Why are Nvme SSD's suddenly cheaper/ the same price as SATA? Did I miss something?

[cummerou1]

17 minutes ago, minibois said:

In many games you won't see much of a difference between a good SATA and a good M.2 PCIE drive:

So I'd say as long as you're sort of below 75% usage on a QLC drive, you'd be okay.

But of course I can't speak for the future, where new tech might be able to better use fast drives.

Thanks for the kind words!

SSD tech is so complicated, especially with all the new stuff coming out all the time and with the different use cases everyone has.

Awesome, thank you so much for taking all this time to help me out and explain this, very much appreciated

[cummerou1]

12 minutes ago, p51mustang23 said:

I'd agree.  The data is out there, and switching from SATA to NVMe might lower your load screens on games from 12.5 seconds to 11.2 seconds, at BEST.  But Hard disks have a 30 second load for the same thing.

Some people have pointed out that the new consoles FINALLY have SSD's instead of HDD's, and that could mean developers start taking advantage of the tech and making use of it.  But if they do, it will still be a couple years as the new console gen settles in, and it's hard to believe SATA drives will just turn into useless clunkers in 2 years.  

 

Oh yeah, I think WOW shadowlands as the very first game required an SSD (until they dropped it due to an outcry). So it will probably happen eventually, but just like RTX was not widely adopted at the beginning but was several years before it featured in more than a small handful AAA games, the same is probably going to happen here. 

[p51mustang23]

5 minutes ago, cummerou1 said:

 

Oh yeah, I think WOW shadowlands as the very first game required an SSD (until they dropped it due to an outcry). So it will probably happen eventually, but just like RTX was not widely adopted at the beginning but was several years before it featured in more than a small handful AAA games, the same is probably going to happen here. 

As someone who has been playing Shadowlands ANNNND accidentally had it installed on my hard drive ....it's still totally playable on a hard drive.  You notice having a SSD in certain areas where there is TONS of data to load (loading into any place that has hundreds of players in it), but it was a bit of a stretch to require a ssd.  The load screens are faster with SSD, but they weren't bad on a HDD.

I found out it wasn't installed on my SSD when my HDD blew up

NVMe, right now, is great for people working with 4k video.  For gamers, the difference (sata vs nvme) is marginal.  

[cummerou1]

31 minutes ago, p51mustang23 said:

As someone who has been playing Shadowlands ANNNND accidentally had it installed on my hard drive ....it's still totally playable on a hard drive.  You notice having a SSD in certain areas where there is TONS of data to load (loading into any place that has hundreds of players in it), but it was a bit of a stretch to require a ssd.  The load screens are faster with SSD, but they weren't bad on a HDD.

I found out it wasn't installed on my SSD when my HDD blew up

NVMe, right now, is great for people working with 4k video.  For gamers, the difference (sata vs nvme) is marginal.  

 

Yeah, that's fair, I was thinking of getting it only because hey, if it's the same price, why not? 

[Godlygamer23]

4 hours ago, cummerou1 said:

Ahh, fair, I thought the nature of the NVME drive (being plugged into the MOBO) would pretty much guarantee quicker speed due to the data having to travel much less speed. Interesting.

NVMe drives may also have less raw material usage since you're not paying for a housing either, which would help in reducing the cost.

[NewMaxx]

SSDs have static (e.g. controller) and dynamic (e.g. NAND) costs, with the latter also having elements of scale (i.e. there is a "sweet spot"). A drive, whether at 250GB or 2TB, may have the same controller for example. This is one reason SSD controller costs are expected to go up 10-15% this year even as NAND remains in decline due to oversupply. So, as an example, you have the dual-core ARM Cortex-R5 Marvell 88SS1074 controller in many SATA SSDs (e.g. WD Blue 3D) while the SMI SM2263 NVMe controller is also dual-core Cortex-R5, albeit clocks vary. The point being that controller costs are a small fraction of SSD cost for a e.g. 1TB SSD and the difference between the 88SS1074 and SM2263 is small once that is considered. DRAM if present also tends to scale with capacity (i.e. 1GB of DRAM per 1TB of NAND, although this is increasingly not the case with consumer drives) regardless of SATA or NVMe and further you can have DDR3, DDR4, LPDDR3/4, etc, with similar functionality because the cache is intended for low latency mapping access. So the difference in cost there is also small - and of course PCB and component costs are not far different (although some of these are higher from the pandemic as we see with PSU pricing in 2020), with SATA PCBs having been larger but now getting smaller with denser NAND.

 

That leaves the bulk of the price to flash/NAND especially as capacity scales (since 2TB drives often have 512MB of DRAM now) which is actually very similar on SATA and NVMe drives. You will sometimes have faster I/O or bus speeds for NVMe but this is often not the case, for example the Samsung TLC found on recent ADATA SX8200 Pros is at a lower data rate that matches what you find on SATA SSDs. It's literally the same flash. This means the primary driver of higher NVMe (for M.2, as opposed to M.2 SATA of course - that is, if we disregard costs from lack of space, something solved with the denser 3D flash we have today) costs, it was really about adoption. 2019 was the first year that more pre-built laptops and PCs came with PCIe (NVMe) than SATA SSDs and that ratio increased in 2020. Therefore, that cost difference has melted away, especially as almost every board comes with one or more NVMe-capable M.2 socket and most people still only have one or two drives (e.g. with storage being SATA).

 

SATA will be cheaper per GB at higher capacities since QLC is most relevant there and still slow enough to not saturate SATA speeds (in QLC mode). It's also possible to hit SATA speeds at lower capacities due to a lesser need of interleaving and likewise a 4-channel controller (or even 2-channel) will be plenty with faster flash, which means NVMe tends towards larger base/minimum capacities especially with 8-channel controllers in Gen4. Which is to say, SATA still has its niche but it's no longer the cheapest way to operate in the most common capacity range.

[Doobeedoo]

Also depends which performance tier you compare, there are top NVME SSDs that are much more expensive than entry ones, which can be found for SATA prices too. Also, in general both are still SSDs having FLASH and controller, better controller, higher quality flash for faster and new interface rises price. But on SATA low end still the basics cost fairly where SSDs in general do, which still are not in HDD price/GB range. Really only on super budged or maybe going multi TB SSD where highest peak performance isn't needed can make sense to get SATA though since you can find NVME one for boot drive for roughly same price, yeah. Really SATA will just be phased out in time. It's an HDD interface.

[Quackers101]

a good SSD is always great, the marketing beind NVME isn't always great.

Also the speed seen in use or by what was said when you buyed it for most storage SSDs etc.

like you can get faster speed with some nvme^, and some companies list the life endurance of how many TB it would be able to write like samsungs lineup of QVO < EVO < PRO.