Samsung 960 PRO Series - NVMe?

[memetootoo]

Hey there, I'm looking to upgrade my SanDisk SSD II 256 drive to a Samsung 960 PRO Series - 1TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 drive. From what I'm reading online, it seems like people are saying that I won't really notice a difference in my game load times? I'm hoping someone can help explain why this is the case, since the read/write times on the Samsung is 4X higher than by SanDisk.

If this is indeed the case, I'm likely going to just get a SSD that isn't so bleeding edge in read/write speeds, if it doesn't translate into real world benefits.

[CandyCotton Marshmallows]

At the moment the rate at which data is read from disk from games doesn't saturate a decent sata ssd; anywhere from single digits to 3-400 MBps, so the extra speed from nvme isn't utilized yet for games. If you are transferring large files, etc you have a better chance to benefit.

If you are only concerned about gaming, then save your money and get what works best for you and your budget; nvme will come down in price over time. If you want an m.2 for the clean look/integration, get one at a capacity and price per gig that you are ok with, or just get a 2.5" drive.

I have an intel 750 series pci-e that I got over a year ago and I'm happy with it, but it's nice not having extra cables and I wasn't worried about cost to perceptual performance with my build either. OS loads super fast, games as well, no complaints, but I could've been served nearly as well with something cheaper I have no doubts.

There are videos on this; but as long as your next drive will do 4-500 MBps random reads, you'll be fine until games start surpassing that mark, which by then nvme should just be the standard and prices reflecting that as well.

[Denpepe]

The data also needs to be processed which takes some time, it depends somehwat on the game but you likely wont see that much better load times.

I would also suggest that you look into the EVO drives for home use iso the PRO, they are usually quite a bit cheaper and perform similarly for the most part.

[Akainakali]

The big improvement with SSDs vs a mechanical HDD is the reduction in latency especially when reading in lots of small scattered files, much more than the increased read/write.

Given that it's already essentially zero, the NVME SSDs can't really improve on that. So the increased r/w performance only factors in if you are doing disk intensive activities, which most consumer level workloads simply don't require.

Also you're hitting the point of diminishing returns, if something goes from taking 20 seconds down to 5, that's an extremely noticeable improvement. However if you're going from 2 seconds to 0.5, that's not nearly as noticeable, despite being the same factor of improvement.

[Rinji]

Hey there, I'm looking to upgrade my SanDisk SSD II 256 drive to a Samsung 960 PRO Series - 1TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 drive. From what I'm reading online, it seems like people are saying that I won't really notice a difference in my game load times? I'm hoping someone can help explain why this is the case, since the read/write times on the Samsung is 4X higher than by SanDisk.

If this is indeed the case, I'm likely going to just get a SSD that isn't so bleeding edge in read/write speeds, if it doesn't translate into real world benefits.

I have the 960 pro 512gb nvme drive, it is blazing fast, but I also had the 840 pro 512gb from 2012 to 2017 (earlier this year) and tbh, don't waste your money. bragging rights are great man but get the evo the only major difference you will notice is maybe 1s on loading a program here or there between programs.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16820147595 <--- evo 1tb

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...82E16820147597 <-- pro 1tb

[Vertigo X]

The data also needs to be processed which takes some time, it depends somehwat on the game but you likely wont see that much better load times.

I would also suggest that you look into the EVO drives for home use iso the PRO, they are usually quite a bit cheaper and perform similarly for the most part.

Your average gamer won't likely reach the max lifespan unless you're using it for large workloads but the endurance of an EVO is significantly less than a PRO. But yeah everyday gaming etc. it'll be obsolete before it dies in most cases.

Just thought I'd throw this in there. Not saying you're wrong.

[Rinji]

Samsung gives 3-year manufacturer’s warranty. According to Samsung, the EVO reaches a daily writing performance of min. 40 GB over 3 years (= total 43 TB). Since rare 40 GB are written daily on the SSD in the home user area, experience has shown that a significantly longer service life than 3 years can be expected.

This was for the 840 series, They have made leaps and bounds since the time of this statement. See Below

https://www.datenreise.de/en/ssd-com...nd-evo-series/

[memetootoo]

Very much appreciate everyone's response! This was helpful, but a little disappointing to learn.

Out of curiosity, why do games have a 4-500 MBps random reads bottleneck? Do you see this changing in the near future?

Thanks again everyone!

[Arainie]

You're all missing the most important factor to why the fancy read and write speeds don't show when it comes to gaming or everyday use. The M.2 NVMe SSDs have excellent sqeuential read and write speed, which means that large chunks of data stored sequentially in the memory can be read or written very quickly. However, that's not going to be the case for many real-world applications and when you look at random read/write speed the difference between SATA and M.2 NVMe is far less impressive (just google benchmarks and you'll see that random read/write speeds are FAR from the impressive sequential read/write speeds that are used to advertise the products).

[Aurimas]

It's not a bottleneck. Like others hinted at, it's because there's processing involved. If someone gave you a MB/s, it's either just a guess, or a benchmark where they were monitoring SSD performance for a specific game.

Copying is just "pick it up and put it down". That's where drives can reach max capacity.

Games (any program really) are doing things with the data it picks up. So there's also processing going on. Now it's a matter of how streamlined the process is. Sometimes you can continue to read more data, other times the program has to finish it's calculation before the next file can do it any good. That's on the programmers and engine to make as efficient as possible.

[memetootoo]

It's not a bottleneck. Like others hinted at, it's because there's processing involved. If someone gave you a MB/s, it's either just a guess, or a benchmark where they were monitoring SSD performance for a specific game.

Copying is just "pick it up and put it down". That's where drives can reach max capacity.

Games (any program really) are doing things with the data it picks up. So there's also processing going on. Now it's a matter of how streamlined the process is. Sometimes you can continue to read more data, other times the program has to finish it's calculation before the next file can do it any good. That's on the programmers and engine to make as efficient as possible.

Cool, I see. This was super interesting to learn. Thank you!

[Vertigo X]

Samsung gives 3-year manufacturer’s warranty. According to Samsung, the EVO reaches a daily writing performance of min. 40 GB over 3 years (= total 43 TB). Since rare 40 GB are written daily on the SSD in the home user area, experience has shown that a significantly longer service life than 3 years can be expected.

This was for the 840 series, They have made leaps and bounds since the time of this statement. See Below

https://www.datenreise.de/en/ssd-com...nd-evo-series/

Not sure if that was directed at me but you just said pretty much exactly what I said.