For Gaming: SSD vs NVME PCIe 4.0

[Mazty]

I'm looking into upgrading my current PC and want to start with storage as I'm currently limited to a single 500GB SSD and two HDD's. While PCIe 4.0 NVME drives seem to offer the best speeds possible, for gaming, is there a point, or will there be a need in the future? From the comparisons I can see online, the difference between an NVME PCIe 3.0 drive and an SSD is usually less than a second when it comes to loading games. 

 

Therefore, when we are talking only about games, is there a point in an NVME drive vs an SSD in terms of game performance? An SSD currently has the best $ to GB ratio, and with the increasing size of games, does it make sense to purchase a 2TB NVME PCIe 3.0/4.0  drive or stick to an SSD? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

We don't know about the future, but currently sata vs pcie ssds have a very small differenc ein load times. But since nvme drive have about the same cost as sata, you might as well go nvme

[RTX 3090]

There is very little difference between NVME and SATA SSD's in terms of loading times e.t.c.

However if you also do more productivity work, the extra bandwidth from PCI-e can help a lot, for example in a video editing system in which you frequently deal with very large files

For gaming, it will make a bit of a difference, but it won't be very noticeable

4 minutes ago, Mazty said:

with the increasing size of games, does it make sense to purchase a 2TB NVME PCIe 3.0/4.0  drive or stick to an SSD? 

The cost difference nowadays is also minimal. If you are buying new hardware and it costs $30-40 to upgrade to NVMEE from SATA, I would go for it, rather then having to buy an entire new SSD if I need the extra bandwidth later

 

Sata price :

NVME price : 

 

[Drama Lama]

5 minutes ago, Mazty said:

make sense to purchase a 2TB NVME PCIe 3.0/4.0  drive or stick to an SSD? 

I guess with " SSD " you are refering to SATA ssds

I'd buy a PCIe 3.0 ssd because they are not that much more expensive than sata ssds and PCIe 4.0 isn't much faster and worth the cost

[Senzelian]

There's a good chance that within the next 5 years we will see more and more games making use of high bandwith storage in more ways than just faster loading times.

But for you to be able to make use of that you will probably need to buy a new and even faster NVMe SSD than the ones you might be able to buy right now.

 

For now my personal plan is to stick to what I have for as long as possible and only buy relatively cheap NVMe SSDs at best and wait for more really high end SSDs to come out, so prices will lower. 

 

Edit:
I guess what I want to say is: The current jump from SATA3 SSDs to PCI-e 3.0 or 4.0 SSDs at 2 - 4GB/s is not worth it, if you will upgrade in 5 years to a 10GB/s, or 20GB/s drive. In my opinion NVMe and PCI-e are nowhere near their limit and the drives that we currently see are just the beginning. 

[tishous]

I agree with all of the above.

 

Another benefit is not having to use any SATA cables and it makes the PC look a bit tidier as well, but this isn't a big deal if you're not worried about the aesthetics.