Would I see an improvement? M.2 SSD swap.

Firegod

Firegod

Firegod

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Hey

So I have a B550 mobo at the moment and I'm running x2 M.2 SSDs. In the first slot I'm running PCI GEN4 but in the second M.2 slot I'm running PCI GEN3 (4 lanes). I currently have a 2TB WD SN550 NVMe SSD in the secondary M.2 slot which is used solely for my Games.

I was reading that the max bandwidth of PCI GEN3 with 4 lanes is 4GB/s. The SN550 has Sequential Read Performance 2600MB/s and Sequential Write Performance 1800MB/s. Does that therefore mean if I were to "upgrade" to a 2TB WD SN850 NVMe (for example), that I'd see some improvement in Read/Write performance? I'm worried if I put the SN850 (a PCIe GEN4 device) in a GEN3 M.2 slot, I would be cutting its legs off and crippling any performance gains? Apparently the SN850 has Sequential Read Performance 7000MB/s and Sequential Write Performance 5100MB/s - but I'm guessing that is when using PCIe GEN4. :)

Is there any info online of showing the speed differences when a GEN4 M.2 is ran in a slower configuration?

The SN550 I have is 2 years old, nothing wrong with it, but wondered if I could eek out some more performance. Or should I bite the bullet and go for an X570S board? :)

Cheers.
 
Assuming you're just gaming, there's only a few games that show more than a few seconds difference in loading time, so I wouldn't bother. When you next buy a PC it might be a different story.
 
You'd need a stop watch and really good reaction times to notice any difference.

I haven't noticed any impactful difference between my system using a 10 year old samsung 830 sata drive and a PCIE4 WD SN850 for Windows or games
 
Disco_P said:
You'd need a stop watch and really good reaction times to notice any difference.

I haven't noticed any impactful difference between my system using a 10 year old samsung 830 sata drive and a PCIE4 WD SN850 for Windows or games
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This. Couldn't notice any difference between Gen 3 and Gen 4. Didn't notice much between a SATA SSD and Gen 3 NVMe either.

If you're moving huge amount of data regularly then that sequential speed boost can be useful but for gaming it's not going to be worth it.
 
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