Does it make sense to use an M.2 NVMe drive for gaming? I remember when the transition was made from HDDs to SSDs that the best "performance" upgrade a user could notice was the shorter load times and possibly elminiating micro-stuttering (if it was present in the first place) due to the quick read times from an SSD. However, it did nothing at all for framerates or anything else. I'm guessing this is still true for M.2 NVMe drives?

I was just thinking if I should get one but then realized it'll just be for OS use so no sense in getting a high capacity one...

I have a 256GB Samsung 950 PRO split into equally sized partitions for the windows/frequently used games (although you don't fit many of the latter in 120GB these days).

Despite impressive benchmark scores I can't honestly tell the difference between it and the regular SSD I used previously. Very much doubt you'd notice any benefit for gaming unless you keep a stopwatch at hand.

Good way to to reduce cables and clutter tho

I have a few games on my M.2. World of Tanks/Warships,NMS,Star Citizen. I think Brun is right,unless you time it,it's difficult to tell how much faster it is when I had the same games on a normal SSD. Sure beats the crap out of mechanical drives,that's for sure.

Thanks for the confirmation guys! Any noticeable difference with OS boot ups and starting programs like Photoshop or MS Word/Excel when coming from an SSD?
There wasn't much of a difference coming from a HDD to SSD with regards to OS boot up, but I did notice a good bit of improvement when loading up programs especially Photoshop when on an SSD compared to when it was on HDD... so I wonder if NVMe even gets better?

Win 10 boots in around 6-7 seconds. I don't use those programs,sorry I can't tell you.

I wouldn't bother Ice, it's not worth the extra second at boot-up and doesn't really help games beyond an SSD other than little shavings here and there. Photoshop does start a bit quicker but again, nothing that noticeable if you've previously had it on an SSD......the big difference is the huge jump from mechanical drives to the SSD in the first place.

Thanks Daz!! BTW, what are you doing outside of the DCS sub-forums? Hehehehe....

It's just that I've noticed my old Crucial M4 is much slower than my Samsung so I was thinking of buying another [device] to use as an OS drive. Just wondered if it'll make any sense to go for an M.2 NVMe drive as opposed to just another SSD.

So I guess my next question would be --- why would I (or anyone) want an NVMe drive instead of an SSD? Aside from bragging rights, of course!

In terms of technology, they're pretty much the same...whereas SSD uses a SATA interface, NvME is just a different interface that pushes it over the PCIe lanes. The main advantage is that the write speeds are blisteringly fast, for me when they are priced better in terms of capacity/price (just as SSD's have increased in capacity and come down a lot in price) then they will be more attractive - there is a huge premium on them at the moment until the technology matures and one thing to think about is that NvME will take up PCIe lanes on the motherboard, something to watch out for if SLi or Crossfire figure in any future upgrade plans even though both Nvidia and AMD's focus is coming away from that. (If I recall I think we have the same motherboard - Gigabyte GA-Z170C-Gaming 7 ?)

I started with a 120GB SSD for the OS drive, increased that to 256GB and now 512GB after coming close to the limits once all the apps build up over time...I dabbled with an M2 drive soon after I got my 6700K but it really just isn't worth it at the moment in my opinion. Maybe if there are are a few dedicated apps and games you would see a minor benefit but like I mentioned previously compared to an SSD you see very little difference anyway. Most games just come down to pushing everything through RAM and pre-loading environments so other than launching slightly quicker you don't really see the benefits anyway especially compared to an SSD with decent read/write speeds...certainly not in terms of frame-rate or overall performance. You'd be better off putting any spare money into additional DDR4 RAM.

I recently made the move from a 1440p monitor to a 40" 4K screen and back to square one lol.....games take 4 times long to load again as it caches the massive textures into RAM. I had a quick look at BF4 the other night to marvel at the graphics, the time between launching the game and actually getting onto the battlefield has moved from about 20 seconds to 2 minutes!

As for DCS, I've pretty much given up on it and would have given the rest of my modules away if it weren't for the changes made to the gifting system. Little to no time required in that forum anymore.

Same mobo, yes, and so far, I don't see the benefit of SLI. Heck, just plugged in a second card and my BMS framerate went down! I also can't go back to single-screen gaming, at least not for flight sims... so while I play other games in a single-screen configuration (ie, Shadow of Mordor, Divinity, etc.), I can't buy a bigger monitor without it screwing up my current setup.

I still do post on the DCS forums to stir the pot a little bit every now and again Can't be leaving the fanboys to their delusions for very long!

Back to topic... I've always used a 250GB SSD for my main OS as 120GB was just too small. Not that I'm maxxing out my 250GB, but I read that SSDs don't like being too full so even with 250GB (237GB according to Win10), my OS drive still has 181GB free and my 250GB (232GB) gaming SSD still has 138GB free. From the pricing perspective, Scan currently has the Samsung 850 Evo 250GB at £95 with a read/write of 540/520 and 97K/88K IOPS... for that price range, I can get either an Intel 600p 256GB at £99 with 1570/540, 112K IOPS or a Samsung PM961 256GB at £100 with 2800/1100, 250K/180K IOPS. Might even splurge a bit and get the Samsung 960 Evo 250GB at £129 with 3200/1500, 330K/300K IOPS. With that price difference, that's what prompted me to ask about NVMe drives... if the gap was £95 for a 250GB SSD and £150+ for a 250GB NVMe drive, then it'll be easier for me to just go for a SSD but for a £34 price difference between an 850 Evo and a 960 Evo.... things are looking a bit interesting.

I just need a little more justification for that £34.

Well, if you 'need' or are going to buy an SSD or M.2 drive anyway then I'd do probably pay the extra for the M.2 drive.......more recent tech, much faster read/write speeds........you're still not likely to see a noticeable performance difference though.

Saying that, if you are looking at this for a new OS drive, then surely you need to be looking at 512Mb to get that additional headroom (exactly what I did) although you do still have plenty of additional space looking at your figures. If it came to a very small M2 speed advantage or the additional capacity then I'd personally take an 850 Evo 500GB SSD @ £138

A budget £250GB SDD for £73 with excellent read/write speeds

Indeed, if I wanted a 500GB SSD, I'd go for that 850 Evo. However, I've had this OS in this system since July 2017 and I don't think I'll be installing any more software, so 250GB is more than enough as an OS drive. 61GB may even fit well into a 120GB SSD with slightly-less-than 50% headroom. As it is, I'm not even using 1/3rd of the SSD. A 500GB SSD would probably be better-used as a Games drive.

Out of curiousity, what do you have installed on your OS drive? You've moved your My Documents (and others) folder off of the SSD, right? Mine comes in at another 34GB but these are on a good old HDD so no worries there.

I'm thinking for £130, I'd be getting a stupid-fast 960 Evo, make my friends drool a bit more, and even improve the airflow inside my case. As it is, I've moved both my HDDs onto the 5.25 drive bays using an adapter and I've been able to remove the top HDD cage... the two SSDs are on the bottom HDD cage. So one of the front case fans is blowing air over the SSDs, the other one has a clear path to the inside of the case itself. If I were to get a M.2 drive, I'll move my Crucial M4 to my son's PC and probably just blu-tac the Samsung 850 Evo to the floor of the case, removing both HDD cages and giving both fans clear pathways into the case.

Easy fix for your airflow......get rid of that massive noctua

Yeah.....my 'My Docs' and 'Downloads folder sits on my NAS. My OS drive is about 220Gb full and contains all my installed apps.

The increased airflow **IS** for the massive Noctua!
And no, my big equipment isn't me compensating for anything. Really.


What?!?!! What programs do you have installed? Just curious what the biggest programs are.... this is a gaming PC and not a work/gaming PC, right?

Liar



It's my general purpose/gaming PC.....mainly games, some low-level virtualisation when I'm not running up the big server but most of the OS drive is full of applications. A quick check of my desktop shows some lazy work where I've saved some mahoosive Visio network diagrams (bad admin!) before converting to other formats and a disk clean-up that saved 23GB. It's about as lean as I'd expect considering I haven't reformatted for a couple of years now. I used to do it religiously once a year but not really any more as I usually keep efficient filing systems and keep data away from the system files.

Just having a bit of a dilemma now.... do I get the NVMe and the bragging rights at 250GB or do I get the 512GB SSD, no bragging rights, but get more games onto the SSD? Not that I really need more space on an SSD, but then again, I don't have stuff like The Witcher 3 installed yet...

**OR** go in a totally different direction and buy a Jet Seat??

Aha, I tried to buy that same seat just after Christmas. Visa refused the transaction and 2 weeks later I got a call from the fraud department saying my details were compromised and there had been multiple attempts to use the card in Russia. My card had to get cancelled and a new one issued!

FWIW, with my new Ryzen build I verified the "advertised" advantage of m.2 960EVO over 850EVO (using the Samsung Magician built-in test). Sequential reads are roughly 6 times as fast. Others (Sequential writes, random reads writes) are roughly 4 times as fast.

In my plodding approach to my new Ryzen system, I'm still about a day away from full system gaming tests. I may "feel" a difference in FO4 load times because that one takes a noticeable amount of time to load. However, I doubt I will put a game on the 960EVO just to pick up a few seconds in load time.

Thanks for the input Allen!! Please tell me if you have a noticeable improvement with the M.2 on vs. just SSDs!

Daz, check PM!

FWIW, the main benefits seem to be increased throughputs. This means when copying large files around or having intensive IO ops you'll see a benefit over a SATA SSD, but in normal gaming and booting scenarios you really won't see much.




The Jedi Master

I usually don't move my pr0n folder around that much to warrant the increased price
Hehehehehe....

Still don't know about gaming in particular with 960EVO SSD because no games on it. However, on my Ryzen build I've used an 840SSD and a 7200RPM hard drive for the Windows 10 installs (playing with installs). And, I used them for other application installs and everyday stuff.

In everyday use, the 960 blows the HD out of the water (we knew that). In addition, the 960 is noticeably faster than the 840 when loading programs and installing software.

By "noticeably faster" I mean that it gets things done so much faster that I can "feel" it without needing to "measure" it. For example, installing a new version of Windows goes far faster. I can just sit there a few minutes rather than go upstairs for more coffee. For example, my Firefox browser seems to "jump open" in a couple seconds (only took a few seconds in the first place).

The improvement is small in the big scheme of things. But, I "feel" I have upgraded with the 960 and am happy I bought it.

All opinion and feelings, FWIW.

Thanks Allen!!

I'm not too bothered by the speed at which programs get installed, as I'll only be doing that a couple of times. What about how fast programs get "loaded"? I mean, is there any difference between the time when you clicked the icon and the time when the program is ready to use? Is it faster with the 960? For example, loading up Photoshop on a HDD takes a few seconds of patiently waiting... when I transitioned to the SSD, the wait time was noticeably shorter even without a stopwatch. Is this wait time even shorter for NVMe?

Interesting video....

link

It was Ice.In some of the comments there are doubters.

I benchmarked all my drives a while ago.

WD Black 750GB Read Speed 100 MB/sec (52 min/129 max) Access time 15.70 ms

Crucial 256 MX100 SSD Read Speed 503 MB/sec (294 min/516 max) Access time 0.08 ms

Samsung SM951 256GB M.2 PCI-e 3.0 x 4 NVMe Read Speed 1,900 MB/sec (1,370 min/2,200 max) Access time 0.06 ms

Clearly there is a great difference between the 3 types of drive when it comes to reading and moving data,although a very tiny amount in difference between the 2 solid state drives when it comes to access times.

It doesn't look from the video that in the real world,there is much difference at all between a traditional SSD and an M.2.

It still 'feels' quicker to me though in general use.

I think there was a big bump up from the 840 to the 850 with the switch to 3D, and then again to the 960 with the switch to NMVe.
I don't doubt x40 to x60 you'd notice it, but I understand going from x40 to x50 or x50 to x60 it's less noticeable.



The Jedi Master