Questions about a new SSD on a PCIe 2.0 slot

[Deleted]

I'm looking for a new SSD (for gaming), and so far I'm leaning to the Samsung 960, although still not sure about either the Pro or the EVO version.
My motherboard is a P8Z68-V Pro, so I'm limited to PCIe 2.0 speeds (running the SSD over a M.2 to PCIe adapter).

I'm aware that I will not get the full benefits of the 960 until I move it to a newer system, which I intend to do later.

For an idea about the type of load that I'm going to put it through, I intend to spend less time staring at the screen while loading each new map on Battlefield 1 (I always finish loading the map only after everyone else took all the vehicles), or while starting up Cities: Skylines with thousands of custom mods and assets (currently takes me a good 10 minutes of load time).

Questions:

Running the 960 on a PCIe x4 2.0 will limit me to a bandwidth of 2.0GB/s. Although both 960 models are rated to a theoretical upper limit of over 3GB/s for sequential read/write, most trusted reviews (example) put them around the 2GB/s ballpark for real-use scenarios in sequential read/write situations, and much, much lower numbers when it comes to random/4k read/write situations. So, in a real world scenario (read, gaming), am I actually going to be bottlenecked by my PCIe 2.0 speeds, and if so, to what real extent?

Is anyone here in the same boat as me? Maybe you migrated from a SATA SSD to a PCIe/M.2 SSD on a PCIe 2.0 capable M/B, and maybe later to a PCIe 3.0 capable M/B. Your input would be most enlightening! I'd just like to have a realistic opinion of what to expect in terms of performance, according to your experience.

Last but not least, it has been quite a while since I've adventured with new hardware, and some things I'm completely out of touch with. So, what is this NVMe thing all about, and does it matter for me at all, with my motherboard? I don't intend to boot from the new SSD, just to put my games in it.

Thank you

[lockblock]

With a board older then z97 I don't think you can boot from one of those unless you can somehow store the efi boot records on a sata drive and hold the rest of the operating system on your 960. But since that isn't the intention for the moment you have nothing to be concerned about.

[Deleted]

This is correct. Most add-in cards for drives, such as RAID controllers or M.2 adapters, are built around the BIOS design and as such won't allow you to boot from drives connected to it.

As for the original question, this is what BF1's load sequence looks like from a system perspective;


I joined just as a map was finishing, but actually got into the game just before it ended. The red line is when the loading starts, and the green line is when it ends. Despite running on a SATA-3 SSD that can push 500MB/s in sequential read speeds, the maximum load I saw from it was around 240MB/s during BF4 map loading. My HDD can push 150MB/s read speeds without a problem, but the access time on it means that large games aren't suitable for running from it.

The access speeds are the key for SSD's, so even buying a moderately sized SATA SSD would be a good upgrade. The 2GB/s speeds are only in benchmarks which tend to use one large continuous file, which once access is setup, doesn't need to be done again. With games, since they're lots of smaller files, access speeds are king. Further to this, every large multiplayer game does a lot of network sync either before or after load or both before and after. Install a game to an SSD, and you've still got to deal with this which becomes one of the bigger delays in getting into game.

With all that said, you won't be bottlenecked by setting it into a converter in real world usage. The only time you should expect to see some limits is if you're running benchmarks. PCIE 2.0 still offers 500MB/s per lane, so a 4x slot or adapter, which is likely what the add-in card runs on, will still offer 2GB/s maximum throughput. Trust me - you genuinely don't need even that much for a gaming rig.

This is great feedback, thank you so much!

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[QUOTE=Synthaxx;44224590]

Also, what software is that in your screenshot?

[Deleted]

No problem. The software is https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...rocessexplorer

It comes in handy for monitoring disk load during gameplay and finding out if that's causing a performance issue, and to see what IP addresses are in use and whether they need to be whitelisted.

Great! Thank you again!