To gen.4 or not to gen.4

[ThaiTaffy]

So with my new motherboard supporting gen.4 nvme I'm wondering if paying double to price for a sn850 over a sn750 is worth it to me as I'm mainly playing games.

 

[quanash]

You won't see much a performance difference in games when you use pci-ex 3.0 vs pci-ex 4.0. You might see the difference if you will have any IOPS related workloads or huge data processing.

My suggestion will be buying a higher capacity pci-ex 3.0 NVME SSD rather than buying pci-ex 4.0 one ( if you can or plan to spend more ) since games' sizes getting bigger and bigger and having higher capacity SSD is a better option than having a faster one.

 

[elghinnarisa]

If the primary usage for the drive in question is going to be holding and running games, then get pretty much the cheapest SSD you can find, NVMe or SATA makes absolutely no difference worth mentioning for games, just get the one with more storage if anything.
Take a look at the reviews here on TPU or other sites where they also test loading times in games etc. The difference is so minimal it's not even worth thinking about between one SSD and another, or NVMe vs SATA.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

You won't see much a performance difference in games when you use pci-ex 3.0 vs pci-ex 4.0. You might see the difference if you will have any IOPS related workloads or huge data processing.

My suggestion will be buying a higher capacity pci-ex 3.0 NVME SSD rather than buying pci-ex 4.0 one ( if you can or plan to spend more ) since games' sizes getting bigger and bigger and having higher capacity SSD is a better option than having a faster one.

That's what I'm leaning towards, I occasionally do some 3d rendering in blender but no way near the amount that justifies a gen4. The sn750 1tb seems the max capacity here in Thailand for just under £80 so I think that's going to be my choice.

 

[quanash]

That's what I'm leaning towards, I occasionally do some 3d rendering in blender but no way near the amount that justifies a gen4. The sn750 1tb seems the max capacity here in Thailand for just under £80 so I think that's going to be my choice.

Well optimized modeled 3D projects and well organized material library will be much more help than the performance difference between those 2 SSDs.

 

[eidairaman1]

So with my new motherboard supporting gen.4 nvme I'm wondering if paying double to price for a sn850 over a sn750 is worth it to me as I'm mainly playing games.

No, gen 3 isnt Saturated

A SSD from 2014 on SATA boots in Less than a Minute on my Rig.

Its for epeen at the consumer level, now datacenters can benefit due to simultaneous requests.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

No, gen 3 isnt Saturated

A SSD from 2014 on SATA boots in Less than a Minute on my Rig.

I have multiple SSDs in my system already I never populated the 2nd m.2 slot of my current motherboard because it was only SATA capable and just buying mx500's was easier and cheaper but moving over to b550 I thought I might as well buy a second nvme it also helps because space is extremely limited in my case i will post a build log in the next few days as it's a reasonably rare sff case using matx.

 

[eidairaman1]

I have multiple SSDs in my system already I never populated the 2nd m.2 slot of my current motherboard because it was only SATA capable and just buying mx500's was easier and cheaper but moving over to b550 I thought I might as well buy a second nvme it also helps because space is extremely limited in my case i will post a build log in the next few days as it's a reasonably rare sff case using matx.

It sounds like you read your board manual (about time someone did!) iirc some mobos lose a sata port if that m2 is occupied.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

Yep both my b450 and b550 loose the SATA 3 port but as I can only fit a max of like 3x2.5inch drives that's no big issue.

 

[eidairaman1]

Anywho go with the cheaper option.

When I upgrade to ryzen I may just stick to SATA due to temperatures and the arch being around for nearly 20 years.

Yep both my b450 and b550 loose the SATA 3 port but as I can only fit a max of like 3x2.5inch drives that's no big issue.

 

[cvaldes]

My approach over the past decade has been to put my operating system and all user accounts on the fastest drive compatible with my hardware and use a more economical storage solution for content consumption. That basically accelerates system performance over a wide range of usage cases whether it be multimedia editing, web browsing, whatever.

I did this initially on my Mac mini 2010 Server in late 2011 or early 2012 (I forget the exact date) which had two 500GB 5400 RPM Hitachi spinners. I replaced the primary HDD with a 128GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD and upgraded the secondary HDD to a 1TB 7200 RPM spinner. I put my iTunes Library and photos on the HDD. Wow, it was like a new computer.

Most of the disk writes during gaming will happen on your system drive regardless whether or not your games live on an auxiliary drive or not. Gaming in general is mostly about sequential reads whether it be loading new levels and content (like models and textures) or playing back video cutscenes (which is now pretty old school).

System drive performance is heavily dependent on random writes.

Thus I'm pretty happy using B550 motherboards for gaming which usually one Gen4 m.2 connector (CPU) and one Gen3 m.2 connector (chipset). Putting my games on the secondary m.2 Gen3 stick doesn't slow down the framerate. It's already fast enough to load new levels quickly. I have one X570 motherboard but I don't notice any faster gaming performance. ]

These builds have one Gen4 m.2, one Ge3 m.2, and usually a SATA SSD. The latter has the best price-per-gigabyte value but still fast enough for 4K video playback.

Drive performance degrades when the drive is nearly full so I avoid filling up the system drive. Whether it's my Mac mini or my various Windows PCs, the system drive generally is less than 25% capacity. The only exception is a Acer notebook (256GB SSD) that is closer to 40%. My current Mac mini 2018's system drive has stayed between 11-13% capacity for the past three years. It is extremely unlikely that I will ever exceed 30% usage on the system drive.

Likewise my primary PC gaming build (described in the system specs) is about 13-15% capacity on the 1TB Sabrent Rocket Plus m.2.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

I already have a 256gb wd black sn750 I use for OS due to that being the fastest my b450 could handle so rather than throw that I think I'll get another 1tb version of that fit to the gen 4 m.2 on my b550 and be done with it.

 

[cvaldes]

It's worth pointing out that the greatest improvement in overall system performance over the past ten years has been the adoption of solid state storage media. This is not specific to Windows desktop PCs, it also includes notebook computers and other devices like set top boxes, portable music players (remember the HDD-based iPods?).

Having the fastest disk access (particularly write speeds) has a massive benefit on diverse usage scenarios.

It is no surprise that the newest videogame consoles moved to Gen4.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

remember the HDD-based iPods?

I had a archos though I don't remember it being particularly bad it was a chunky gadget.