Should my boot drive also be NVMe for performance in Games?

[skjoedt]

Hello

I have a setup currently, where i have a samsung evo 860 256GB SATA ssd as my boot drive and an Intel 660p 1TB m.2 nvme as additional drive for gaming.

Currently all my games are on the 1TB m.2 nvme (Steam Library, Blizzard Library, Epic etc.), however i was wondering if this is all fine and dandy, or if i am bottlenecking something by having my boot drive being a SATA ssd?

 

I know my windows, boot times and overall experience would probably improve if i switched to m.2 nvme instead of SATA ssd, but i am purely interested in gaming performance

I hope you can help me with my question.

 

Best Regards

Frederik

[BetaEffect]

gaming performance will not improve. for most games even sata ssd has enough speed.

 

[dxzone12]

While games will read and write things to your documents or app data folders, which would be on the sata ssd, it should handle them fast enough.
I don't think you would see any appreciable difference in games

[skjoedt]

9 minutes ago, BetaEffect said:

gaming performance will not improve. for most games even sata ssd has enough speed.

 

 

8 minutes ago, dxzone12 said:

While games will read and write things to your documents or app data folders, which would be on the sata ssd, it should handle them fast enough.
I don't think you would see any appreciable difference in games

Thank you very much for the quick and useful replies!
- I will wait until my next rig to upgrade my boot drive

[bmichaels556]

18 hours ago, skjoedt said:

Hello

I have a setup currently, where i have a samsung evo 860 256GB SATA ssd as my boot drive and an Intel 660p 1TB m.2 nvme as additional drive for gaming.

Currently all my games are on the 1TB m.2 nvme (Steam Library, Blizzard Library, Epic etc.), however i was wondering if this is all fine and dandy, or if i am bottlenecking something by having my boot drive being a SATA ssd?

 

I know my windows, boot times and overall experience would probably improve if i switched to m.2 nvme instead of SATA ssd, but i am purely interested in gaming performance

I hope you can help me with my question.

 

Best Regards

Frederik

Not really...

 

I've found it more to depend on the drive that the games are stored on. One game that was REALLY bad about storage speed was Fallout 4. If it wasn't on an SSD, the whole game would slow to a crawl, and often.

 

Your setup is fine. Don't sweat it.

[JoostinOnline]

18 hours ago, BetaEffect said:

gaming performance will not improve. for most games even sata ssd has enough speed.

 

This doesn't really capture the issue. An NVMe drive (correctly called a PCIe drive) can be much slower than a SATA one. At that point you're just discussing bandwidth. For example, the 860 Evo is faster is almost every respect that matters compared to the Intel 660p. Sequential speeds are useless for most people. They're meaningless for all games.

[BetaEffect]

1 hour ago, JoostinOnline said:

This doesn't really capture the issue. An NVMe drive (correctly called a PCIe drive) can be much slower than a SATA one. At that point you're just discussing bandwidth. For example, the 860 Evo is faster is almost every respect that matters compared to the Intel 660p. Sequential speeds are useless for most people. They're meaningless for all games

I dont know where you get your numbers but according to the Intel 660p product page (1) this drive is faster in any numbers than the 860 Evo (2).

Please give sources to your statement.

 

(1): https://www.intel.de/content/www/de/de/products/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/consumer-ssds/6-series/ssd-660p-series/660p-series-1-tb-m-2-80mm-3d2.html

(2): https://www.samsung.com/de/memory-storage/860-evo-sata-3-2-5-inch-ssd/MZ-76E4T0BEU/

[JoostinOnline]

51 minutes ago, BetaEffect said:

I dont know where you get your numbers but according to the Intel 660p product page (1) this drive is faster in any numbers than the 860 Evo (2).

Please give sources to your statement.

 

(1): https://www.intel.de/content/www/de/de/products/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/consumer-ssds/6-series/ssd-660p-series/660p-series-1-tb-m-2-80mm-3d2.html

(2): https://www.samsung.com/de/memory-storage/860-evo-sata-3-2-5-inch-ssd/MZ-76E4T0BEU/

You are comparing sequential speeds, which are meaningless except in rare use cases. A metric that actually reflects the performance gain is the 4k random read speeds.  Programs usually rely on loading a lot of tiny files, which puts strain on the controller. The 660p's average controller, QLC NAND, and lack of a DRAM cache really hurts the Intel drives there.

 

Now to be clear, a 660p is still a great game drive. Games are made with hard drives or optical disc loading speeds in mind, so it's not like they're very bandwidth hungry. I doubt loading a game ever 100% maxes out the controller on any SSD. But Windows frequently does. That's why so many nice SATA drives are faster than cheap PCIe ones.

 

[BetaEffect]

9 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

The 660p's average controller, QLC NAND, and lack of a DRAM cache really hurts the Intel drives there.

And even this isn't true. According to crystal disk benchmarks on notebookcheck.com the Intel Drive is still faster in every task. Even 4k Read/Write is 40% faster.

So please provide a source or stop talking nonsense.

[JoostinOnline]

42 minutes ago, BetaEffect said:

And even this isn't true. According to crystal disk benchmarks on notebookcheck.com the Intel Drive is still faster in every task. Even 4k Read/Write is 40% faster.

So please provide a source or stop talking nonsense.

1. Stop using trashy benchmark sites. They aren't at all reliable.
2. Because the speed changes depending on how big the drive is (true with almost all SSD's, explained here), and because the lack of a discrete cache means the drive speed also changes depending on how much free space it has, you can't really get a firm metric.
3. I already said that the drive was good enough. My intention was to clear up the OP's misunderstanding that NVMe automatically means it's faster. There are a lot of factors that contribute to speed.

 

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