Is there really a worthy difference between SATA and M.2 drives?

[weeblord]

So I was watching this video and saw that there seems to be, at best, a one-second difference from the SATA SSD to the m.2 drive. Is the extra cost really worth it?

[Enderman]

First of all, M.2 is just a connector, there can be both sata or PCIe NVME drives, and it's the PCIe ones that are faster.

 

Second, the performance improvement depends on what you do. For programs and boot times NVME does pretty much nothing. It's more for video editing and file transfers and data processing.

 

[dizmo]

17 minutes ago, Enderman said:

First of all, M.2 is just a connector, there can be both sata or PCIe NVME drives, and it's the PCIe ones that are faster.

 

Second, the performance improvement depends on what you do. For programs and boot times NVME does pretty much nothing. It's more for video editing and file transfers and data processing.

 

There can actually be pretty decent gains in load times in some titles. Considering it's only an extra $10 at most, or often the same price, it doesn't make much sense to go with the slower drive.

[Enderman]

7 minutes ago, dizmo said:

There can actually be pretty decent gains in load times in some titles. Considering it's only an extra $10 at most, or often the same price, it doesn't make much sense to go with the slower drive.

Load times are usually CPU bottlenecked, but yeah some games can use the extra storage speed.

FPS doesn't improve though.

[weeblord]

30 minutes ago, dizmo said:

There can actually be pretty decent gains in load times in some titles. Considering it's only an extra $10 at most, or often the same price, it doesn't make much sense to go with the slower drive.

Oh hey, you found my other post. I was also debating m.2 drives because they seem a lot easier to slot in, and my motherboard has a m.2 heatsink included.

 

24 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Load times are usually CPU bottlenecked, but yeah some games can use the extra storage speed.

FPS doesn't improve though.

ok thanks 

[dizmo]

3 hours ago, weeblord said:

Oh hey, you found my other post. I was also debating m.2 drives because they seem a lot easier to slot in, and my motherboard has a m.2 heatsink included.

Yeah, they require a lot less cabling so they're definitely handy.

[weeblord]

9 hours ago, dizmo said:

Yeah, they require a lot less cabling so they're definitely handy.

Would this cheap Intel M.2 N.VME storage work? It would be better than the WD SSD for the same price.

[dizmo]

1 hour ago, weeblord said:

Would this cheap Intel M.2 N.VME storage work? It would be better than the WD SSD for the same price.

Not really no, the 660p iirc isn't a very good drive. The P1, Sabrent Rocket, HP EX920, etc are all better.

[AZ Hobo]

17 hours ago, weeblord said:

So I was watching this video and saw that there seems to be, at best, a one-second difference from the SATA SSD to the m.2 drive. Is the extra cost really worth it?

It's that warm and fuzzy feeling at you know which disk drive you have

[weeblord]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

Not really no, the 660p iirc isn't a very good drive. The P1, Sabrent Rocket, HP EX920, etc are all better.

What about the mx500 in m.2 form?

 

edit: oh wait it's not n.vme