PCI-e 5.0 is dumb

[JollyJamma]

Most people would be fine with any SSD, even PCI-e 3.0 or SATA and I’ll stand by that hot take as per the loading times of video games in this video

If you’re a data scientist and have huge data sets of multiple terabytes, then yes, faster PCI-e is better but otherwise you are wasting your money.

 

[dave28]

Realised that sometime back in 2012 i think, it was always the price and capacity that was the problem. Not the speed which smoked the fastest hard drives that we were using.

 

[Hotwired]

You can still benefit when(if) you clone/transfer/backup but games aren't the place to flex the almighty sustained transfer speeds.

Still got an older pc using an ancient ssd, falls over when transferring files but it's just fine for quickly loading up all kinds of older games.

 

[JollyJamma]

You can still benefit when(if) you clone/transfer/backup but games aren't the place to flex the almighty sustained transfer speeds.

Still got an older pc using an ancient ssd, falls over when transferring files but it's just fine for quickly loading up all kinds of older games.

What?

 

[ATIorNvidia]

They're useful for video editing or other workloads that take advantage of the sequential speeds I guess. More general use cases are bottlenecked by random read/write performance (RND4K Q1T1 in benchmarks) and have been since like gen 3.

 

[JollyJamma]

They're useful for video editing or other workloads that take advantage of the sequential speeds I guess. More general use cases are bottlenecked by random read/write performance (RND4K Q1T1 in benchmarks) and have been since like gen 3.

So is that more dependent on the memory controller? Would it not be better to use enterprise SSDs which are typically more durable and with higher I/O performance?

 

[aaronyuri]

So is that more dependent on the memory controller? Would it not be better to use enterprise SSDs which are typically more durable and with higher I/O performance?

If you're doing video editing casually, enterprise SSDs would be pretty overkill.

On the general premise of the topic, I agree. No hardcore gamer needs some PCI-E 5.0 NVMe SSD.

 

[ATIorNvidia]

So is that more dependent on the memory controller? Would it not be better to use enterprise SSDs which are typically more durable and with higher I/O performance?

Mostly yeah, NAND access is inherently not that fast in terms of latency, along with other things like caching, wear leveling etc that add addtional layers of latency compared to say, Optane SSDs with 3D Xpoint memory (expensive).

Enterprise SSD's that are SATA/PCI-e M.2 aren't much difference except they might have better binned NAND and better firmware tuning.

 

[aaronyuri]

Enterprise SSD's that are SATA/PCI-e M.2 aren't much difference except they might have better binned NAND and better firmware tuning.

Longevity is where enterprise/data centre grade shine. We have all flash SANs that have written thousands of TBs and not a single SSD has failed.

The performance benefits of NVMe over SATA are realised everyday in data centres, especially when it comes to IOPS.

 

[ATIorNvidia]

Longevity is where enterprise/data centre grade shine. We have all flash SANs that have written thousands of TBs and not a single SSD has failed.

The performance benefits of NVMe over SATA are realised everyday in data centres, especially when it comes to IOPS.

Longevity/endurance and better data retention etc is quite literally what better binning does. The physical NAND is the same unless we're talking about type, and most enterprise grade SSDs are no longer MLC, they're TLC now, just like high end consumer SSD's.

Obviously NVME drives are faster than SATA, you don't need data centre workloads to make that conclusion. I was comparing like for like, e.g SATA consumer vs SATA enterprise.

 

[aaronyuri]

Longevity/endurance and better data retention etc is quite literally what better binning does. The physical NAND is the same unless we're talking about type, and most enterprise grade SSDs are no longer MLC, they're TLC now, just like high end consumer SSD's.

I never said it wasn't. I was agreeing with this section and providing a real world example - not sure why your reply is a tad condescending, TBH.

Obviously NVME drives are faster than SATA, you don't need data centre workloads to make that conclusion. I was comparing like for like, e.g SATA consumer vs SATA enterprise.

I disagree. Sure, benchmarks can easily demonstrate the difference, but in everyday use there is little perceptible difference to a user for NVMe over SATA. Especially for your average gamer (going with JollyJamma's initial theme).

You do need an enterprise workload to truly appreciate how much faster NVMe is over SATA in real world performance. Few get to experience that, which is the general premise of this thread that super fast NVMe SSDs are wasted on average home PCs.

 

[ATIorNvidia]

I disagree. Sure, benchmarks can easily demonstrate the difference, but in everyday use there is little perceptible difference to a user for NVMe over SATA. Especially for your average gamer (going with JollyJamma's initial theme).

You do need an enterprise workload to truly appreciate how much faster NVMe is over SATA in real world performance. Few get to experience that, which is the general premise of this thread that super fast NVMe SSDs are wasted on average home PCs.

I'm convinced I'm being trolled. Have a nice day, mate.