato
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game loading times are i/o and cpu constrained, once i/o hits a few hundred meg sec and above tho the cpu becomes the bottleneck so in most games if not all games, a nvme ssd vs a fast sata ssd you will not see a noticeable difference as seen in that youtube video.

For video editing and what not it may be a different story, but for a standard desktop/gaming user a sata ssd is good enough.

Add to that as well I think installing a nvme ssd in a built case is probably more hassle than sliding a ssd into a sata bay. Which will probably run cooler in that bay.
 
Associate
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NVMe is a protocol designed for NAND flash and it's access times...AHCI is more oriented towards spinning platters...The purist in me says use the tool for the job, and go for NVMe :) but you do pay the premium for it.
 
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Was shopping around for ssd/nvme to drop into an external caddy the other night. Looks like price wise, there's not much difference between them now than when they 1st came out. If nvme is only a few quid more then I'd say it's a no brainer.

I run a pair of 1tb nvme, less cables/clutter in the case.
 
Soldato
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Just my 2p after jumping to NVMe with a 500GB 970 Evo, good £100 spend, 227GB extra storage, it boots up faster, about 3 seconds from turning laptop on to booting into Windows, Cities Skylines seems to be a bit smoother / slightly quicker to load too.
 
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I use one in my dev workstation and makes a big differences for sql workloads and for virtual machines, I also have one in my gaming rig and the difference is speed is less noticeable
 
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The biggest jump is from HDD to SATA SSD. However, if you are playing games, I would say NVME is worth it, it is super fast, and those few seconds will add up!
 
OcUK Staff
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Hi there

Well this deal is epic for a 1TB Samsung 860 EVO for those who favour capacity over performance but still understand this is still truly a crazy fast SSD:


Samsung 1TB 860 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 64 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-76E1T0B/EU) @ £139.99 inc VAT https://www.overclockers.co.uk/Sams...olid-State-Drive-MZ-76E1T0B-EU-HD-234-SA.html



MZ-76E1T0B/EU, The 860 EVO is the advanced consumer SSD powered by 3D V-NAND technology that maximizes everyday computing experiences with optimized performance and enhanced reliability.



Only £139.99 inc VAT.

ORDER NOW






But for those who do want the NVME edge, then also this deal is fantastic and one of the very best NVME drives:


Samsung 970 EVO Polaris 500GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive @ £109.99 inc VAT https://www.overclockers.co.uk/Sams...-3.0-x4-NVMe-Solid-State-Drive-HD-23N-SA.html



MZ-V7E500BW, 500GB Samsung 970 EVO, M.2 (2280) PCIe 3.0 (x4) NVMe SSD, Phoenix, MLC V-NAND, 3400MB/s Read, 2300MB/s Write, 370k/450k



Only £109.99 inc VAT.

ORDER NOW
 
Associate
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Pretty much everybody else in this thread disagrees with that though......
Yeah, which is fair! From my experience (and some friends too) with the 970 pro, and the games I play it is faster, it is seconds like I said but to me it's noticeable. However, I think it does boil down to what ubersonic said, whether those seconds are worth it is very subjective.
 
Soldato
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Yeah, which is fair! From my experience (and some friends too) with the 970 pro, and the games I play it is faster, it is seconds like I said but to me it's noticeable. However, I think it does boil down to what ubersonic said, whether those seconds are worth it is very subjective.

Have you watched the two videos posted 10th November. It's a couple of seconds in most cases, for a markup of at least a third.

When @Gibbo is posting deals that good on the 860EVO it's really worth thinking twice. I'd opt for more capacity or invest the savings in other components like a GPU upgrade.
 
Soldato
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If you have lots of spare cash or your usage scenario will take advantage then the NVMe is the way to go but if budget is any kind of reckoning or your just gaming then I'd get the 1TB Samsung.
 
Soldato
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These evo's have dropped a fair bit it seems.

Even I got one (sadly not from ocuk, the offer was too late). I will trust samsung 3d TLC now, since the 850 evo and newer, reliability reports seem comparable to their MLC ssd's. It will be replacing a WD black 640 gig hdd, so extra 300 or so gig capacity and faster i/o as a bonus.

I do have a WD red 4tb on my todo list Gibbo, probably expecting to buy in Jan 2018. So if you have those and get them down to around the £120-130 mark around that time I will grab from OCUK. That will replace a samsung 750gig hdd.
 
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