Why don't PC games take advantage of the NVMe speeds?

[Ragingsilver]

So I'm hearing that PC games don't take advantage of the fast speeds an NVMe drive can provide, instead relugated to OS and programs/apps usage. A normal SSD is usually more than enough. How comes?

[For Science!]

1 minute ago, Ragingsilver said:

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Because SSD/HDDs are not the performance bottleneck.

[Turtle Rig]

14 minutes ago, Ragingsilver said:

So I'm hearing that PC games don't take advantage of the fast speeds an NVMe drive can provide, instead relugated to OS and programs/apps usage. A normal SSD is usually more than enough. How comes?

In benchmarks you will get 2500mbps compared to SSD at 500mbps.  In benchmarks there is a big difference, but in the real world there is no difference at all.

[spartaman64]

diminishing returns. idk how much data is being loaded during a load screen but lets say 1GB for an example. roughly an hard drive (200 mb/s) will load it in 5 seconds an SSD (500 mb/s) will load it in 2 second and an NVME ssd (2000 mb/s) will load it in 0.5. so the difference from sata ssd to nvme is 1/2 that from hard drive to sata ssd despite the nvme ssd being 4 times faster than the sata ssd and the sata ssd being 2.5 times faster than the hard drive. this is just an over simplified model.

 

if you are asking why it doesnt give you better fps because its mostly loaded into ram which is much faster than the nvme ssd. if you dont have enough ram and it starts using the drive then you might see a difference

[Tristerin]

Zero difference between SSD and NVMe in gaming.  It affects loading time, but as noted already - that is not the bottleneck (SSD) at this time

[dizmo]

Why code for something few people have.

[spartaman64]

10 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Why code for something few people have.

thats not even the problem. you would need some uber inefficient coding for it to make a fps difference like you literally have to try to make it as inefficient as possible

[WereCatf]

39 minutes ago, Ragingsilver said:

So I'm hearing that PC games don't take advantage of the fast speeds an NVMe drive can provide, instead relugated to OS and programs/apps usage. A normal SSD is usually more than enough. How comes?

Take advantage how, exactly? You're just saying "take advantage" without saying what you think they could do. I mean, games do load faster from a fast NVMe-drive, but...what else is there to take advantage of?

[SolarNova]

1 hour ago, Ragingsilver said:

So I'm hearing that PC games don't take advantage of the fast speeds an NVMe drive can provide, instead relugated to OS and programs/apps usage. A normal SSD is usually more than enough. How comes?

In what way ?

Beyond loading times, games are more affected by CPU and GPU in regards to hardware, and even more so by the game engine, and the API. Many games nowadays are ports from an original console game, as such they general have rather terrible PC optimization. A NVMe drive instead of a normal SSD isnt going to help overcome any of that.

[Zando_]

54 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Zero difference between SSD and NVMe in gaming

 

59 minutes ago, Turtle Rig said:

 there is no difference at all.

There's 3-7 seconds difference in loading times, so NVMe drives are noticeably faster for that. Probably not worth the price premium for that little bit more performance, but there is actually a difference. As to if you're gonna get more fps with an NVMe SSD, no. Like the others said, that's not the bottleneck in the first place. 

[Tristerin]

9 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

 

There's 3-7 seconds difference in loading times, so NVMe drives are noticeably faster for that. Probably not worth the price premium for that little bit more performance, but there is actually a difference. As to if you're gonna get more fps with an NVMe SSD, no. Like the others said, that's not the bottleneck in the first place. 

Ive watched quite a few videos where they take multiple "loading" videos and show how the loading times do not change in side by side comparison, unless its in the milliseconds? 

 

As for me, it only boosts Windows 10 loading times.  Something like 15 seconds or so.  As for games, my NVMe drive is zero help in my use case for gaming.  Perhaps that's because I HAVE bottleneck elsewhere but if I cleared those bottlenecks I could see the faster loading times?

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, Tristerin said:

Ive watched quite a few videos where they take multiple "loading" videos and show how the loading times do not change in side by side comparison, unless its in the milliseconds? 

 

As for me, it only boosts Windows 10 loading times.  Something like 15 seconds or so.  As for games, my NVMe drive is zero help in my use case for gaming.  Perhaps that's because I HAVE bottleneck elsewhere but if I cleared those bottlenecks I could see the faster loading times?

Varies by game, last I checked there were a good few that loaded a few seconds faster. Again, probably not worth the usually higher price, but there is a difference. My point is not that you should get an NVMe SSD for gaming (I did tho, lmao), it's that saying there's "no performance difference" as a statement of fact is false. There is very little noticeable difference, but same as Intel chips vs Zen 2, they are a few % faster. Not fast enough to be worth the extra cost, but it's still something you should inform people of because what they want in a PC could be different to what you want them to want.